Sometimes you need to get completely lost to find something new. This trip through Armenia and Georgia broke me open in ways I didn’t expect – as a person and as a musician.
The first thing that hits you is the silence. Not the heavy, suffocating silence I know from bad mental health days, but this clean, ancient quiet that lets your brain actually rest. Standing on those beaches with the Black Sea stretching endlessly, watching sunsets that turn the whole world orange – it reminded me there’s beauty worth writing about, not just pain.
Georgian hospitality is something else entirely. The way people welcome strangers, the ritual of sharing food and wine, the warmth that doesn’t ask for anything in return. I found myself humming different melodies – warmer ones, less frantic. Maybe because for the first time in months, I wasn’t running from my own thoughts.
The street art told stories I recognized. Creative expressions mixed with hope, rainbow flags next to poetry and murals. Creative people finding ways to speak truth even when the world feels broken. That resonates with anyone who uses art to process chaos.
Those mountain towns with their layered architecture, old meeting new, reminded me that survival takes many forms. Buildings holding each other up, communities growing organically around ancient foundations. There’s music in that – the way traditions support innovation, how the old gives structure to the new.
I spent hours walking cobblestone streets, listening to how sounds bounce differently off stone than concrete. Church bells mixing with car horns, vendors calling out in languages that feel like music even when you don’t understand the words. My voice recordings from this trip have textures I’ve never captured in Moscow studios.
The cultural blend here – Eastern meeting Western, ancient meeting modern – is exactly what my music needs right now. Less rigid boundaries, more fluid connections. I’m hearing fragments of songs that combine electronic elements with acoustic warmth, English lyrics with instrumental passages that feel timeless.
This journey reminded me that inspiration doesn’t have to come from struggle. Sometimes it comes from witnessing resilience, from communities that create beauty despite everything, from landscapes that have survived longer than any of our problems will.
Coming home with notebooks full of new ideas and a head full of mountain air. This place changed something in me.
— Indie pop artist, musician Anastasia Ledovskaya