When the heart is cut, it bleeds slowly. We don’t always notice the quiet trickle of our life force wasting away sweetly inside us until we’re spent. Being remarkably resilient, the heart can recover, but it must first process its wounds. New York-based singer-songwriter ROREY pulls back the curtain on this vulnerable evolution in “Dying Fire”, her ethereal new dream pop single.
“Dying Fire” flickers awake on gossamer flutes and gentle bird chirps, immediately distinguishing itself from regular pop fare. Its opening suggests the beginning of a coming-of-age film that’s sure to stir a bit of mist in your eyes by the end credits. ROREY then floats in like a benevolent specter, or maybe the pure-hearted indie protagonist, to gently layer her woes over a luxurious spread of bass, wind instruments, and electronic glitter.
“I never wanted us to be a phase / You’re someone I can never hate,” ROREY assures the lost lover to whom her confessions spill forth. “Our history / It keeps haunting me / Now I’m crying over everything we couldn’t be.” ROREY’s satin tones, lustrous and elegantly soft, smolder with that helpless but clear-eyed sadness that follows a severed connection. She knows as well as we do that the person we’re afraid to mention anymore to family and friends—or linger on too long in our thoughts, because everything’s already been analyzed down to the molecular level—isn’t coming back. We are allowed to watch embers fade inside us where flames once reigned.
Importantly, ROREY isn’t bitter about it. We shouldn’t be, either. “I’m no victim… If anything, it was a privilege.” Some people enter our lives to deliver what feels like poison but ultimately remedies a lack of clarity or personal understanding. These people step in, set us alight, then vanish. When the smoke clears, we see what we lost in the fire and what survived or even was refined in it.
It’s painful, to be sure. The wounds seem mortal. ROREY’s “Dying Fire” encourages us to reassess that belief. We may soften, harden, burn, come apart, and writhe in ashes, all in the span of a single relationship. However, if we give ourselves time and permission to mourn, the tear in our hearts will mend. We’ll stop the bleeding. Maybe, like “Dying Fire’s” delicate sonic atmosphere, it can even be a beautiful experience.