On Love and Death
On Love and Death
And a demo of "Clean Up Good" for your listening pleasure
I made a promise to myself to avoid using this newsletter as a means of explaining my songs to you. You deserve the opportunity to have your own experience with my music without me getting in the way.
I’ve instead decided to share with you the branches of the tree. Every song I’ve ever made has an imaginary folder of photos, text messages, and notebook scribbles that comprise all the seedlings of that song. They make up the DNA of that piece of music.
Below is something I wrote in August of 2021, and if you make it to the end you’ll find the original demo of “Clean Up Good”, the song that I put out last week.
On Love and Death
We sat on the floor of my parents’ living room, Adriana and I, scrolling through my phone looking at moments of the week prior. It was mostly blurry photos of us dancing at my brother’s wedding, an event that was scheduled to happen a year prior if it wasn’t for the pandemic. If he’d been married in 2020, Adriana wouldn’t have been there. We didn’t know each other yet, a detail that, upon realizing, made me hyper aware of the fact that nothing is promised.
I suppose it’s necessary to live life with some semblance of delusion that everything will be okay. Otherwise, the weight of the news would suffocate you before you’ve even had your coffee. But there are no guarantees, and I really hadn’t been living with that truth in mind. When I was younger, I was obsessed with the idea of living an artist’s life. I romanticized the entire thing. I made awful life and business decisions in the name of art, or worse yet, I made no decisions other than to create and be a sponge. I couldn’t see more than 24 hours into the future, so I couldn’t feel the weight of time on my shoulders. But now, sitting on the living room floor of my parents’ condo in perhaps the last place I’d ever imagine to feel anything, I felt everything.
I remember waking up one morning beside her and realizing that because we met later in life, we had less life to live together than those that meet in their 20s. It only briefly frustrated me, as it’s a bit absurd, but I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t temporarily ruined my day.
We’ve been together two years, and the idea that nothing is promised remains at the forefront of my mind. At times, it comes as gratitude and helps to keep me off my phone and remain present. Other times, it comes as a sharp and intense wave of fear as I read about a mass shooting or climate change, feeling the urge to protect my blessings at all costs; like the margin that separates me from pain and tragedy is razor thin.
Falling in love made me realize that I am going to die. Not soon, hopefully, but eventually. I felt undeserving of the whole experience at first. It was a lottery ticket I hadn’t played, and all of a sudden I was holding the prize. It’s a delicate dance, to be aware that clinging to anything in this world is a short path to suffering, but also to lean into the blessings and immerse in them fully, convincing myself that I’m deserving of all this precarious beauty.
