Caroline Scruggs
In Spring Cleaning, I Found the lyrics that started it all...
You guys, you guys! As I flipped through old sketch pads in the depths of my closet, looking for some free space to make more art, I FOUND THE ORIGINAL LYRICS TO ELOISE, the first song I wrote in my adult life! Sheesh, it took me back.....
back to 2014: I had graduated college, walked the Camino de Santiago (a 500 mile pilgrimage across Spain) and was now broke, living back at my parents' house, working in their diner. To say that I had a direction was laughable. This was when I was supposed to be getting my shit together to move to New York and 'make it' on Broadway, but instead, I was either behind a cash register, or depression-sleeping.
One day, someone broke through my malaise. As I stood my post at the diner, day dreaming and distracted, suddenly I heard a man yell "ELOISE!!" I turned to see the flash of a tiny little girl strolling behind the counter where I was stationed and back into the kitchen, so nonchalant, like she owned the joint. We all laughed at this little person and her spunk, her dad came up and retrieved her, and that was that. Maybe it was because I had nothing going on in my life at that point... or maybe I was meant to see her and the little light that shone out of her carefree spirit that did not yet know fear or boundaries or society's rules.
I went home that night, sat on my childhood bed, and wrote Eloise in an hour. It was the first song I'd ever written that felt like I had accessed it from somewhere, that I was simply the instrument through which it came.
If you listen to it again now, and really listen to the lyrics, some things may make more sense to you. It is all completely and utterly true... a reflection of my self at that lonely, directionless, essential point in time.