The Magic Lantern, the musical moniker of British Australian musician Jamie Doe, has shared his new single ‘Family Affair’ which he describes as “one of the songs I’m most proud of. Stripped back, raw, direct – these are simplest and most profound tools I’ve got right now.”
In a very personal message to fans via his newsletter, Jamie explained the background to the song:
The song is a meditation on a loss witnessed in slow-motion. The past year or two I’ve been spending a lot of time helping to care for my Dad who has Alzheimer’s disease. The love I have for him is deep and true. As a son and a songwriter, finding a way to articulate the slowly suffocating feeling of crushing inevitability and its effect on all of us, has been a challenge I’ve done my best to rise to.
I don’t normally talk about my songs so directly, but I know there are lots of families dealing with similar, if not the same, situations everyday, in private and out of sight and I wanted to say that I see you, I feel you and I know you’re doing the best you can.
“It’s a family affair to make peace with despair /
and singing songs to stave way the tears”
From where I’m sat, I feel like I’m in the middle of one of the most creative and challenging periods of my life. I feel very alive. There is so much that is uncertain right now, so few of the old pillars left to hang a flag on. So it feels even more important ‘to engage in the hard work of hope’, to borrow a phrase.
If there is value to what I do it is, I guess, in trying to articulate my own search for meaning in such a way as to allow the audience to do the same. It’s an imprecise and entirely subjective science, but I believe it in with all my heart.
Thanks for all your support, wherever you are, the ripples reach out!
The ‘The Life That I Have’ EP is out on 31 January,
Big love
Jamie x
Stream/download ‘Family Affair’ here https://cdbaby.lnk.to/FamilyAffair
More here: https://the-magic-lantern.co.uk/
You can also hear Family Affair on Folk Radio’s Mellow Folk Spotify Playlist.