Lena Ruth - Hold My Threads (2022)

Hands do it all: they are cleaners, door openers, sweepers, steering wheel turners, mixers, lifters, keyboard clatterers, benders, pullers, strummers, breakers, and identity makers.

After I began to feel the pain sharply dive down my forearms, encircling the wrists, vibrating along the palm and slinking around my splayed fingers, I knew that I must stop weaving. I had been working for days without much rest, hunched and outstretched. I thought perhaps it would be a week of rest. Weeks turned into months and months turned into a year and some. Soft tissues scarred and shortened from overuse. Without hands, I needed to evolve disciplines and focus on what I could use: my voice. Working with Cmntx records and collaborator Evan O. Adams, Hold My Threads has emerged, a collection of songs about healing, highways, dinosaurs, moping, the kickstart of a restart, and the ever-evolving way we see ourselves. An ode to our sensitivities, perseverance through pain, and to the surmounting anxiety over barreling fascism and the disregard of climate change.