EMBRACING YOUR POETIC SELF : AN INTERVIEW WITH MARY ECKERT

"Love has a very high stakes: high rewards, high stakes kind of situation, but it’s always worth telling people." 

The concept of being the poet and not the muse started gaining traction on social media a few years ago. While it lies at the core of Mary Eckert’s artistic identity, she doesn’t view it as a rejection of softness or femininity. On the contrary, Mary embraces her poetic self, and in this interview with Forevermore, she shares her thoughts with honesty, insight, and warmth.

©danniijophotography

Selma Tabti (interviewer): You told me you were considering yourself as a poet and a bard, do you mind telling me more about it ? 

Mary Eckert: Lyrics have always really been important to me. They are the most important, even when I am listening to other people’s music. I can’t listen to something I don’t like the words of. I’ve always been drawn to lyrics : I love English, I love reading and I always loved creative writing at school. I wrote a song called Always too high and I guess the whole point of it is that I wrote a love poem. I’ve ended up writing the lyrics “You’re a sicko with words and I’m just a bard”. I think it unlocked something in my writing: I wanted to delve deeper into having more imagery and double meanings. I ended up being okay with telling everyone that I am a poet, a bard and a lyricist and I truly love the imagery of it. 

M.E: I’d say very metaphorical, at some point maybe a little bit cheeky. I love basing a song around a concept and I love having fun with that concept. for example, at the end of Fortune Teller, which is one of my favorite lyrical songs that I have, I do this thing when I throw loads of images all at once. I guess that’s kind of my universe. A really big inspiration, but it’s more sonically, even though I love his songwriting, is Ryan Beatty. He is literally insane. I discovered him last year and I just fell in love with his album Calico. I just think sonically it’s amazing, I just love him. His writing is incredible and it really inspired what I’ve done now. He’s a really big one. I really like Laura Marling. I love Lizzy McAlpine as well: I love her newest album so much. 

S.T: What about literature, do you have any influence, maybe in your writing style? 

M.E: That’s a really good question. I don’t really like to think about it, if that makes sense. I don’t like to think about things too much, I like things because I feel compelled to do them. If I try to designate myself a style or a way of writing, it can end up really hard to do…I feel like the inspiration is within me. In terms of literature, because I am a big fan of imagery, I absolutely love Daphné du Maurier. A couple summers ago, I went camping with my friends and we literally didn’t have anything to do but reading. I read one of her books and it was so beautiful. We just read her books. She writes really beautifully. But also, I love shit books. When I say I love reading, I’m not always reading amazing books, sometimes I just read the worst books ever but sometimes I don’t want to think, I just want stupid books! 

S.T: Are there any favorite lyrics that you’ve ever written ? 

M.E: Oh gosh, that’s such a hard question. It’s hard because I feel in every song, I have a favorite. At the moment, my favorite one, because it changes all the time, is the chorus of Fortune Teller. I end up saying “and I dropped the ball”. Currently, that’s my favorite. 

S.T: I suppose you’re more of a lyric person, do you have particular process for writing a song? 

M.E: Yeah, I’m a terrible musician, I am literally so bad. However, I do play piano and guitar, but to a very low standards. I play to a point that I can write a songs...I can play live, but I make mistakes and it’s terrible for the other people playing with me. I have written all these songs on guitar, but i actually don’t really know chords, they’re all open tunes and I just put my fingers where I want to. Lyrically, a lot of the time, I have a concept.  That’s what happened with Cowboy Blue, I had the first couple of lines and all this imagery. At the time, I was really inspired by cowboy and western imagery, but now, I am more into whimsical and mystical imagery. Lyricwise, sometimes I do research, I listen to songs I love, I read... Sometimes, if I’m doing a specific topic, I search words that are related to that topic and write them down. I probably change the lyrics a few times until I’m happy with it or get what I want. 

©danniijophotography

S.T: Are you writing them down on a notebook, a phone ? 

M.E: It will be on a notebook or I just record it. That’s wild because when I sent you everything, I had to write all my lyrics down! I can’t do this again, it is so lame! I don’t like typing them, I don’t like being next to a screen when I’m doing something creative, so it’s normally on a notepad, very terrible handwriting, or I just don’t write it down at all. Sometimes I do it on the tube but I am Really scared that other people would look at me typing my feelings down. 

I was sitting next to this really cool lady —I always make a point to really look open because you know when you want to sit down on the train, people look like they don’t want you to sit next to them. She looked like one of my favorite singing teachers I’ve ever had and I was like “you’re identical to her”...I don’t know, I felt really inspired at that moment. It’s weird when a feeling catches you, right? I just started writing them down and I definitely needed some sort of privacy screen. I was writing random lyrics...But then you know you lose things, you lose things if you don’t write them down immediately.

​S.T: So do you have your notebook on you at all times? 

M.E: Yeah, I always have it in my purse. I actually have the perfect size at the moment. I also use post it notes, so now I have a notebook, post it notes and sometimes lyrics on my phone. Don’t use post-it notes if you don’t want to lose them!
S.T: Yeah, don’t use any type of sticky notes if you don’t want them to end up in the trash or be lost forever. 

M.E: Yes exactly. They’re everywhere and people can easily find them. 

S.T: As you may know, this issue’s theme is based on the song All my love by Noah Kahan. Do you think writing a song for someone is the highest form of love? 

M.E: I would say so. I think to write someone something is very personal. It is a compliment. If someone writes something about you, they’re thinking about you. They put a lot of time in it. I think it is a very beautiful thing to do for someone. People used to write poems all the times, or write each others letters and that sort of things are not a thing anymore. I think that’s so sad, I don’t like that. Bring back handwritten notes!  

S.T: I am such an advocate for handwritten notes. I do that all the times. Bring back love poems, love notes and everything love related!

M.E: I do the same to be fair, I write some poems for my partner. If I go to a different place, I write a poem about my holiday and I send it to myself on a postcard: they’re always really silly!

S.T: It is actually so cute, this is such a nice idea! I actually do the same, everytime I go to a new place, I buy a postcard and I write the best memory I had there. 

M.E: The hardest part is to find a postbox in a country where you not from. Well…actually that’s not that hard…I always have to do it at the airport. There’s always a box at the airport. 

©danniijophotography

S.T: Going back to the concept of love, I’ve heard one of the preview you’ve posted on Tiktok and one of the lyrics were "If I love you, I’ll tell you I love you ‘cause I can". It is very simple, yet I find it absolutely beautiful because sometimes, we forget how simple love can be. Over social medias, you can see that people are trying to make rules about love. It becomes really hard to let yourself say these three little words, but genuinely, who’s stopping you from saying them if you feel like it.

M.E: Yes, absolutely. I don’t believe in following those rules. If I fell in love with someone, I would just say it. Actually, the lyrics are from a very sad songs…it’s all about a relationship that didn’t work out with someone that I loved. Love has a very high stakes: high rewards, high stakes kind of situation, but it’s always worth telling people. 

S.T: There’s no point of saying the word like when your heart truly loves someone. 

M.E: Yes, I really don’t like the word “like”. For some reasons, loving becomes embarrassing. I think some humans really struggle emotionally, saying how they feel or not knowing how. It is a shame that people are worrying about if someone or something is seen as cool… I think people worry to much about things and it impacts on how people connect. 

S.T: How people connect, but also how people create as well. So many people are so afraid of putting their art out there. Coming back to your career, are you working on any project at the moment? 

M.E: Well, let me tell you about the things I’m currently working on right now because they’re not out yet. I am so excited.  It’s been a lot of work for the longest time, it’s been two years. It’s going to be pop but folk, lots of very pretty things. Obviously, very lyrically dense. I have three EPs worth of songs… I’m not gonna have to write for so long, obviously I am going to write. I’m going to release the first four, hopefully starting in may with a single. It’s hard to pick which one to do first. It’s very motivated by love and I wrote all those songs in a weird time, when I finished a long term relationship. It was not great. I was struggling and those songs really helped me get my feelings out and I ended up liking them. I actually need to get it all together. As an artist, I had such a long time of creating, just making stuff for the sake of making stuff. I need to get pictures done, I need to create the project…but yeah it’s all going to be about love, bard, lyricist… I don’t want to release too many songs at the same time because I am a small artist. 

S.T: When I was listening to the songs you’ve sent me, I really felt like you put all your love into it. Any type of love, at some point you’re talking about how much you love London. It is about multiple types of love, friendships included. In Fortune Teller, you say “I’ll sing riddles forever”. Do you feel like you communicate more freely when you write a song? 

M.E: I don’t really know. I think it makes me ruminate. I am such a dweller, I will never get over anything ever unfortunately but that’s okay. I kinda write songs about dwell, it’s not good. I wish I could get some forms of closure, but with songwriting, you romanticise and you paint a picture. Now I am singing songs about situations that hurt my feelings, but I love it. 

S.T: Is it a never ending chapter ? 

M.E: It’s ongoing, I struggle to talk about things. It’s to write and reflect. It’s like poems. When you’re sad, and you want to feel sad – same with listening to sad songs. 
​
S.T: Going back to the songs you’ve sent me, let’s talk about Something With Your Name On It. It’s all about being the poet and not the muse. It’s all about someone, but there’s no mention of any name in the song. It is clearly not something with someone’s name on it. It is a way of taking your power back, because at the end, what remains is your words and love. At the end, it’s all about being your own muse as you are writing about yourself. 

M.E: Yes, it’s true. I know it is very ironic because it is about dedicating something to someone. The end is a lot more empowering because I am reclaiming my love a little bit back. “It must be nice to have something with your name on it”. It is about reclaiming my power, but to be honest, it was a bit  pathetic when I wrote it because it wasn’t about empowerment at all. It was very sad. 

S.T: As you said, having a song being written about you is very beautiful, even though the song is not really happy, the act of writing someone a song is really beautiful. Do you think they will know it’s about them ? 

M : I actually have no idea. It is an issue that you need to worry about. I don’t know if I am going to send them anything, but I guess there’s a lot of clues in them. Maybe I was crazy and I put a lot of things in my head that never happened. 

S.T: Are you a little bit scared of pouring out your feelings out by releasing a song to the public? 

M.E: A little bit, because I think it’s a bit crazy. I am artist, I am a creative, I can’t help it and as we said earlier, we don’t need to be embarrassed about anything. It is a concern when you are writing things. I am always writing songs about people. 

S.T: You did write a song about London though.

©danniijophotography

M.E: I did. I need to finish it, I can’t think about a second verse. It’s because my favorite line –or one of my fav– is “I laugh at friends until we stain tables”. I really want to find something with a similar vibe for the end of my second verse but I can’t grasp it. 

S.T: Do you feel that when you write a song, it needs to be better than the previous song? Are you struggling with that? 

M.E: Yes, I would say so. I do struggle with it. I wouldn’t say I’m a perfectionist because there’s a lot of stuff I don’t care about but lyrical content I do get a bit..yeah. 

S.T: So do you think you have a song that you could not top? 

M.E: Oh no…never. This is the problem though…Basically when you first write a song, you love it and it’s your favorite new song. Fortune Teller is my favorite at the moment but it’s only because it’s the newest one. My least favorite was once my favorite. As you get a better writer, you write your best thing, that’s a problem because you set a bar, new standards. I had the feeling but I know that is something that will pass. But maybe someday I’ll write a song and nothing will ever top it. 

S.T: Are you writing on a daily basis? 

M.E:  Oh my god, no. I do the morning pages, but they’re rubbish. I try to sit down and write every week. There’s a debate on whether you should wait for inspiration or if you should be able to write whether you are inspired or not…I think because I had such an intense writing period...I’ve written twelve songs in a very relatively lose time and I think I need to take a break. I know for some people it works to write daily, but for me personally, in order to make something different and to move on and come up with new ideas, I need to experience life. ​

Are you falling in love with Mary too? You can find her work on Spotify and follow her daily life through Instagram and Tiktok at @mmaryeckert. Always Too High and Something With Your Name on It are out everywhere!