Staying present isn’t always easy. There are so many distractions built into our everyday life, including but not limited to our phone, social media, the internet and the news. What if you were just to… press pause? That’s what Leo Sawikin does, with his latest release, ‘A Whole World Waiting’.
It’s a song which looks directly at those things in life which might not be quite ideal, and encourages us to sit with the feelings, and then to move past them. In short, it’s a modern day lesson in mindfulness, one for the pandemic era.
“Overall, the new album reflects this feeling that you’ve missed out on the best the world has to offer, and just the pervading sense that things are getting more difficult in the world – and every attending emotion that goes along with it,” Leo adds. “It’s kind of like letting go of that and trying to figure out what you do after everything falls apart. When I wrote these songs, they were about the way my friends and I were thinking, that the world we think we have is not going to last long. We were thinking more in terms of issues like climate change or the political divisiveness, but the pandemic, which none of us expected, gives the songs more power. We’re already starting to live that new reality where you can’t turn your back for a second. In the old world, we could distract ourselves with our day to day lives, but now we’re forced to stare down just how fragile everything is.”
Life may be fragile, but at least we have music. ‘A Whole World Waiting’ is out now, with Leo’s full length, Row Me Away, coming later in the year.