How can you convey a song about a disease? Especially a disease like epilepsy that most people have heard about but probably know very little about. And can I express the feelings and the hopelessness associated with having a child with this disease without it being simply too much for others to listen to?
Among other things, it was with these thoughts that I started writing the song Epilepsy. A song that has now become very central to my album The Admirer, which is my most personal album to date. The song was also the first single from the album, and was released on International Epilepsy Day. That all made sense.
Listen to the song while reading the text.
The anxiety and hopelessness of being a parent of a child with this disease – that you cannot help your child when the epileptic seizure strikes – filled our minds and our home extremely much during the period when I started writing songs for the new album. One day I came up with the main melody line for the song while jamming on my acoustic Gibson j-45. And I found that rhythmically it perfectly suited to singing e-p-i-l-e-p-s-y. It was like a magical moment without incident. It was like my personal equivalent of McCartney’s Yesterday. It just came to me – this song was meant to come here and now.
And that’s how I came to the probably unconscious conclusion, that this album should also be a funnel into my feelings and worries. That it would be right for me now to write songs about the very personal things that are going on in my life here and now. Whereas before I have written songs based on more unspecified incidents in the world around me, this time it has been all about writing songs about my own life, feelings and relations. And that decision has been incredibly rewarding for me in the creation process but also afterwards.
I hope that these very personal songs on The Admirer also hit the listeners in a different and at least for us new way compared to our previous releases. I hope that the song Epilepsy and this album will give the listeners something that they can also reflect on their own lives and the worries, troubles and doubts they may have.
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Dear Martin,
There is always hope. I have had epilepsy since I was 11 years old. Yet the medication I have been on since then, has prevented me from having any more seizures in 31 years since. I have to be careful of flashing lights, but apart from that my illness doesn’t bother me. I have led a full and happy life.
I have a nephew who has more severe epilepsy, he is more affected than I ever was, but he is still a happy little chap and gets a lot of enjoyment from playing sports and football.
I also have a friend with a little boy who has very severe Dravet syndrome epilepsy, this does affect his learning and general activities, but again he is amazing in his own way and lives a happy life of park visits and school activities, when not actively undergoing seizures.
So what I guess I am saying is, you must feel terrible as a parent, to watch your child going through it, but there is hope of medical treatment, and a happy, relatively normal life ahead.
Sorry if this sounds banal or unfeeling. Trying to offer some solace!
Good luck to you and your child.
Richard Thomas (Mint Biscuit Sounds).