Eager to take her music on the road, London-based artist and BeatRoute’s January cover star, Arlo Parks, recently wrote a poem called “Electric Blue,” communicating her fervor and longing for the intensity of live music performances. Reciting it from the comfort of her childhood bedroom, Parks puts her raw delivery on display.

For an hour, we are sweat

We are unbeautiful, we are held in electric blue 

I don’t know you, but for an hour we are completely together 

We are not tired, we are not dark with the personal because here is the music

Here are the limbs, here are the kisses behind the barrier 

Here is the sticky heat, I feel it in my spine and my feet 

We are alive with it all, we’re alive and I promise

I’ll see you again, and it will be lovely 

“I wrote the poem as an homage to live music and to the experience of being in that room and being completely consumed and overwhelmed by being in a space with all these people,” Parks says. “It’s something that I was kind of struggling to imagine, especially at this point in time, so I wanted to capture the energy and the warmth of being in a room with live music.”

With ongoing restrictions placed on live music around the world, the logistics are still uncertain and tours are difficult to plan. But until Parks is able to travel safely in support of her debut LP, Collapsed In Sunbeams, her parting line from “Electric Blue” continues to ring out with prescient optimism: I’ll see you again, and it will be lovely.