new fears and other updates

keep up with me who can’t keep up with myself:

• did a spin session for spin mag with songs from time machine,

• published an essay on pit magazine about food (msg) racism and the white gaze,

• published a set of photography prints (message me on IG if interested)

i’m still in the process of finishing up those postcards for folks who pre-ordered the EP (thanks by the way). have been listening to a lot of my bloody valentine and astor piazzolla. it feels weird to express sadness anywhere on the internet (except twitter) because it often feels like i’m soliciting a comforting response, which i’m not.

but i’ve been feeling shit! (thanks for signing up to read this lol.) in the past year i grew more and more distant from the discipline of making music because of logistical circumstances. i gained a salary and lost time and energy. the distance between me and music made me feel useless and made my life feel hollow and false. a new fear grew at the back of my neck, fear of not ever making music i like again. fear of having peaked, fear of an infinite writer’s block. fear of having never meant to really be an artist according to the internet. fear of slowly compromising settling for a more practical life, slowly fading, death by regret. fear of killing the magic that first lured me into songwriting. the fears stayed with me when i was awake and when i was asleep. months passed and i was filled to the brim exhausted overflowing of infinite fear so i tried to clog it by reading and taking photographs and drawing and telling myself i was in absorption mode but i didn’t ask myself, can you really absorb anything when you are flooding?

some days i want to irish-goodbye my music career and change my name and escape to a small bamboo hut in some depressing forest that looks like a tumblr pic. in this fantasy i get heartsick and escape to yet another life where i restart a music career but anonymously. most days i just long for my music to be mine again, just mine, not for PR, not for some algorithm, not for commentary, not even for an audience. not for sake of quantity. or even objective quality for that matter?

but there is no scapegoat (except capitalism ha), only sadness. i often wonder if i would have been happier if i was more selfish and more private with my music. or is it the opposite? what do i need to regain control of? why does anyone listen to my music? does everyone feel the same (shit)? does it make a difference that everyone is feeling shit too? is being emo on a newsletter narcissistic? are all artists narcissistic? why is writing so difficult when i sit down but so easy when i’m on the train but too fatigued to type anything? why is therapy so expensive? why can’t i feel what i felt when i first uploaded shit to soundcloud? when will my ACL completely heal? when will i run again? why do our grandparents have to grow old? why is time so fast but so slow? why can’t we have more time? why is gyutan (japanese bbq beef tongue) so underrated?