I’m not a kid anymore and it’s scary to experience my mind, body, and soul solidifying. Not that literally everyone else hasn’t experienced the exact same feeling. But I guess that’s why I wrote this song: an epilogue to the book of Everything.
I returned to my family home in December observing most of my behavior through a lens of addiction. Most of my interactions with the world (food, phone, people) were out of a desire to escape the general helplessness I felt. Obviously engaging in this way leads to further loss of control over one's life. But it's really easy not to be the one in charge.
I returned to school in January and committed myself to get these goddamn songs out, whatever the cost. I stayed up working on visuals, web design, and content. I slept weirdly and permanently lost some of the definition to my eyesight from such extended periods at my laptop. I felt my hairline receding. I barely ever went out of my way to see friends. My unwise priorities caused me even more stress than before, but I was in control.
Idk how to continue this story so I'm just gonna say I'm eternally grateful to:
Everyone who helped me share my music with people this year: Hana Ramos, Isaac Corby, Tyler Busse, Blake Young, Tyler Donnelly, Tashi Litch, Ben Lewis, Quintin Fernandez, Cassidy Anderson, Henry Hale, and Maika Lansing
My friends who don't care that I'm always very obnoxiously telling everyone to listen to my stuff—I get to share life (obviously including but not exclusively limited to music) with you
Anyone who discovered what I make without knowing me and liked it enough to stay and listen for a while
Whether letting go of harmful habits or the stress of personal expectations (developing a fulfilling career, releasing high-quality music, maintaining meaningful relationships, etc.), laying down all baggage to take steps in a new direction appeals to me, especially in moments when everything’s so incredibly heavy.
This is a very special song to me. Like a Christmas carol. Like a sequel to Deserve..
I don't plan to be very active online from August-January. So this is likely the last you'll hear for a while. I have done a lot of prep to make this release special. I mean I guess if a couple videos count as special.
Hey all! As of my writing this, it's been a month since the album came out. If I were to fit a mold in certain ways I don't want to right now, I might say something like, "I know the me from two years ago with a couple demos on his laptop and a couple big dreams would be so proud if he could see this music now," but I'm glad it took all the effort it did to get this music where it is now, and I wouldn't ever want to see what the music I'm conceptualizing now will look like in two years. I'm trying to make things for the process. Cause I love making things. And revealing the product (finished album, tight performances, etc.) is fruitless. The fruit is not the product. The fruit is getting to look back on all the work that went into it not knowing where it would go and say it went somewhere yay.
But like idk speaking of two years ago...............
In February 2022, I dropped out of college. I felt directionless. But somehow I managed to make this sketch of an extraordinarily carefree fun song, which I released as "slog_1," the first in a series of what I decided to label "song-logs." Without nearly any motivation it was super hard to finish things, and these pieces were meant to keep me feeling okay with not finishing or polishing stuff, and instead just going and making the thing and then once I got tired of it saying "ok it's done here it is, internet." The following slogs 2 and 3 descended into exponential despondency as I became increasingly depressed.
In March 2022, I took all my music off the internet (most significantly an album called Memory Sea which is still up in some places but not on streaming cause I want to keep only my best work there and I kinda made that project a long time ago with a lot less experience than I have now). I felt like all my work writing and recording music meant nothing because people did not care about it or enjoy it. That's kinda screwed up, right? I should want to make things because it feels good not because people look at it and say "that is good. keep making." I'd really lost any sense of self and I think I valued others' opinions of me too much in comparison to my own. I'm still fixing that balance and, often, I realize I'm valuing my own perspectives too much these days.
In April 2022, I started to feel like something had to change. I'd begun to regain some inspiration, but I wasn't ready to focus on anything long-term yet. I continued the "slog" series with a piece inspired by the "dariacore" genre, which had begun to blossom within the online scenes I followed. The next two were covers.
In May 2022, I decided I wanted to finish things. I started this video series to try and motivate myself to create with some consistency cause everybody says that's where the best inspiration comes from and they were right. Some of my best songs, and foundational pieces of this album (Rebound Baby, Who Needs?, Deserve) came out of this process. Upon jumping into this project, I had no conception of the energy, time, and CPU it takes to edit long-form content. It took me until the beginning of last summer. So obviously, by the third installation, I'd given up. Momentum had been found, though, and I didn't need the videos to keep me rolling on the goal of an album. I promised myself I wouldn't release the vlogs, though, until the album was out. And now it is. So here's my cut-short attempt at weekly vlogging!
Oh, and remember slog-1? I finished it. It's called Right Track. This is a pretty full-circle moment, considering that draft was the first thing from the album I put into the world and this video is the final piece of the story. Ok here it is:
