{"id":31083,"date":"2020-01-17T10:00:22","date_gmt":"2020-01-17T15:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/?p=31083"},"modified":"2020-01-17T17:24:07","modified_gmt":"2020-01-17T22:24:07","slug":"letitia-vansant-owns-her-story-with-you-cant-put-my-fire-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/letitia-vansant-owns-her-story-with-you-cant-put-my-fire-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Letitia VanSant Owns Her Story With ‘You Can’t Put My Fire Out’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Alyssa Stokes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Letitia VanSant creates a chilling effect with the opening line of her new song, \u201cYou Can\u2019t Put My Fire Out:\u201d \u201cI didn\u2019t run\/I didn\u2019t scream\/I didn\u2019t want to make a scene.\u201d<\/p>\n

The words came to her during a workshop when she was presented with the prompt, \u201cHow are you wounded?\u201d It brought to mind her experience with sexual assault – she was raped by a former friend years prior, an experience she is sharing through song. “I think that question really opened the door for me,\u201d VanSant says. Three years after she wrote down those striking lines, the rest of the song began to organically unfold as she watched Christine Blasey Ford courageously recount her story of sexual assault during the hearings for Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to Supreme Court in 2018. Premiering exclusively with Audiofemme<\/em>, \u201cYou Can\u2019t Put My Fire Out\u201d was \u201cone of those songs that forced its way out of me,” VanSant says, “and then I recognized the message that was coming out of it.”<\/p>\n

VanSant shares that she initially kept the details of her sexual assault to herself, and is honest about the long-lasting impact it had on her life, subconsciously making her feel socially hesitant and \u201cunwanted.\u201d “People don’t realize sexual assault is not just the physical vibration, but it’s the mental impact that can live on for years,” she explains, adding that she\u2019s since been on a journey of self-love. “I think that I’ve finally done enough of that that this song was able to recognize how much the experience had hurt me.”<\/p>\n

Writing \u201cYou Can\u2019t Put My Fire Out\u201d has served as a healing process for VanSant, who reclaims her narrative in its potent lyrics: \u201cToo long you\u2019ve lived inside my mind\/You paid no rent\/You stole my time\/Now I\u2019m taking back what\u2019s mine.\u201d \u201cI didn’t realize how much of the voices in my head that said bad things about me kind of came from this experience,\u201d she continues. \u201cIt was sort of like recognizing that all of those voices saying hateful things towards myself, that’s not me. Those are the voices that I can kick out and that I can replace with more positive and much more powerful messages.”<\/p>\n

One of those powerful messages is the title of the song, which VanSant admits she originally thought was \u201ccheesy.\u201d But as the lyrics began to tell her story in a meaningful way, she saw the title as a statement of self-confidence and conviction. “It’s more of a realization of a statement of something that’s true. It’s both a willful ‘I’m not going to let you’ but also ‘you actually can’t.’ People really can’t get at the core center of my being and my spirit. No matter what the world throws at me, the core of me is an unchanging and alive thing,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Through \u201cYou Can\u2019t Put My Fire Out,\u201d VanSant can use her story to connect with others who\u2019ve experienced sexual assault. The singer says she\u2019s had \u201cpowerful reactions\u201d from women and men alike when she performs the song live, recalling a time when a group of college-aged men approached her after a show to discuss the song. “I think that this is the kind of song that can speak to anybody who’s been through a difficult experience. It’s for anybody who has someone in their past living in their head and needs to kick them out,” she says.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Growing up as white woman in an upper middle class family in Baltimore, VanSant is open about her intention to acknowledge the privileges and advantages she\u2019s been given by society. She\u2019s adamant about wanting to create space for people of color and those who are non-binary – and the question posed in the workshop reminded her that we all experience pain in our own way.<\/p>\n

“As a person that occupies a position of a certain amount of privilege in our society, I think there is a place for self-doubt and for questioning. But I think that within that there is a place for growing a deep and centered kind of self-love. And the more we all grow that,\u201d she expresses, \u201cthe better the world will be.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou Can\u2019t Put My Fire Out\u201d is included on VanSant\u2019s new album Circadian, <\/em>set for release on February 21.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Letitia VanSant creates a chilling effect with the opening line of her new song, \u201cYou Can\u2019t Put My Fire Out:\u201d \u201cI didn\u2019t run\/I didn\u2019t scream\/I didn\u2019t want to make a scene.\u201d The words came to her during a workshop when she was presented with the prompt, \u201cHow are you wounded?\u201d It brought to mind her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":31084,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[9650,1662,7855],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/LetitiaVanSantfeatimg.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31083"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/103"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31083"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31111,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31083\/revisions\/31111"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}