The song was created in the wake of the end of a relationship and the termination of a pregnancy, but girl with dream’s approach finds her on the other side of the pain. Lawson imagines a way to move forward while also knowing that her experiences will inevitably bury themselves deep within the tapestry of images that make up her life and the person she has become – for better and for worse.

In the video, girl with dream finds strength in running and uses a projector to blend together past, present and future lives. With fellow Montreal artist Helena Deland accompanying her on vocals, their tender harmonies communicate all of that emotion over an echoing acoustic backdrop.

We caught up with girl with dream below to talk about processing grief, hope for the future, and the images that would appear on her personal tapestry. 

First of all, could you introduce yourself to our readers? What has your musical journey been like so far?

Yes! My name is Chrissy Lawson and girl with dream is the project I started about two years ago. My musical journey began pretty young; I played bass in the worship band of the evangelical church I grew up in. A lot of contemporary Christian music a la Hillsong (iykyk…). I then attended a now defunct arts program at a high school in Peterborough, Ontario. Those years were extremely formative, me and my friends jammed and partied and that’s when I first started attending secular shows. I’m a self taught guitar player and when I moved to Montreal at 18 I started exploring songwriting and performing at a lot of the local open mics (RIP Cafe Shaika in NDG). 

In like 2016 or so I started working at this bar called Sparrow in Mile End and that’s where I met Finn and Kev, my bandmates in Dresser. I owe a lot to that project as it was with Dresser that I started really gigging and making substantial connections in the Montreal music scene. Then a few years back I started performing and writing as girl with dream! I’ve released a few one off singles that I wrote and recorded while working on the more substantial project of Tell, my debut EP, and its accompanying short film.

What was the vision for this music video?

I wanted to find a way to visually represent how future hope and past experiences of loss weave together. There are sort of two versions of me in the video, the ghostly form I take representing grief or loss in the past and then the future version of myself that is stronger, that has overcome that pain. When I was going through it I turned to running as a means to deal with or support my mental health (or literally run away from my feelings). I wanted to incorporate that into this video. We shot the running sequences first and then that same night I stood in the attic of this 18th century home and our light artist projected the footage onto the sheet-like costume I had on. Projecting future possibilities onto a past self, revealing the potential that this damaged version of myself has to heal and literally move forward from loss.

These tracks were originally meant to be private – what inspired you to release them to the world?

These songs were written as a means of catharsis. I was cloistered away, living alone for the first time in my life in the Plateau while Montreal was under some pretty severe curfew measures. I was reeling from the loss of a relationship and the termination of a pregnancy I’d wanted. When I originally pitched this idea to Josh (my producer) I said “one day, one mic, one take.” I wanted to create this record of my experience for myself and as a valve to release the pressure and reduce the strain. It was so personal and private that I couldn’t imagine expressing these things publicly. Moreover, I was afraid of the churn of music as a product to be consumed. Exposing my most intimate feelings to the algorithm, to metrics and data analysis. Sometimes it can all feel a little cold.

Then, as I let more people in and was encouraged by my peers, I gained more confidence. I realized that while I was in the depths of my pain my experience was kind of niche: there wasn’t a lot of media or art that expressed the feelings of a trans woman grieving, addressing these really specific issues around fertility and loss. I felt that perhaps I might be saying something that someone else might relate to, that I could solve the isolation I felt myself by allowing this project into the world.

What are some of your favourite lyrical moments on “Tapestry”? What inspired these words and what do they mean to you?

I’m so proud of these words, I took a lot of care in writing them. My favourite moment would probably be the coda, the final words at the end of the song. My life had changed so much and I think my perspective on grief and the whole situation matured. The end tag became the title – “So I’ll grow around this part, a woven tapestry and life as art.” It’s like, you don’t move on from loss, it’s more about how you incorporate it into your life. How you fold in all the elements of your experiences and accept that those feelings can persist, but are just as much a part of you as anything else.

Helena Deland appears twice on your upcoming EP – how did you meet Helena and become such close collaborators?

We met online and connected over music! I shared my early demos with her and she was so encouraging. She’s such an inspiration for me and her support really means the world. I think it helped me take this project seriously and I was honoured when she said she would sing on “Bench” and “Tapestry.” She’s really just a wonderful person and I can’t imagine what the project would have been like without her involvement at various stages.

If there was a tapestry created that depicted your life, what kinds of images would be on it?

This is such an interesting question!! It would definitely be centred around all the things that have drawn me into music. Maybe it would feature the church I first started playing in, or the school that I attended which had an arts program that really expanded my horizons? Mont-Royal would definitely feature heavily, it’s like this source gravity around which we all orbit here in Montreal. There would be guitars and basses, pianos and drums. My dog would have a place of honour for sure. My wife and our lovely marriage by the sea. Perhaps some needles and other ephemera related to my transition. Some dark patches depicting the harder times and some beautiful, vibrant colours for the ecstatic highs! And naturally one side would be unwoven; the frayed edges of an uncertain future.

What’s next for girl with dream? Anything else you’d like us to know?

This year has been challenging for me and I’ve spent a lot of it recovering from a series of unrelated surgeries. So I’ve had this opportunity to write some new tunes and I’m in the process of demoing a new record which I’ll be recording next year. I’m playing an “off pop” house show on the 28th and will also be booking some more dates soon, keep an eye out at your local venue 🙂