Back in January, Ryan White’s extraordinarily beautiful documentary “Come See Me in the Good Light” premiered at Sundance. The film follows poet laureate Andrea Gibson as they navigate treatments for an aggressive form of cancer that, among other side effects, have the potential to literally take away their voice. White chronicles Gibson’s relationship with their wife Megan Falley and their drive to perform for a live audience for the first time in years, with Gibson fully aware that it might be their final performance. And throughout the film, Gibson’s ultra impactful poetry is highlighted, serving as an expressive, artistic commentary on their pain, joy, and love.
Between the film’s premiere and its November release, Gibson passed away on July 14. Besides being a stunning film in its own right, the documentary now serves as an incredibly lively memorial to Gibson’s voice, talent, and passion, not to mention their overpowering adoration for Falley, their many ex-lovers turned companions, basketball, the birds that live in their backyard, and the capacity for poetry to turn heartache and seemingly-individual feelings into universal expressions of the soul.
For the film, Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles co-wrote a song with fellow songsmith Brandi Carlile. The incredibly powerful “Salt Then Sour Then Sweet” bases its lyrics around unfinished work of Gibson’s. It’s the kind of profound song that fits neatly into the film for which it was written, but is so effective at conveying its message that it comfortably stands on its own. In her interview with Next Best Picture, Bareilles discusses her relationship to Andrea Gibson’s work, how this song came about, and even teases an upcoming album.
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Sara Bareilles, I am so excited to be speaking with you today about your beautiful song, “Salt Then Sour Then Sweet.” “Come See Me in the Good Light,” I caught it at Sundance when Andrea [Gibson] was still with us and rewatching the movie now, it’s even more resonant and your song is a huge part of that. I think I wanna start by asking, when did you first get acquainted with Andrea Gibson and their work?
I think I thank and blame Instagram. Love-hate with Instagram. Somehow Andrea and their videos ended up in my algorithm and it was a very fast follow for me where I just was so moved by their vulnerability and their ability to kind of extract beauty out of very painful things for themselves, but also it just felt like a great service to offer other people, this window into how to love what is difficult. I just was really, really moved by, yes, their poetry, but also just their offerings on Instagram and how just frank and open they were. And I ended up going to the concerts that are featured, or one of the concerts that is featured in the film, completely by happenstance. I was in Colorado and I had a friend going to the show and I snagged a ticket and ran into [executive producers] Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach there, and it felt very serendipitous because we just were gushing about Andrea and our love for their work. And then a few weeks later I got an email inviting me to come on as one of a few executive producers, and then this opportunity to collaborate with Andrea’s unfinished work and make a song for the film developed. It felt like just a total gift that this all materialized.
I wanted to ask about the actual construction of the song itself. So you said it was based on unfinished material by Andrea?
Mm-hmm. So Brandi and I were both given – Brandi Carlile and I were both given like two pages. Two or three pages of couplets and musings and maybe a line here or there that Andrea had been kind of working on constructing a poem that they thought would be featured in the film. I think by the end of the film, focusing on their health and their treatment was really the main event. So as we came on, it just became this really sort of intuitive evolution of a possibility of a collaboration of, “Can we take these beautiful lyrics and build a song around them?”
After I saw the film for the first time, I was just utterly blown away, just leveled by the experience of watching this film. Very quickly started the jigsaw puzzle of trying to just make what was already there work. And then there was very little interstitial phrasings or adding a few words here or there, or just trying to stitch things together. But it was very intuitive and really easy. And Brandi and Andrea and I would’ve had a lot of fun on tour together.
I cannot imagine, yeah. Listening to the song, it really does sound like a pretty even mix of all three of your styles of expression and your voices, literally and figuratively. I don’t wanna ask the dreaded question of, you know, “Who did the music for this part?” But was there a sort of even collaboration with Brandi in regards to the musical composition of the song?
Well, the music I sort of wrote pretty quickly. The film used to end with these wind chimes, so I wrote it in the key of the wind chimes. And so yeah, I think I did a first draft of the song and then I sent it to Brandi and then we had some conversations and made some adjustments and changes, but we weren’t really in the same city so it ended up being more like her giving feedback on existing material. But you know, she’s such an incredible artist and has a really fine tuned directional arrow about, “How do we make this really sing?” And then of course, having her voice on the song is just like a total gift.
Absolutely. Matching the key of the wind chimes, I love that. Incredible. And that fits in with the ending of the film too, when they’re outside on the deck and they’re talking about the breeze and the birds, and so it just flows very nicely into the credits. I love that.
Have you seen the film again since Andrea’s passing? And if so, how did it feel different in any way?
What I think is so amazing about this film…I’ve had a couple of friends say to me that they were a little afraid to watch it because they were feeling anticipatory grief. And what I find so remarkable about this movie is that it is so funny and it carries so much joy. Of course, it has some pretty devastating heartbreak and ache to it. But, it is an uplifting film, like, full Stop. It is not one of those films that you’re like, “Oh, I gotta gear up to watch this one.” It feels like comfort food to me.
The first time I saw the film after Andrea passed was at a screening in New York, and that was actually with [Gibson’s spouse] Megan Falley. And that was her first time seeing it since Andrea had passed.
Oh, wow.
We did a Q & A at the end of that screening. It’s kind of amazing to sort of watch the wisdom of Andrea, this sort of otherworldly wisdom that was already coming through their earthly form. Now it feels like, you know, a prophet or like they were some kind of shaman that was interpreting this incredible depth of wisdom about love and life and what matters most. It’s really interesting. I mean, Andrea really feels like they were already some kind of angel walking around and now like, oh yeah, that’s where you belong, with the angels
Right, there’s no funereal energy to it. It’s not weighed down, it’s not gloomy. It’s appropriately mournful at times, but the film and especially your song have a liveliness to them, have an energy and an excitement for living and life.
I think the thing that I think about with Andrea’s work so much is this idea of the open-heartedness of it, that there’s this invitation to life itself, to the life force itself. And that means the good, the bad, and the ugly. It is their willingness to stay broken open, feels like a real throughline in the film and throughout all of their work. The refrain of the chorus is, “Keep the Novocaine outta my wisdom teeth.” I wanna feel everything. “I wanna feel it all.” And I think that that really speaks to Andrea’s mission statement.
That line really jumps right out and just kind of anchors the song. Do you have a favorite or most exciting lyric or line in the song yourself?
I love that one. I love when you can hear words that don’t often land in song, you know? Novocaine, I can’t think of that many songs that talk about wisdom teeth! So I sort of love, I love how literal Andrea can be and how poetic it remains. There’s, there’s oftentimes people get so literal in their writing, and for me it doesn’t sort of lift off the ground, but it’s just never the case with Andrea. There’s something about their work that always kind of just hovers above the earth a little bit, which I think is just a testament to their soul that was always straddling two places.
Absolutely. I wanna take you back for a second. You sang a gorgeous rendition of “Both Sides, Now” for the In Memoriam segment at the Oscars about 10 years ago. And then at this year’s Tonys, you sang “Tomorrow” with Cynthia Erivo for the same segment, which ended with this stunning moment of Gavin Creel’s smiling face just filling up the stage. Between those moments and now this song, you’ve shown that you’re an incredible artistic interpreter of the emotion of grief, and what it is to move through that process and the complicated, bittersweet feelings those can bring about. So what’s it like to sing through such potentially emotional moments, and how does performing in such a poignant setting affect you?
Well, there are times where it’s too much, where I’m unable to. I have a record coming out this next year, and its main thematic component is grief. I’ve been grieving multiple dear friends who have passed, and I think since the pandemic, honestly, I feel like grief is the emotion that I think we’re processing culturally, politically. I think it’s unprocessed pain and grief that people don’t know what to do with, so it comes out sideways and it comes out as paranoia and anger and all this stuff.
I feel really honored to be invited into spaces where I can try to use what I can do to hold this very tender, liminal space. Grief for me is one of the most tenderizing emotions. It is so vulnerable and can be so childlike because it’s really just love. It’s just the other side of love, it’s loss of what we love or what we loved. There have been times in my grieving where I felt like it was so powerful, I did not even think I could…I felt like it was going to eat me alive, that I would sort of disappear into the grief. And the amazing thing is that it doesn’t, and you don’t disappear. And it’s just this, building this capacity to stand under the sort of tidal wave of emotion and realize that you’re still here at the end of it. I feel like the chemical makeup changes over time of processing grief. But I do think grief, it takes you to what’s true.
There’s a lyric about that as well: “Grief is the singer in my band, she’s a passenger van, and a shortcut straight to the truth.” That last line is Andrea’s line about grief being this shortcut to what is true. It’s an incredible, wise emotion that I think is here to help if we can just pay attention.
It’s like what Joni Mitchell said in “Both Sides, Now”: “Something’s lost, but something’s gained.” There’s two sides of the coin to all emotions, especially grief.
Right? Yeah.
So, I’m gonna poke at something you just mentioned though. You did say something about a new record coming out and I wouldn’t be doing my homosexual due diligence if I didn’t pry a little more about that.
Yeah, I’ve been working on a new record! And this song will be featured on it, “Salt Then Sour Then Sweet.” It just felt like the right time to share the song as the film is just having this really beautiful, resonant moment and I just love getting to celebrate Andrea and Meg’s story.
But yeah, I’ve been finally, after many, many years…I was one of those artists that when the pandemic hit, I actually had like nothing to say. I was so jealous of my artist counterparts that I felt like were making a lot of art out of the pandemic, and I just kind of went silent for a long time. I had a really severe mental health dip and then went through the loss of a couple of friends and, yeah, just some really challenging years. And finally, finally, finally, I’m making music out of it, which is such a beautiful…I’m so grateful that I get to do that. So we’re hoping it will come out next year.
Fabulous. Okay, I can’t wait to hear it! Back to this song though…
I’m not, like, making song of the summer. Bring your tissues!
Bring the tissues! You got it, you got it. So, “Salt Then Sour Then Sweet.” As the title tells anybody listening, it encompasses so many conflicting and sometimes indefinable emotions. Do you find that there is a level of difficulty to different capturing of emotions, or do you find your writing process fairly uniform regardless of the topic?
Oh, no, I think it can be hard to, you know, anytime you’re trying to tackle something that’s nuanced and complex, I think the trick is trying to thread the needle of how do you simplify enough so it feels sort of palatable and bite-sized, but also speak into what is sort of too big to wrap your arms around. I think sometimes with these kinds of emotions, that can be very overwhelming. It’s like, how do you touch into what is beautifully specific about the experience of that, but also leaves room for the vast interpretation of those kinds of experiences? Heartbreak or loss of a love, a romantic love, looks a lot of different ways. I think specificity in writing I think is always your friend though. Trying to distill an experience into a way that you have felt it or lived it, I think is a good window into how to translate.
Definitely. Something that a lot of your work has had, but especially this song, is it’s specific, but manages to be universal. So, what do you hope people get from this song and from this film?
Andrea’s hope for the song was that it would feel hopeful and they really wanted to make a love song for Meg. So, that’s what I hope they take away from it, is just what Andrea wanted. I felt like I wanted to make something that honored Andrea’s grit and sort of drive towards the truth and also their poet heart. Their romance and ability to find delight in small, even dark places in life. I hope that it evokes a feeling of watching the film, and I hope it evokes some sense of Andrea themselves, and Meg.
Absolutely, it absolutely comes through. Well, Sara Bareilles, thank you so much for chatting with me today, this was fantastic and congrats on your incredible song for this beautiful film.
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
“Come See Me in the Good Light” is now available to stream on Apple TV+.
You can follow Cody and hear more of his thoughts on the Oscars and Film on Twitter @codymonster91
