Story

This song came from a prompt of “a paler blue”—a phrase that fell away during rewrites.  In researching what I could do with that original seed, I discovered shibori for the first time.

Shibori is a traditional Japanese resist-dyeing technique. A pattern is made by binding, stitching, folding, twisting, or compressing a natural fabric, dyeing, and then releasing the binding pressure to reveal the pattern. Techniques were ancestral, handed down exclusively within artisan families.

When the fabric is returned to its flat form after dyeing, the design that emerges is the result of the bound and tied three-dimensional shape. The cloth sensitively records both the form and the pressure; the “memory” of the tied shape remains imprinted in the cloth, often creating a unique texture. Each and every detail of Shibori represents a tied knot made by an artisan’s hands.

The technique spoke to me of family trauma, and the stuff of life that we can eventually think of as staining—rather than the very stuff that makes us who we are, and beautiful by the design of unseen hands.