"Stand Here"
Thoughts Behind the Song + Painting
Inspiration for the Song
On July 4th, 2024, I heard the tragic story of Jayda Woods-Johnson, a local 13-year-old girl who was shot and killed at the food court at Alderwood Mall. The 16-year-old boy who fired the shot had an altercation with a group of boys. He aimed at one of them, missed, and struck Jayda instead, someone simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
This story devastated me. I had dropped my own kids off at that exact spot many times to meet their friends. I kept thinking about the parents. What were they experiencing? How do you survive a tragedy like that?
As I processed this, I felt compelled to create.
I thought of a local artist I admire, Holly Ballard Martz, who tackles subjects like domestic abuse, abortion, politics, and gun violence. Her piece “Constellation of Transgressions” (Thoughts and Prayers), the phrase spelled out in spent bullet primers, demonstrates how art can articulate a powerful perspective.
I also remembered the impact of Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy.” I decided to relearn it for a performance on July 13th, and as I reacquainted myself with it, I began forming the idea for my own song, “Stand Here.” I was struck by how “Jeremy” is sung from the bully’s point of view—an emotionally complicated and unsettling perspective. It made me wonder:
How could I offer a new point of view in order to process my own emotions about being a mother in a world saturated with gun violence?
The AS IF! Moment
I began with the question of what we tell our kids to do to be safe. I researched school protocols: lockdowns, lockouts, shelter-in-place procedures, trauma-informed training, and other institutional vocabulary. I filled my journal with these phrases, assembling the litany of instructions we hand to children.
The basic order is always the same:
Run. If that doesn’t work, hide. If that doesn’t work, fight. Fight last.
Reading these guidelines made me react with a kind of incredulous anger. Oh sure, just follow all of this and you’ll be fine. AS IF.
Jayda wasn’t safe. So many kids aren’t safe.
That AS IF! moment flipped the perspective of the song into something sharper—sarcastic, almost from the point of view of an “adult” who believes everything we’re doing is working. By adopting that persona, I could sing out the instructions we give our children and let listeners feel the absurdity and violence embedded within them.
Process that, mfers. Right back at you.
That night, after all this research and emotion, I had a dream about the song. I woke up and wrote the melody and lyrics in one sweep. I barely edited them later. It truly felt as though the song had written itself in my sleep, I just had to transcribe it.
Side note: One of my proudest songwriting moments was accenting the opening consonants of Check, Change, Charge, Take so they sound like gunshots.
Lyrics to “Stand Here”
Stand here.
Make the call and wait for her.
Who knew you’d be standing here forever,
waiting for us to make a change,
waiting for us to make it better.
Check your pockets now.
Do you have “running,” “hiding,” and “fighting”?
We equipped you with window shades, shelter-in-place, and such.
So you should be ready for anything.
You should be safe because you are warned.
Be prepared!
Be trauma-informed!
Be more!
Photographs will only burn so fast.
Memories are the ones that last.
Why are you gone?
We offered thoughts and prayers—isn’t that enough?
Change has a name but I won’t say it for the fear.
Charge me for the crime,
I’ll do my time (or I won’t!).
Stand here.
Exit plans say you’ll be fine.
You’ve got your rights, and I’ve got mine.
And if our worlds don’t align, you’ve got justice on your side.
Take the active threat and defend yourself with all that we taught you.
Just stay away from all the doors—turn off the light.
You should be ready for anything.
You should be safe.
You should be warned.
Be prepared!
Be trauma-informed!
Be more!
One idea that kept surfacing as I wrote from this persona is how much we expect kids to endure. We expect them to be “more” be trauma-informed, vigilant, and adaptable to the reality of gun violence. The question that echoed in my heart was:
Why? Why don’t they have the right to feel safe in their own communities?
If culture is shaped by values, what does it say about ours that this is the norm?
How can we orient ourselves toward protecting innocence and safety?
Listen to the song Here
Inspiration for the Painting
My first idea was to incorporate imagery from instruction manuals, icons of people running, hiding, and fighting, rendered in bold black lines and overlapping, contradictory messages. Then I imagined a collage of human figures with dramatic lighting, pulled and obscured by external forces.
Eventually, a different image emerged: an abstract architectural structure blending geometry with symbolic human presence. I envisioned a space divided horizontally, like two realities meeting. The upper portion would be warm, structured, architectural; the lower portion cool, fluid, dreamlike.
The building form represents the constructs of our rules and regulations around guns.
In early sketches, I played with scaffolding and added a “weapon sight” and the icon of a child. Rearranging these components created new relationships. I placed the weapon sight as both a radiating light source and the “head” of a figure—an adult interacting with a child. It symbolically extends to all adults interacting with all children on this issue. The right arm reaches out to nourish and comfort; the left points toward the child’s head. As the images began to resonate, I knew it was time to move to canvas.
I started with simple painted linework, adding key words from the song under the surface like a skeleton to support the final layers. The lines were both playful and decisive, echoing the authoritative tone of cultural messaging: “This is how we should be!”
As I blocked in color, I let the forms stay a bit dreamlike, ambiguous and shifting.
Halfway through, I fell out of love with the painting entirely. Some early color layers were hideous and clashing. I still pushed through, knowing the process would turn eventually. After years of creating, I know the love-hate-love cycle well (or more accurately: love-hate-love-ew-hate-meh-love-give-up-LOVE-I’m-an-idiot-I’m-a-genius-love-hate-stop-love-hate-ugh-okay-fine-love-hate-actually-I-adore-it).
The more risk I take in the process, the more compelling the final piece becomes.
This painting tested that truth.
The architectural structure allowed me to explore the interplay between control and uncertainty, between built environments and interior landscapes. The geometry never fully resolves into a building; it hovers between blueprint and memory. It feels like standing at the threshold of an unfolding moment—entering a building, a memory, or a state of mind still in formation.
The icon-like human figure in the lower right absorbs the beam of light crossing the canvas. Its schematic nature makes it symbolic rather than personal—an avatar of presence toward which everything else orients. There are threads of meaning in the linework and symbols that still surprise me.
Rather than proselytizing a single message, I tried to absorb and reflect the conflicting ideas surrounding this subject. I wanted to create an image that makes sense visually but in a mystical, contemplative way, giving the viewer space to find their own meaning within this language of art.