March 2024: On “A Little Green Left”
If you’ve ever been in a position that rings familiar, where your life proceeded according to a set of values that you inherited and resented, where you felt like investing in it meant betraying that which must not be betrayed, I hope you hear in “A Little Green Left” the paean to molecular hope that I intended it to be. If it rings true to you, I invite you to propagate it: to plant it in soil where it might grow, to extend it to others who might be suffering in kind.
February 2024: On Performance, Vol. I: Pre-Show Anxiety
Physical symptoms of nerves included an accelerated heart rate, stress-sweat commingling with heat-sweat, and jittering fingers — none of which would be conducive to a confident performance. This was a particularly intense episode, but almost invariably before performances, I endure an episode like it, an episode of near-suffocating anxiety.
January 2024: On Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On
I’m most inclined to dream after powerful moments of human connection. The more I have, the more my head fills with ideas and plans and enthusiasm to see them through. The longer I go without them, without people, the more I’m inclined to take the dark view on life: that it’s absent of magic, absent of dreams.
December 2023: On Whether 2023 Was Musically “Successful”
“For artists, answering the question is doubly hard because “success” is really a business lens, and art is characterized by the unhappy marriage of business and spirit. At best, art reluctantly submits to the lens of “success”; at worst, it resents it completely. I know many artists who categorically refuse to look through lenses such as these. One friend described herself as allergic to them.
I don’t love to view my art through this lens either. But I do love to practice my art, I recognize that I’m practicing it under capitalism, and I would love to practice it in a way that lets me define my terms of engagement with capitalism.”
November 2023: On Singing Your Friend’s Songs
“Last month, I played a set consisting exclusively of covers of my friends’ songs. There were eight songs, each by a different artist, all in slightly different styles. “Fundraising Drive” stuck out to me for two key reasons: 1) It sounds eerily like a song John Prine would have written if he’d been raised a Brooklynite, and 2) When I told Christian [Rutledge, the writer] what I got out of it, it wasn’t what he’d intended.”
October 2023: On Process Vs. Outcomes
“ … If you pin your self-worth on outcomes — be they base hits, social media followers, money, or even love — you’ll go crazy, fast. But if you pin your self-worth on process, you at very least give yourself a chance. You give yourself the gift of a healthy mindset and the willingness to grow. You raise the chance that you’ll find the outcomes you’re looking for — and that you won’t compromise your wellbeing in the process.”