The ceiling fan in my hotel room in Bangkok sways above me, the rest of the room silent. I’m back from an hour of listening to TALA’s ‘On My Own’, traversing the suffocatingly populated streets of Ramkhamhaeng area; and although just moments before I’d reached human energy overload, the silence of my hotel, except for this goddamn fucking fan, just makes me acutely aware of how alone I am. It’s this bizarro type of rawness, that you know even if you where a tshirt that screams ‘I know no one here, all my loved ones live 7,000km away’, it would never lead to anything that could abet these feelings. Because this wistful sadness is intrinsic, and it’s a strength. This is something, as TALA puts it ‘I’m doing for myself, I’ve got nothing to prove.’

And that’s why TALA’s track begins with what sounds like a live show in Hua Hin province Thailand, continuing to distort her voice throughout as she sings to an expat audience. It’s to signal that the performative ways we express emotion isn’t always a cry for help. An anthem is not always a fist pumping way to punch the world in the balls. Sometimes it’s a solemn, shake-out shout of your own state, connecting to other lost travelers but only serving to awake the strength of the solitude in them.

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