In 2013, Abbe May glimpsed the end of the road.
The prospect of enjoying a near-death experience might be unfamiliar to most, but for May – who these days happily calls Fremantle and the Western Australian music scene her home – a trip to the emergency room brought with it a strange affirmation. Having bounced back from the seizures that could have killed her, May has been able to assess her life and art from an entirely revitalised perspective.
“I’m glad it happened,” May says without missing a beat. “I really like where I’m at now; I like that my mental and emotional processes now are very solid. I’ve learned that I have an amazing support network. It really is like being thrown in the deep end and learning how to swim. I did have a few very dark moments where it came close to the end of my life. And I was lucky. I could choose to reach out and get support for that, which was vital.
“I live in a nice mezzanine apartment on my own about three minutes from the beach, and I basically spend my time writing and learning to play piano, developing my guitar and songwriting skills. It’s a pretty recreational kind of time for me – lots of yoga to keep my head together. I read this thing how there’s this massive sharp spike in anxiety in people post-9/11, and I think it’s a real thing. I think the world is a really scary place, and it blows my mind. I try to keep myself light on the booze, and heavy on being healthy. I have no intention of falling apart – not when I have an album to make.”
The experience in question was the culmination of a shock to her nervous system. May collapsed with severe seizures, and in a strange twist of fate, it happened right beside where she is currently sitting enjoying her lunch. She has come a long way from those fragile days – days where the prospect of moving forward seemed both unrealistic and unwelcome.
May styles them as dark times, yet from that she has found a perhaps unsurprising reservoir of strength. It has so far produced two singles from her forthcoming album in ‘Doomsday Clock’ and ‘Are We Flirting?’ – songs that are poles apart thematically, yet manage to represent the scope of what she is trying to achieve.
“I had a couple of years there where I was definitely drinking too much and self-destructing. I had a physical nervous breakdown on the heels of all the work I was doing, and I started to see links between the external world and my own internal world – concepts like the Doomsday Clock, which was created by atomic scientists decades ago as a way of measuring the onward march towards the ultimate destruction of the planet by nuclear war, or climate change. And I think my own near-death experience, and the depression that rose from the ashes of that, led me to pretty dark, near-life-threatening actions and thoughts.
“But it eventually made me realise there’s a macro and a micro, and there are a lot of parallels, so I became very interested in my external world to find a way to fix myself internally. It’s been pretty successful. So the Doomsday Clock is an interesting concept, especially since they’re not talking about it in terms of hours [from catastrophe] now – they’re talking minutes, which I think is partly why people are having such strong, anxious moments recently. It’s strange times.”
If anything, this lends an air of urgency to May’s ambitions. With her life settling into place again – her mind and intentions clear – she is obviously an artist with a lot to say, and a great deal of backed-up energy to say it. For us, all we have to do is kick back and wait.
“I think there are two or three more songs to work on. Not all of them will make the final cut. I [released] ‘Flirting’ and ‘Doomsday’ because, well, I’d been out for quite a while recovering. It’s been a long time, so I wanted to throw a few songs out there just to see the lay of the land. Particularly in Australia, we’re looking at how different the response is from certain songs compared to, say, Europe. I’ve deliberately thrown out some very different sides of the record. My producer and I are both quite dedicated to delivering a cohesive record rather than a collection of different elements, which is what I think I’ve done with every other album. Even though ‘Flirting’ and ‘Doomsday’ sound quite different, I think once we put them all together it’ll make a lot more sense.
“The music I’ve released is not particularly flattering to me,” she continues. “There are songs that are bitter. I’m not painting myself in a very noble way, and I think people can relate to that. None of us are always noble. We have noble moments. I look back on my catalogue, and I’m fine with it. I’m happy with the choices I’ve made, and the personality traits I’ve ever had to tame, or the drives and desires I’ve had to embrace. And people connect with that, because we all know that we’re flawed, and we don’t want to be alone with that.”
[Abbe May photo by Thom Perry]
If you or anyone you know needs help, you can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or beyondblue on 1300 22 46 36.
Abbe May, andMike Noga, play Newtown Social Club on Thursday November 17.
