Jaz Gómez
Song
CICADAS is a song I wrote in 2021 about my impending 25th birthday, an age many consider to be the definitive end to their childhoods and a major pinpoint on the map of their lives. At the time I had been struggling with college, feeling directionless, and reeling from the sudden end of a close friendship (not to mention trying to survive during a global pandemic), everything was moving fast and I was disoriented. That very same year Brood X, the periodical cicadas of the Eastern U.S., were making their own mad scramble into the adult world and I couldn’t help but feel a strong kinship with them. I had grown up in Virginia and remembered their emergence 17 years prior; I was looking back at my wild 8 year old self and forward into an intimidating but hopeful future. I could finally tell where I was in that moment: hooked onto the tree of my own life, halfway between the shell of my old self and the wings of a new one. I was where I was supposed to be, I would be going where I wanted to go, and so I wrote a song about it. (Special thanks to Michael J. Raupp Ph. D. who’s 2004 NewsHour interview heavily inspired and is sampled in this piece)