Last year we worked with 18 brilliant disabled creatives on our Young Artist Development Programme (YADP). Their work is featured in a new zine called “Department for Wonder and Play”, more about this here. In addition to the digital and physical publication, we’re going to spotlight each artist on the blog so you can get a deeper insight into their work and process. Over to Daniel (Dan1s) who is going to talk about his song Older.

I am Daniel. I am 17 years old. In December 2020, within one minute, my life completely changed. I became paralysed as a result of a rare neurological autoimmune illness. I sustained a spinal cord injury which meant I spent 8 months in hospital and rehabilitation, trying to recover. In that period, I suffered a relapse to my condition.

I wrote lots of songs in hospital, many of which were about my situation at the time. The song in question here is called Older, which was one I actually wrote a day before I was paralysed. I found this song very relatable to my experiences, and a few months later I decided to refine the lyrics so that they’d relate to my situation.

Two years later I decided to finally record it. I am so thankful to Touretteshero who helped me fund it, as well as putting it in the zine. I hope people who have been through similar experiences can resonate with this song and the lyrics.

You can stream Daniel’s song, and some of the lyrics are also written below.

Content warning: This song includes themes of hospitalisation, medical trauma, and mental distress.

Every day people just want to diss me
Next day when I’m gone they will just miss me
I’ll be trying to have a good life before it hits me
Because most things are over in a second or just sixty
Every day I’ll be getting older
And the whole world damn it’s getting colder
I’m just tryna carry all this weight on my shoulder
Every day in every way
I feel like I need a change
But I’m wasting my time in these ways
And I don’t really know what to say
So I just leave it late
Now I might have really just left it late
Or decided my fate
Cause life’s changed in the craziest of ways
Writing in a new perspective
Looking and reflecting
When I wrote this song all I thought was death
Next day behind so many machines it was life or death
But the fight wasn’t notorious
So it didn’t turn into life after death
Sitting in this new world learning to accept
Now I know I can’t ever go back to my best
After sitting for hours didn’t know I could be dead
So much pain I couldn’t see it’s too much to congest
And what I was I like in this position
Writing this song
Did my rights go straight to wrongs?
Or was this prolonged?
And now trapped is that where I belong?

Thank you so much to Daniel for sharing more about your work and the experience that shaped it. Look out for more Artist Spotlights coming soon.