Yebba’s “My Mind” and crying without tears

I’m bout to lose my … my mind

Standing on a modest stage in a New York City design-studio-turned-performance-venue in late September, 2016, Yebba places her soul in the hands of an attentive – albeit rather unexpressive – audience.

Her 5-minute-33-second performance of “My Mind” begins with what might be a hint of a smile, eyes closed in concentration and head swaying as she floats through an introductory run that feels as effortless as it does deliberate. But the atmosphere quickly changes the moment Yebba reveals her subject (and his betrayal) in her first four lines. “I heard you come in at a quarter to three / You closed the door and laid down next to me / But then I heard you say her name in your sleep / Your dirty secrets too far gone to keep.”

What follows is a masterful display of vocal and emotional control, delivered as both story and sermon. Yebba gets straight to the point – the man she loves is cheating on her, and the pain has brought her to a mental and emotional breaking point – and stays there, not wallowing so much as cleansing, pulling out of herself a little piece of Heaven – her voice – to help bring her out of the Hell she’s inhabiting.

But Yebba doesn’t just sing – she performs.

Performing isn’t an activity, it’s a test. It’s a leap of faith. A gamble that, with the right combination of words and notes and just a little bit of luck, you can find in yourself, and then give to your audience, strength that you didn’t know you even had.

White knuckles clenched around the mic stand, eyes pleading with her lover, voice crying out in anguish, Yebba wrestles with her spiraling emotions – her self-diagnosed insanity – in a space where breaking under the pressure isn’t an option. Where her being on a stage and having an audience means the only place for her inner turmoil to go is outward. Yebba sounds like she wants to cry but has no tears left. She just has a voice, an audience and a microphone – three ingredients that, in the right hands, can turn the distinctly human pain of betrayal into something divine.

You say you love me but I know it’s a lie / When I work so hard to keep you satisfied

It’s rare that I catch every word in a song on first listen. Even ballads can be tricky to try and hear as a story rather than a melody. I find the slow pace sort of forces me to hear the words as syllables rather than sentences – less informational, more sensory.

Not the case with “My Mind.” The minimalist instrumentation of the song obviously helps the lyrics come out crisper and clearer than maybe they otherwise would. But it’s the simplicity of the words and phrases Yebba uses that really drives the connection between the listener and the narrative of the piece. “Lose my mind,” “She got you hypnotized,” “I’ll be damned if I ever leave” – these common and widely understood phrases are essentially Yebba’s only uses of metaphor or any other poetic device in the entire performance. She’s stripped away as much complexity and nuance as possible, leaving only the raw, unmistakable pain of her situation.

We do the same when we cry. Crying is not concerned with the details of what’s causing our emotions. More importantly, it’s not preoccupied with the social context in which our feelings reside – it’s one of the few acts that can truly (if only temporarily) free us from the anxiety of wondering how other people will react to our own reaction to something. Crying is emotion without judgement, self expression without a filter. Crying is simple.

It's also tiring. It saps your energy to weather that kind of emotional outpouring. And yet there's a unique sort of clarity, a calmness even, that I think we can only achieve through crying. It's not exactly a logical clarity (sometimes crying results in a new, more helpful way of seeing a situation, but sometimes it doesn't), nor is it some intangible spiritual feeling. Crying grounds us in our physical bodies, yet at the same time lifts us out of our physical reality into a space of pure, unrestrained feeling, and then finally triggers a wave of physical exhaustion once we're done. I think that unique mix of mental and sensory experiences can, even just for a moment, connect us to something deeper within ourselves. I think it reminds us that acknowledging (and more importantly accepting) that our emotions will sometimes overpower us is actually in itself a sign of our strength. That just as our emotions overwhelmed us and caused us to cry, so can we wrest control back for ourselves, stop crying, and resume living.

There's a moment in the second chorus that I think illustrates this perfectly. From 2:43-2:48, Yebba truly looks like she's about to break down. Her eyes look helpless; her whole face is contorted in an immediately recognizable pre-cry expression.

But then she finishes the phrase, "I'm bout to lose my," by hitting an utterly miraculous note on "my," voice on the edge of breaking but still somehow in total control. To me it's unbelievable, and I can't help but wonder if it's precisely the near-breakdown of the previous moment that powers Yebba up to the ending note of the phrase. The pure emotional release she's pushing from herself in this performance has a potential energy all its own, which takes Yebba's vocal talent and makes it go supernova.

Anybody know what I’m talking about?

It’s possible this line (4:50) was planned, but I’d be surprised. I think it’s improvised. And I think it’s no accident that Yebba’s unexpected, seemingly involuntary invitation for anyone who relates to her experience to share in this moment comes right after the song’s most painful, most severe admission: “I sure won’t stay / But I’ll be damned if I ever leave.”

That phrase is another beautifully simple description of Yebba’s suffering. And the fact that it contradicts itself doesn’t at all get in the way of us intuitively understanding what she means – that sometimes both staying in a bad relationship and leaving it can feel equally painful, equally damaging, equally impossible.

Yet that feeling isn’t exactly relatable, at least not universally so. There’s a difference between feeling stuck in the middle of two bad options (common) and feeling physically chained to someone who’s irreparably hurt you (not so common). Most of Yebba’s audience probably gets what she’s talking about – but only a few truly know what it’s like to be in the specific position she’s describing.

Which is, of course, the point. As all great artists do, Yebba is making the personal feel universal and vice versa. But what feels unique to me about this moment is its vulnerability – not emotionally but physically, literally, independent of her song’s subject matter. She's earnestly asking the audience, "Is my story resonating with you? Are you connecting with my way of expressing it? Are you feeling ... anything?"

And the answer might be no. As with any performance, there's a chance the performer misses their mark and doesn't actually succeed in moving their audience. That sucks – especially when you're laying your whole heart out on the line for that audience. But that's certainly doesn't mean it's not worth trying anyway. Because at some point, performing in a design studio or a stadium or singing in the car with a friend, someone will connect with what you're trying to express. Someone will know what you're talking about, will hear your voice break or listen to you cry and connect not just with your emotions, but with the awesomely human strength you show by sharing them.