Making my way outside
See you this morning on The Lot Radio at 10am EST
May 6th - Groovetrackers at Bossanova Civic Club
May 8th - Mind Cargo at Lullaby
May 21st - Prefix at Motor City Wine, Detroit
May 22nd - T4T Luv NRG as Boyz II Them at Tangent Gallery, Detroit
May 30th - Upstairs at Public Records
Papers have been signed, a deposit made, an engineer contracted. Release updates coming soon.
Sometimes, I feel guilty that you haven’t heard from me. That I’ve been somewhere out there living my life, less encumbered by the ambitions, or rather, depravations that have historically motivated a frantic approach to producing new music, new materials, new words that legitimize the perception that I am what I say that I am.
An artist.
I’m crawling again, after long tumbling forward, downhill.
At the beginning of this year, someone asked me if being medicated has affected my creativity at all. The answer is yes, of course it has. It has decoupled my anxiety from my desires. It has opened up a new home for me to explore. There is less in the way. I have slowed, but there are less hurdles. I climb them one limb at a time.
9 months ago I decided to start medicating my mental illness again. I have struggled with anxiety and depression for much longer than I have been an adult. These maladies are compounded by the daily and prolonged stressors that I have accrued in this life. I was reaching such a critical point of rage and discomfort that I had to do something. I had to do something that wasn’t just letting the din grow louder.
9 months into reflecting on this process, I have realized that the density of my productive output has been powered by my mental health struggles. The pressure to produce was fueled by a desire for external validation and the material depravations of adulthood under late capitalism. Though medication and therapy are not the only balms to alleviate the former and regular work, lower expenses, and good wages can, at times, assuage the latter, the space that has been created by their collaboration has proven the most powerful antidote to this life that I am beginning to leave behind.
Facing these challenges has caused a curious, melodious and dissonant third space to arise. I still wake up early in the morning ready to live, I still eat shitty food sometimes, I still knock my shins on the corner of the bed frame. The pace, my pace has changed even if it seems that the pace outside has not.
For the first time or the fifth time, I am living a new life. I have never felt so open, so safe, so free. I am stretching my arms out to feel where the walls are. Right now, I am finding none. Right now, this scares me. But when I close my eyes and make a move, any direction will be correct. Any direction is one that I am ready to accept.