CARRY YOUR PAIN

CARRY YOUR PAIN
Love, Loss & Writing Through the Unthinkable
Exclusive Interview with Elsar Dwiman
Featured in 'Innerviews'
Hosted by Allié McGuire

​Grief has a rhythm. Sometimes it’s quiet. Sometimes it breaks through without warning. For Elsar Dwiman, it became a song that carries more than pain. It carries love that never left.

ALLIÉ: You’ve shared your voice with the world in a way that invites people to listen beyond what they see. Elsar, when did music stop being something you did and start becoming the way you told your story? When did you start using it as a storytelling tool?

ELSAR: I think from the very beginning, songwriting is about telling something that you cannot broadly tell. I started writing my own songs, I think, two years ago. And as you know, in our last conversation, I said that I had this song, Take a Shoulder, that was like a practice song. But in the end, I ended up pouring my feelings into it.

So I think since the very beginning, the story in my heart has always sought a way to get out. I always write because that’s the basic thing in songwriting and art in general. It’s pouring your soul into it and pouring your story.

ALLIÉ: Yeah, I love that. Taking your soul and pouring it into these songs of yours, which are so beautiful and so powerful. Let’s talk for a moment about growing up with it. It’s ichthyosis. Am I saying that right?

​ELSAR: Ichthyosis, yeah.

ALLIÉ: That means the world has often noticed your appearance before your artistry. So when was that moment? When did people stop only looking at you and really start listening to you? When did your songs truly capture people’s attention?

ELSAR: I think if people just see me, it makes sense that the first thing they would notice is my appearance. It’s pretty obvious. Whenever I upload my singing videos on the internet, on my social media, that’s when people start to realize that there is something beyond appearance.

If you ask when that happened, I think whenever I can sing a song and sing it well enough, that’s when people start feeling a deeper connection, instead of just seeing a man who looks different.

ALLIÉ: Let’s shift gears and talk about something very personal. Losing your mother to cancer is a kind of heartbreak that reshapes everything. How did you process your grief before you poured it into a song?

ELSAR: Yeah, thank you so much for bringing that up. I’m starting to share this song of mine, Carry Your Pain. It will be out in May, hopefully. And yes, as you said, it’s about my late mom. She passed away because of cancer.

If you ask how I processed it, the interesting thing is that when I started sharing the song, people told me, “I’m sorry for your loss. I know it’s hard.” And it is hard. But people treat it as if I’m still holding onto that grief. Maybe at some point I still am. But what I want to say is, if I think about it deeply, the fact that I can pour this grief into a song is a sign that I’m healed enough to deal with it.

I’m dealing with the grief, especially when it first happened in 2017. But as time goes by, you start to realize there’s nothing you can do about it. That grief begins to shift into something else. It’s not completely healed, but it’s healed enough for me to put it into something vivid, which in my case is a song.

ALLIÉ: We’re very much looking forward to it. I know it’s not released yet, but tell me about it. When you wrote Carry Your Pain, who were you speaking to? Your mother? Yourself? Or something beyond both of you?

ELSAR: I think the answer is all of them. In this song, if you read the lyrics, I would say “you,” but there are many “you’s” in this song. Of course, that refers to my late mom. I imagine I’m talking to her in the afterlife, somewhere else.

So when you hear “you” in the song, that’s me talking to my mother. At the same time, it’s also me speaking about something beyond us.

In the chorus, you’ll hear:
“Mama, is it my fate to never see you again?”

And then I say:
“Once I do see you again, in the next life… what would I say?”
​
So the song is me here, her there, and at the same time, imagining what we would do when we meet again somewhere beyond us.

​ALLIÉ: Thank you so much for sharing all that you have, Elsar. It’s so beautiful. 

Before I let you go today, I have to ask one more question. For someone listening right now who is carrying a loss they don’t know how to hold, what would you want them to hear, not just from this beautiful song of yours, but from you?

ELSAR: I want them to know that it’s always hard to deal with grief. No one is ever really ready for it.

Even for me, my mom was in bed for more than a year before she passed away, and still, I wasn’t ready.

For people dealing with that, please know that you are not alone. I hope this song can be at least a small offering of solace.

If you’re dealing with grief right now, just know that at some point, you will meet again. We will meet them again. And while you are still here, please live on. As long as God blesses us with life, that means He wants us to live it.

If I can offer you any comfort, I hope this song becomes one of the things you turn to. But please know that you are not alone. You’re not alone. ∎
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Find & follow Elsar on Instagram: @elsar_dwmn