Inside Hiding

Tasha’s latest single “But There’s Still the Moon” first landed on my ears at a festival set in Arizona last spring. Although she hinted that it was a “sad song,” distinguishing it from her buoyant 2018 album Alone at Last, the mood shift was lost on the afternoon crowd, most of whom continued basking themselves in the desert sun, unbothered. 

“Clearly,” I remember thinking, “this audience has no idea what a Chicago winter is like.”

The timing of this song’s release, on April 15, couldn’t have been more fitting. April snow was falling fast. Chicago and much of the rest of the country remains on lockdown due to COVID-19 precautions. Staying inside, “inside hiding,” as Tasha sings, is now an order.

The comforting strum of the first chords pauses just long enough to break your heart with the opening lines: “The truth is all these rhymes/Barely hold me together.” Rhymes or no rhymes, it feels like many of us are barely holding it together right now. This song provides welcome companionship, coming alongside as an unsentimental comrade who quietly and steadily reassures us that it’s okay not to be seen and okay not to want to be seen. Right now, like Tasha, it’s necessary to keep our best things, our worst things, to ourselves.

Janaya Crevier is a contributor to the Weekly. A geographer by training, she spends her time learning about data feminism and taking long walks across the South Side. Find her on Twitter at @JanayaCrevier. She most recently covered small business development in Beverly for the Weekly last June.