I’m releasing a 60-second preview of “I Know Your Words,” Track 2 from Winter Rhapsody Volume 2: Echoes of Medina, offering listeners an intimate first glimpse into one of the album’s most emotionally vulnerable and human pieces.
Echoes of Medina continues my six-album instrumental journey—a long-form exploration of emotion, mythology, and lived experience shaped through global musical traditions. This volume leans heavily into Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and Moroccan textures, using rhythm, timbre, and atmosphere to craft narratives that unfold without a single lyric spoken. Every track is a story told in movement and resonance, each one a landscape built from feeling.
“I Know Your Words” is based on my poem of the same name—a deeply personal meditation on ambition, distance, and the kind of love that reveals itself not through grand declarations, but through the smallest, unmistakable details. At the heart of the poem lies a quiet conflict: the speaker’s pull toward their creative career and the simultaneous pull toward the person they love.
The story follows the speaker as they navigate the pressures of artistic success—reviews, critique, the constant weight of expectation. They know that growth depends on discipline, that opportunities can be fragile, and that sometimes dreams require sacrifice. Yet even within the strain of self-imposed distance, there’s a moment of profound connection: an anonymous glowing review that stands apart from all the others. The speaker doesn’t need a name attached—they recognize the voice instantly. The phrasing, the warmth, the way the praise sees them fully and truthfully. In that moment, they feel held, supported, and deeply understood.
This track expresses that emotional paradox: the ache of choosing ambition, the comfort of being known, and the steady, quiet devotion that endures even when life pulls two people in separate directions. Both the speaker and their lover want each other to thrive. They acknowledge the space between them not as abandonment, but as temporary necessity—a season that allows personal aspirations to flourish. Beneath the uncertainty is a promise: when the time is right, they hope to grow toward something lasting together.
The music mirrors this delicate tension. “I Know Your Words” opens with a calm, almost reflective pulse—soft chords that feel like a confession whispered into a dimly lit room. Gradually, the instrumentation blooms into something warmer, fuller, and quietly triumphant, echoing the emotional lift that comes from being truly seen. Subtle motifs rise and fall like breaths held and released, creating a sense of longing tempered by hope. The arrangement carries a fragile glow, evoking the way a single, heartfelt message can alter the course of an entire day.
In the architecture of the album, this piece serves as one of its most introspective and emotionally grounded movements. Where other tracks build entire worlds of myth and shadow, “I Know Your Words” builds an intimate interior world—the space between two people who care deeply, even when life pulls them along different paths. It captures the complexity of balancing love and ambition, and the quiet miracle of being recognized by someone who knows you so well they could pick your voice out of a thousand others.
The 60-second preview captures the essence of that recognition. It reveals the warmth, the vulnerability, and the bittersweet honesty that define the poem. Each note feels like a remembered phrase, a familiar gesture, a reminder that real love isn’t only about grand moments—it’s about the delicate details only one person in the world would notice.
This preview invites listeners to step into that emotional landscape: a place where devotion doesn’t disappear with distance, where encouragement becomes a lifeline, and where love is found in the unspoken recognition of one soul by another.
The full version of “I Know Your Words” will be available with the release of Winter Rhapsody Volume 2: Echoes of Medina on Friday, December 26. Until then, this early glimpse stands as a testament to connection, compassion, and the quiet power of being truly known by someone who loves you.
