A Funeral In My Heart
Have you ever given up everything so your dream could live? …I did.
To let music live, I had to let everything else die in my heart. But the ghosts of doomed romances had nowhere to go except to find their way into my upcoming solo Double Album ‘There Is A Funeral In My Heart, For Every Man I Loved (心葬)’: my greatest, most important and intimate body of work to date.
5 years of writing, recording and producing this double album on my own went into making sure these delicately crafted, heart-aching ballads would heal in the midst of tragedy, and prepare you to smile at the end of your tears. I wanted it to be timeless.
For I truly believe in creating soul resonance & meaningful connections between my art and aesthetes who can truly appreciate its multifaceted values.
- Double Album By Fifi Rong
DOUBLE ALBUM TRACK LIST
Album 1 (English: There Is A Funeral In My Heart, For Every Man I Loved）
1. Out of clock
2. Only Man
3. Love Yourself First
4. Another Me
5. Distance
6. Beg For More
7. I refused to Break Down
8. Alchemist
9. I’m Enough
10. Dream On
11. Stay Away
12. Another Me (Acapella)
Album 2 (Chinese: 心葬)
1. 来不及 （Out of clock）
2. 流尘 （Only Man）
3. 自爱 （Love Yourself First）
4. 另一个我 （Another Me）
5. 距离 （Distance）
6. 金石为开 （Alchemist）
7. 足够 （I’m Enough）
8. 梦之爱恋 （Dream On）
9. 离开你 （Stay Away）
10. 零度空间 (QFT)
11. 唯美 （Art For Art's Sake）
12. 另一个我 Another Me (无伴奏)
I was born into a culture of conformity and collectivism in China. When I was growing up, my surroundings made me believe I’d never have the talent or the look to make it in music. I didn’t understand that people were speaking of their own limitations. I knew I needed to get away and break through mine. Now I’ve been in the UK alone for 2 decades, staying far away from where I came from.
To keep my music dream alive, I let go of my nationality, motherhood, and carried the guilt of my inability of being a dutiful daughter to my parents. ‘I Refuse To Break Down’, a monologue track from this double album, I said: ‘my father told me, it might take the world 2 years, 20 years, or 200 years to understand’ (my art). So I must make peace with it at every moment and keep going forward. His understanding breaks me and heals me every single time.
Just like me, culturally and musically, this double album has 50% in English and the other 50% in Chinese. I'm very blessed with my unique background that I can write in both languages to a similar level of depths and eloquence. It’s a memoir of love that documents everything I’ve lived, and everyone I’ve loved in my life. I wrote about strengths in vulnerability. Our deepest hurt is always teaches us the most important lessons.
I want this album to encapsulate a specific branch of melancholic romanticism that transcends its own context. It’s taken me 5 long years as I picked these album songs from over a 100 demos. And I had to make sure each demo was hitting me emotionally from the demo stage to the finishing stage.
Production wise, I’ve taken an extremely feminine, delicate and vocal-led approach because for 1. as a that’s my corner female producer, and what I do best, and 2. I was inspired by a Peruvian Shaman during an ayahuasca retreat in 2019. That's when I realised, as that’s when I realised the raw vocal coming from the soul is the most intimate, vulnerable, yet powerful instrument there is.
I'm blessed with a fanbase, supporter, and tight-knit community full of incredible talents.
The idea of having my great artist friend and supporter Shane Rodrigues paint a hyper-realism life-size acrylic painting is to honour the years I spent crafting this double album as a piece of 'sonic painting'.
Dylan Chubb, whom I met participating with me in the 2019 Ayahuasca retreat, is the art director and photographer of this album. And my graphic designer Eric from Kahinienn Graphix went from being a fan to someone I work with day in and day out.
The album is a portrait of the archetypes of human conditions in the form of a collection of unrequited love stories through the perspective of a woman who tragically and willingly falls into romantic affairs that were doomed from the start. In a way she’s designed her own stories and played out the same role ritualistically over and over, but she doesn’t know why.
Cycling through a constant of attachment and detachment, encounters and departures, she sees love as flames, unattainable, with lust and love eventually burnt out like yesterday's dream. She tells her stories while seeking for answers and ultimately transcendence through these songs. She accepts the pain from each and every experience she chooses to have, but she has to heal her wounds alone so she invariably leaves the situation, returning to her default state of otherworldliness.
This is why she held a funeral as a ritual for every man she once truly loved but inevitably forgets and erases from her heart. In spite of her vulnerable, feminine and melancholic exterior, she is indestructibly strong, so she can play with love seriously every time and get ready again for the next thrill for her soul, or turmoil in her life.
Every woman or man can find a part of themselves in her from one time to another, as she represents the collective consciousness: fear, pain, insecurities, lust, loss, disappointments, suffering, loneliness and the desire to be loved. The chain of pain she goes through represents the unenlightened egoic state of human conditions – conditional love.
I was her emotionally, when I wrote the songs.
The album is dedicated to those of you who have been through heartbreaks, pain and suffering. Let’s give a funeral to all of our pain and heal together.
I’m so proud of this album to the point I’d be happy if I die tomorrow. But as long as I do live, it’s my duty and honour to do my best and share it with you and the world.
For the most part of my life, it was the most unthinkable and unlikely thing for me to become the music artist I am today. So I want you to free yourself and live your truths too, no matter what circumstances, how old and young you are.
Thank you for your incredible love and support. I appreciate you...
Fifi Rong
