Peklektru – Għadna Għaddejjin

A story in three parts

part iii

2022 passed

But if I thought—or rather hoped—that a new calendar would stop the storm, I quickly learned, in the very first week of the new year, that the storm had yet to pass. The mobile rang early in the morning. One of those calls you figure out before the first word is even spoken. My mother, whom we had been losing bit by bit over many years, was now also gone physically forever. 2022 had passed, but its echos endured.

The bitterness of 2022 gave me plenty to write about. But I don’t want to write sad music. Or at least, I don’t want to write only sad songs. The music that has always come naturally to me has never been very dramatic—it’s always been rather simple, somewhat raw, music that doesn’t take itself too seriously, more rhythmic than melodic. It’s true that 2022 changed me, but not that much. The guiding star was always the groove, the ultimate aim: to get the listener to boogie.

And so, partly because time eventually started to pass and the skys began to open up a little, and partly because the music I was writing was more uplifting, I had to explore other themes and accept that full of bitterness as life may be, it is never only that. “Those were the days,” those drunk on nostalgia like to say. “These are days too” tends to be my retort. Don’t wait twenty years to get it.

Maybe this is the recurring theme in this collection of songs: the passage of time, the inevitable challenges, and a philosophy about how one might try to navigate through them. Beyond that, the story can stop here. Music is written primarily to be played, not to be talked about and analysed.

The first songs are out on my youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/@peklektru