Giving Shape to What Isn’t There: Reflections on “Chore”
Welcome back to Music in Conversation, where we explore documentary songs as a way to spark conversation about the complexity of being human alongside other humans. This month’s featured song, “Chore,” came out of a collaboration between storyteller Tanisha Lokwani and teaching artist Caleb Edwards.
In documentary songwriting, teaching artists work one-on-one with community storytellers to transform their stories into songs. Unlike traditional songwriting that might fictionalize or romanticize experience, this process commits to honoring the truth of what actually happened in the storyteller’s own words—even when that truth resists easy categorization or happy endings.
“Chore” explores what it means to “extend” ourselves in relationships—and more importantly, when we need to stop extending. Tanisha’s song tells the story of her relationship with her dad and the decision to stop hoping for the relationship to be something different than it is. Rather than extending herself toward reconciliation or repair, she extends toward a different kind of truth: accepting that some relationships will always be defined by what they lack rather than what they provide.
Giving Form to Absence
In thinking about Tanisha’s story, I recalled the work of British sculptor Rachel Whiteread, whose art gives physical form to empty spaces. Whiteread became famous for casting the interior of an entire Victorian house—filling every room with concrete, then demolishing the walls to reveal the solid ghost of domestic life. She creates sculptures by casting the negative spaces around and inside objects—the space beneath a staircase, the interior of a room, the hollow under a chair. Her sculptures transform absence into presence, making visible the spaces we don’t notice or take for granted.
Whiteread’s work reveals how absence can carry its own weight. When she casts invisible voids, she transforms them into solid, visible forms. The resulting sculptures give shape and substance to emptiness, making us aware of spaces that would otherwise go unnoticed.
Something similar seems to happen in “Chore.” Tanisha isn’t trying to repair her relationship with her father or transform it into something functional. Instead, she appears to be giving shape to the absence itself—the space where feeling valued and wanted might have existed. Like Whiteread’s sculptures of intact spaces—the hollow beneath a chair, the interior of a room—Tanisha gives form to what was never there to begin with, rather than trying to repair what’s broken. The song makes visible what was missing, acknowledging that absence itself has weight.
The Courage to Stop Extending
The word “extend” reveals its complexity throughout Tanisha’s story—extending hope, extending effort, extending trust, and finally, extending herself through the vulnerable act of storytelling. Each carries different risks and different wisdom.
But perhaps the most significant extension in her story is knowing when to stop. Tanisha’s song challengesthe sometimes unspoken sense of obligation to keep extending ourselves, to keep trying, keep hoping, keep working toward reconciliation. In her story, Tanisha demonstrates a different kind of courage: the wisdom to recognize when extending ourselves has become harmful, when hope itself has become a burden rather than a gift.
This also resists our deeply held assumptions about closure—the persistent belief that we must resolve our relationships and traumas in order to move forward. This belief suggests that healing requires a clear endpoint, a moment when we can declare ourselves “over it” or “healed.” But many relationships, particularly those marked by absence or chronic disappointment, don’t offer this kind of neat resolution.
In my reading of Tanisha’s story, the song may feel like it lacks conventional resolution because it doesn’t end with forgiveness or understanding. Instead, it offers something more complex and perhaps more honest: “I don’t even wish you were better / Don’t want that life anymore.” This isn’t giving up—it appears to be a form of self-preservation that recognizes the difference between healthy persistence and destructive hope.
The final lines reveal what strikes me as hard-won wisdom: “You can try to make things better / You could even apologize / You can hold the guilt on your shoulders / But you taught me how to say goodbye.” Like Whiteread’s solid sculptures of empty space, these words give permanent form to an ending that has already occurred.
The Art of Incompleteness
The documentary songwriting process itself seems to mirror this sculptural approach to absence. As Caleb worked with Tanisha on the song, he noticed something unexpected happening: “Throughout the process, I kept trying to guide the narrative into a more literal connection to the prompt ‘extend.’ However as we dove deeper into Tanisha’s story about her family life, I began to find the connection within the process itself. It was clearly a difficult story to tell, and I wondered if I would have heard it at all had it not been for this project.”
Caleb’s reflection reveals how the act of extending ourselves through storytelling can create its own form of resolution. Just as Whiteread’s casting process transforms invisible space into visible art, the collaborative songwriting process transforms private pain into shared understanding.
“The story’s message is one of disappointment, trauma, and ultimately triumph,” Caleb reflects, “as Tanisha learns to define this troubled relationship on her own terms. While extending a part of her life to me, the teaching artist, she also puts into words a resolution she has felt perhaps only subconsciously until now.”
The paradox is this: by refusing conventional resolution, Tanisha achieves a different kind of completion—not the resolution of her relationship with her father, but the resolution of her relationship with her own hope. This mirrors how Whiteread’s sculptures reveal the sculptural quality of emptiness itself. When she casts the space under a chair, she’s not trying to create a functional object—she’s highlighting the inherent form within negative space.
Perhaps accepting incompleteness is itself a way of stopping our endless extension toward what cannot extend back. When we cease trying to fill the absence, we might finally see its actual shape.
Extending Towards Truth
What strikes me as perhaps the most radical form of extension in “Chore” is Tanisha’s willingness to tell the truth about a relationship that defies easy categorization. She extends herself not toward reconciliation or forgiveness, but toward honest acknowledgment of what is and isn’t there.
This kind of extension requires a different form of courage—the bravery to disappoint cultural expectations about family relationships, to refuse the pressure to transform pain into wisdom or growth. Sometimes the most profound extension we can offer might be simply witnessing and naming our own experience, even when that experience resists transformation into something more palatable.
Whiteread once said about her work, “I’m not trying to make something beautiful. I’m trying to make something that has never existed before.” There seems to be something similar in Tanisha’s song—she’s not trying to make her story beautiful or redemptive. She’s simply trying to give form to an experience that doesn’t fit conventional narratives about family, healing, or closure.
In a world that often insists on resolution and growth, “Chore” might offer something more honest and ultimately more helpful. It invites us to consider whether we, too, might honor what isn’t there, extend compassion toward our own incomplete stories, and find freedom in accepting rather than transforming the relationships that have shaped us.
Tanisha’s song becomes both testimony and invitation—not to fix what’s broken, but to recognize what Rachel Whiteread knew about empty spaces: they have their own dignity, their own form. In giving shape to absence, both artist and storyteller create something that has never existed before. Perhaps that’s what we’re all trying to do with our most complicated relationships—not to fill the voids, but to honor their particular shape.
If Tanisha’s story resonates with your own experience of learning when to stop extending, we’d love to hear about it. How have you learned to honor absence rather than trying to fill it? When have you discovered that accepting incompleteness was more healing than pursuing resolution? Share your experiences. Share your experiences through this link or email Caroline.