At night, when campus finally exhales, I put on Sampha’s “Process.” The hall lights hum, someone drags their laundry bag past my door and the first notes land like a breath of fresh air. I used to think that grief announced itself with violins and a capital-s Sadness. “Process” waits there in the background, until I’m quiet enough to hear it.
When I first heard the album back in 2022 — which Sampha released after years of collaboration and the loss of his mother — I couldn’t imagine how much I’d come to rely on it. I remember thinking it would follow a cliche arc: collapse, revelation, recovery. Instead, it moves through smaller, messier spaces of doubt, submersion and recognition, culminating in the slow return to routine. Nothing gets resolved and grief just meanders through your mind.
“Reverse Faults” is a track I return to when my thoughts are getting repetitive in a way that feels dangerous. It feels like someone is trying to rewrite a memory — looping and rewinding it, hoping it’ll sound different the next time.
We all know that loop. It’s walking home, replaying conversations in my head that didn’t end well, rearranging the blame until the puzzle pieces fit. The song doesn’t attempt to solve this issue, just as I cannot fix my words, but rather it lets the loop exist without rushing it out of frame.
I don’t always notice when a day starts to get away from me until I’m already under it. That’s the word Sampha keeps repeating: under, under, under. His voice folds in on itself like he’s being pulled down further each time. It’s less of a chorus and more of a reminder that the ground you thought was under your feet is suddenly gone.
I’ve felt that exact sensation before. Most recently, it was this summer, when I realized the relationship I thought was grounding me had already slipped away. The song doesn’t give me a way back onto my feet; instead it forces me to sit with that unsettling drop into somewhere I didn’t plan to be.
I resonate most with “(No One Knows Me) Like the Piano” as a performance. Sampha’s voice lies bare, accompanied only by his keys and the reverberation of the room around him. When I put it on, it feels more like I’m overhearing someone playing it at home, down the stairs in the living room. Sampha’s voice carries that same uneven quality, almost breaking in places as if he isn’t sure if he’ll make it through the line.
I feel like the spaces between the notes are just as important as the notes themselves, not because they’re dramatic, but because they hold the risk of silence swallowing the song altogether. That fragility is what makes the song hit for me, as my grief often arrives in those same unsteady waves.
This summer, I ended a relationship that carried me through two years. She was my high school sweetheart, the first person who felt like everything to me. We had been through so many “firsts” together that breaking up felt less like walking away and more like leaving a version of myself behind. I told her in person — there was no possibility for silence between us, or unread messages piling up. I said the words out loud, and I watched the shape of our lives split in two.
I didn’t call it grief at the time. I thought that belonged strictly to funerals and hospital rooms, not a relationship I had decided to end. But being home over the summer made it impossible to avoid. Every corner seemed to hold a version of us that still existed there. I caught myself looking for a sign that I was handling the loss correctly.
“Process” reminded me that there isn’t one solution or one way to handle the process correctly. Sampha’s songs never resolve in the same way twice, and they don’t try to. They make space for my spiraling, sinking, pausing and starting again. Listening has been a way of loosening my own grip on how my grief is supposed to look. The record doesn’t offer me any definitive answer, but leaves enough room for me to keep going.
Some days I still wonder if I should be further along, quieter about it or less caught up in these small reminders of what once was. Other days I forget for a while, and then it all returns in an instant. I don’t know if I’m grieving the right way, but that isn’t the point. What I do know is that I’m still here, carrying it, learning how to live with what’s gone.
Sinan Walji PO ’28 has made peace with the fact that Blonde might be the last Frank Ocean album. He finds the wait painful and a little ridiculous. He wonders if Frank is laughing. He almost hopes he is.
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