My friend George (left) and I (right) in my dorm during our senior year of college together, with some of my musical setup in the background - photo taken by our friend EK!

Hello, reader!

For reasons utterly bewildering to me, you’ve decided that you’re curious about my endless, spiralling descent into the art life. But if you’ve come here for sauce, tea, or beans of any kind, I warn ye now: turn back! I seek to spill the secrets of my musical life, not my personal life!

…Alas, the venn diagram of those two sectors is a perfect circle right now. Rest in peace, college years. So long, hanging-out-with-your-friends-all-the-time, hello making-music-in-a-cellar-every-day. But cellar spiders aside, I am deliciously happy.

I started writing and recording songs pretty late. I played piano growing up, and every once in a while I’d write a melody or some lyrics, and every single thing I wrote I positively hated. I think I hadn’t yet learned to separate the secondary, critical, editorial side of art-making with the primary, free-flowing, creative side. Plus the world of recording/producing “real” songs was so foreign and unapproachable that I never really thought it was an attainable goal.

Flash forward to December 2019: It’s my first year of college and I’m about to step into my dorm when, out of nowhere, a melody falls into my head (strangely enough, it’s the exact same guitar melody in the Alex G song “Forever,” though I’d never heard that song at this point). With this melody noodling around in my noggin I suddenly think to myself: hey, I just got a macbook for college, I can record this on garage band!

A backpacking trip to Kofa National Wildlife Refuge! With my friends Harrison (top left), Anbi (middle front) and Julian (behind the camera)

My kind, charitable, and devilishly handsome roomate Kevin had a USB microphone, and he loaned it to me. I recorded the song, edited it a little, got in my bed, turned off the flights, and hit play. I experienced then for the first time a sensation that will be familiar to anyone who’s ever made music before: total, irreversible enlightment. And then I spent the rest of my life in agony trying to create beautiful art. But the suffering is, like, the point, man! And within two months I knew that I wanted to spend my life creating music. The only problem was that I didn’t have enough time. I was in college, my goodness! I had classes, exams, and a social life—it was dreadul. I got down on my knees and I prayed, prayed for something, anything, to give me more free time… this was in March, 2020, by the way…

And my prayers were answered! Suddenly I had unlimited free time and no responsibilities. Huzzah! I spent my time in isolation first learning the basics of audio engineering using Logic Pro: how a compressor works and how to use EQ and all that jazz. Then I embarked on the journey of creating what would become my first album: Good Morning, My Love! Tomorrow It’s All Over.

When I finished that album, I thought it was the greatest piece of art ever produced by a human being. And perhaps it is! If you’re brain-damaged. Or maybe you’ve just experienced a breakup in you late teens. Are those the same things? Anyways these days it’s essentially unlistenable for me, but not because I think it’s bad (I even think some of it is maybe… good?), but because there’s too much I want to change. And on the personal side of things, that album was pretty autobiographical (a quality which my new music doesn’t really share) and I’m at a different place now yadda yadda yadda. It’s been five years since I finished that album - a glorious five years of personal and musical growth. Which brings us up to now. Magic, come forth!