My Little Swallow

This is not simply a song. It is a dedication—to my little swallow.

People who follow my work may eventually wonder who the person is whose name appears among the songwriters; who handles the administrative and legal side of the project; who remains beside everything that happens around my music.

That person is my little swallow.

I would go even further: she is my reflection, sealed inside a fragile female body. I have always told her so. The most interesting part is that she says exactly the same thing about me: that I am her male reflection.

Perhaps nature—or fate—once decided to play a joke on us.

Although, judging by her character, her manner, her colourful vocabulary and her ability to organise our entire male collective, she was probably the one who was meant to be born a boy.

Behind that outward fragility is someone capable of taking on everything other people would rather step away from: documents, contracts, rights, organisation, endless decisions, and the responsibility of keeping this complicated mechanism moving.

And yet, to describe her merely as the person responsible for administration and legal matters would be to say almost nothing about her.

For as long as I can remember myself, I remember her beside me. We are so close that it is difficult for me to separate one part of our lives from another. Everything I do passes through her in one way or another: songs, lyrics, ideas, experiments, research, films, animated projects, and the new directions into which she once led me.

That is probably why the story of this song refuses to follow a straight line. The moment I begin speaking about my little swallow, I find myself speaking about my entire life.

We began writing poetry while we were still at school. Many teenagers probably pass through something similar. We wrote poems, turned them into songs, and never imagined that any of it might one day become a profession, a source of income, or the subject of legal agreements. Back then, copyright never entered our minds. Songs were simply born—and then travelled on.

I still remember one New Year’s Eve. We were perhaps eighteen or nineteen and still at college. We gathered with friends that evening, and in the few hours before midnight she managed to write five or six songs. Just like that. On napkins.

The napkins were passed around among friends and classmates as New Year’s gifts. Perhaps someone from our old circle still remembers that evening. Perhaps one of those napkins has even survived.

It never occurred to us to preserve proof of authorship, sign agreements, or think about where those lines might one day appear. Years later, we came across fragments of verses and choruses in other songs—sometimes rather well-known ones. But that belongs to the past. We are not going back to make claims against anyone. Let everyone sleep peacefully.

For us, it became a lesson. Today we are far more careful about copyright, documentation and protecting what we create. But those years were different. There was chaos. Songs were given away or sold. Sometimes it happened simply because I needed help getting back on my feet—and she did everything she could to make that possible.

Money has never been what drives her. Perhaps the same is true of me. For years, we thought first about songs and people, and only afterwards—if at all—about contracts, rights and money.

She has always known about my stories, infatuations, mistakes and adventures. She knew my past, stood beside me in the present, and tried with me to understand what the future might become.

Sometimes I told her things I could tell no one else. Sometimes songs began to grow directly out of those conversations.

That is how one of my most personal songs, Forever in My Heart, began. She wrote its first words. The song had originally been intended for another performer and would probably have been given away or sold like so many others.

Then one day I picked up a guitar and sang it—sitting at a table, almost by accident. It was one of my first attempts to hold the instrument again. As the song developed, the melody changed a little, certain lines were adjusted, and it gradually found the voice that belonged to it.

That was when my little swallow made the decision:

“We will write another hundred songs. That is not a problem. But this one stays with you.”

I had no plans to perform it. I had no plans to record it, and I was not even certain I would ever return to music. The song simply remained there—once played on a guitar and sung at a table. It waited for years until its time finally came.

Some words, perhaps, simply have to be spoken. First, you must recognise them yourself, say them aloud and release them. But there is a second step: one day, someone else must hear them.

And if those words eventually reach the person for whom they were meant, that is almost a miracle.

In everything I create today, the two of us are still there together.

I can experiment, explore new technologies, change the sound and follow wherever my creative curiosity leads. But the final adjustment to a lyric and the last listening session always happen with her.

Her taste matters to me. Her opinion matters to me. I need her producer’s intuition—that special instinct that allows her to hear not only what a song is now, but what it might still become.

We share everything equally.

Although sometimes I think that the heavier half of our “equally” falls on her shoulders.

I tried to write the story of one song, but realised that I could not separate it from all the others. To speak about my little swallow is to speak about every song: those I perform myself; those performed by other artists; those once written on napkins; and those we have yet to write.

Because she is present in everything I do.

We may argue. Life may carry us to different cities and countries. There may be thousands of kilometres between us. But whatever happens, when she is not beside me, I miss her deeply.

Perhaps this entire dedication could be contained in one short sentence:

My little swallow, I miss you.

— Alex Kryve