An Introduction to THE ELECTRIC FUCKERY
I wanted to leave a parting gift—dare I call it that?—before I take time to retreat to my personal life.
I’ve lived in Nashville for 4 years now. The first six months were spent sleepless in the studio—an experience I am forever grateful for; and will forever be learning from. By accident, I routinely found myself stuck in the city. In different pockets or neighborhoods… within different friend groups or industries—and, more often than not, I wound up lost in the pursuit of my identity or creativity.
It wasn’t until the pandemic hit, when a nerve was struck, that I started to intentionally exist. Not only in consciousness, but with and for myself. I spent lockdown obsessing over my inability to play guitar—writing a slew of tunes with the same chords over and over again. I wrote so feverishly that the lines between song and poem indefinitely blurred; and I opted to share the latter in a trilogy of 2020 collections.
Somewhere along the way the symbiosis of body and soul dissipated into the background of my life. It shifted out of focus as the city reopened and my wounds, fresh and unhealed, were put secondary to those nearest me. I started drowning in domestication—in mundanity. I started spiraling into depressive depths that I had overcome a decade before. Through this all, however, I continued writing.
The writings saw light via my 2021 chapbook Primordial Chaos—a collection that expanded my understandings of what poetry could be; and pushed me to pursue different mediums of writing. I was sharing poems that felt definitive and quintessential to the themes I was exploring years prior. Still, in the back of my head, on the side of the lines, was a brooding drive to dive back into music. To tweak my abilities, expand my understandings, and push my capabilities in sonic composition and lyrical format.
While I pursued this though, I found myself beside someone who took art too seriously and chastised me for my imperfections. My lack of talent when it came to playing guitar. My lack of talent when it came to singing. My lack of talent when it came to anything decent in a field similar to their own. I was both a threat and wildly inferior. So I held my breath. And tried to displace the desire.
After November hit, and I found myself single and legally protected—I was ushered into a world of mania and temporary escape houses. I found myself returning to a handful of tunes I had written—but never perfected—and humming along to the melodies, or reciting the refrains, throughout my days. With limited resources, and no place to call home, I shared a handful of these writings in the November collection “A moment of fractal uncertainty.”
After several breakthroughs in therapy, epiphanies in conversation with friends, and reclaiming a space as my own; I started to feel the similar itch I did in March 2018. For those of you who’ve met me in the time between: allow me to recap a bit. I had an over-abundance of poems that I had written between the ages of five and eighteen. Previously, in moments when my notebooks or phone storage would become full, I would simply erase, destroy, or set fire to the words of my yesteryears. Only this time, I desired a different catharsis. Something to build upon… something to say “I did that.” What unfolded was the start of my website, a collection called ‘Alienation,’ and a 200 page poetry chapbook that I self published (while sleepless in the studio—at school).
That same drive—at times suicidal—I had in 2018 before I unleashed my first batch of poems into the world, is where I sit currently with the handful of tunes I’ve kept around for the past year. So… before I torch these words in an effort to close this chapter and move forward: allow me to share with you my first experiments with the sonic world.
THE ELECTRIC FUCKERY is available to stream and purchase on bandcamp here. Bask in the glory of ALL my fucking imperfections (this includes, but is not limited to: my out of tune guitar, my rusty voice, and talentless strumming).
I almost didn’t share this project because it isn’t fine-tuned or glossed enough. These are the bare fucking bones of my wanderings into music—after years of honing my poetic craft. Take it for what it’s worth—but take it with love.
Yours truly xx