Wildflowers
Wildflowers was one of the first songs I wrote after I started experimenting properly with songwriting on the Maschine Mikro mk3. At the time, I was still finding my way around the workflow, but more importantly, I was trying to work out how I could communicate something I had never really articulated before.
The music came first. It often does. But running alongside that was a growing need to make sense of my experiences of ADHD. Not in a neat or explanatory way. More as a way of putting shape around something that usually stays internal and messy.
Nothing starts, nothing ends
There were parts of Wildflowers that were genuinely difficult to get going. I would sit down with the intention of working on it and feel completely stuck. But once something clicked, it was full steam ahead. Hours would disappear. Ideas would pile up faster than I could process them.
That contradiction ended up right at the centre of the song. The pre-chorus line, “Nothing starts, nothing ends”, neatly sums up the experience. Starting tasks can feel impossible, but once I am in the flow, stopping can feel just as hard. It is not a lack of motivation or interest. It is a problem with control.
At the time, I did not set out to make a point with that line. It just felt true, and that was enough.
Lyrics I did not plan to write
Originally, Wildflowers was not meant to have lyrics at all. I thought it might stay instrumental. But as I spent more time with the track, and more time sitting with what it was stirring up, certain lines started to arrive fully formed.
They did not feel forced or constructed. They felt like they had been waiting.
The song has always been about the struggle that comes with ADHD. The hidden fight to find executive function. The constant effort to block out distractions. The quiet frustration of knowing what you want to do, but not being able to make yourself do it.
It also brushes up against the idea of hyperfocus as a so-called superpower. That framing has always felt uncomfortable to me. It implies choice and control, as if hyperfocus is something you can turn on at will. For me, it never has been. It just happens, or it does not.
What I did not expect to surface
One thing that surprised me was how much shame and guilt found their way into the song.
I did not consciously set out to write about that. If anything, those feelings are usually the ones I keep locked away, even from myself. But once the writing started, it opened the floodgates. The song became a place where those feelings could exist without being argued with or explained away.
That ended up being pivotal for me. The message I took from it was not that these feelings should define me, but that they are real. And that, in many ways, I am not in control of all my behaviours or emotional responses in the way I wish I were.
Writing the song did not fix that. But it did make it visible.
Listening back now
When I listen to Wildflowers now, what I mostly feel is empathy for the version of me who wrote it.
I recognise those feelings, both in my past and in my present. There is frustration in the song, but also acceptance. It is not hopeful, exactly, and it is not sad either. It feels more like an honest account of something that simply is.
The song feels communicated rather than resolved. I cannot change who I am, and I cannot choose not to have ADHD. But I can explain how it makes me feel, how it makes me act and react. Sometimes that is enough.
A starting point
Sonically, Wildflowers is less anchored in the sound that Fauhn grew into later. Other tracks feel more settled, more confident in their identity. But emotionally, this song sits right at the entrance to the project.
It introduced the subject matter, the tone, and the idea of music as catharsis rather than performance. It also taught me practical lessons. Writing it while learning Maschine pushed me towards working vertically. Getting all the parts of a section roughly right before moving on, rather than perfecting one element at a time. Everything I have written since lives on those lessons.
Wildflowers stands on its own, but it also quietly informs everything that followed.
Next writing: Everyone Hates Me, and what that voice sounds like.