Hello, dearest reader…

I have been in a dream-like state… recently, I decided to share my story online. Something came over me, so I made a youtube video:

I didn’t think anything of it, my 2 friends that usually watch my stuff commented on it… until, I guess, something pushed it in front of many more eyes than I am used to. And not only was I seen, but I was understood, something I never thought would happen to me. I’ve been putting out sounds and making art for a decade, and deep down, I’ve always wanted to find the people that resonated with me, that saw the world the same way. Along my journey, I’ve been lucky to meet people that felt aligned with me + meeting them (a lot of them also fellow artists) restored a lot of faith in art for me, but I still hadn’t felt like I’d found my community.

Seeking community + connection is interesting, because the small price of admission is to reveal something of yourself, to allow yourself to be seen. But I thought there was a possibility to circumvent this, if only I could be unknown—yet held + adored. I could keep my distance and feel the small glow of light, its warmth illuminating my gaze, but not touching my body.

As I’ve kept going though, I’ve realized I can only be seen as much as I allow myself to be seen. I can only connect if I “sacrifice” something of myself first (aka vulnerability)—and trying to outsmart that process had left me more isolated and exhausted than I was able to carry anymore…

So after my last show in April, as we exited Pisces season (death + endings) and entered into Aries (action, change), I felt an impulse to stop hiding, and I think this mounted into me being able to share my story in that way… I thought it was cringe at first, why not remain a mystery? Why not remain ephemeral, cold, and unreachable? At least I won’t be judged. But if I remain inside the dark cocoon space, I won’t stand a chance to feel the light and fire of acceptance…

I feel myself unraveling in this process, in ways that are very lightening. I feel a sense of release after a period of feeling very weighed down by the world, by carrying so much on my own… I also decided to start “therapy” again (although we call it “witnessing”). The synchronicity of finding a source of healing and support in this time, that feels so aligned to my senses and my perspective is also giving me faith.

Faith in others is not something that is easy for me to feel. But as I am learning to trust myself and my intuition again, and as I continue to learn how to exist in this world and in my tender body, I am hoping this feelings will continue to activate and carry me forward.

-A

I’ve been on a mini-sabbatical. The idea was to hole myself up in my apartment to edit music videos and practice for my upcoming album release show. I’ve started doing some of that. But I’ve also uncovered a voracious appetite for films and books that I felt would never find me again. I finished two books last week and I am halfway through another one. I’ve been watching a movie every day, to try to make a dent in my endless list of movies that I want to see, but it’s only grown as I discover more corners of cinema, directors, and actors who’s entire oeuvre I wish to consume.

Yesterday, I got the news that my place of employment will likely go out of business. They didn’t give us an exact timeline, only that it is imminent. I’ve been at this job for two years, which is the longest I’ve been anywhere. The idea was that I would pick this up while I “figure out what’s next”, but I was quickly lulled into a false comfort in the routine of it. As spiritually unemployable as I feel, I finally found somewhere that sort of meshed with my condition. A small woman owned, queer-friendly space, the sort that are quickly disappearing as they struggle to keep up with the increasing rents in the cutthroat market of this city.

It’s strange, before I went on my trip, I was contemplating if I should put in my notice, instead I opted to take some extra time off to recover, and maybe then I could revisit what’s next with a fresh perspective. And while I felt reluctant to return to the same routines, now it feels daunting to imagine my life without them. This was a unicorn of a place after all, a ten minute walk from me through a street I’ve grown very fond of. I get to make coffee and discuss current events and drama with a couple of oddballs. There’s been a lot of clashes, and interpersonal drama, as is expected when you put a bunch of neurodivergent people in a pressure cooker, but I was fond of it all. It was a place I felt I could be.

I’ve been finding it hard to push forward since I got this news. It seemed I was finally finding momentum, but now I am finding myself with this huge setback, and I am staring at an overwhelming crossroads. I haven’t exactly chosen a stable path, so these things are to be expected. Still, the weight of everything being so uncertain has fallen on me and I feel paralyzed in terms of how to move forward. I feel like I could go in any direction now, but my head is spinning in it all too.

I think for now I still want to focus on my album release, and after that I want to see what’s next. I have also been contemplating leaving Austin, and maybe it’s finally time to not renew my lease, and spend some time elsewhere. I’ve internally been dying for a fresh start, and life now seems to be throwing me out the door, telling me it’s ok to go.

It’s been dreary and rainy too. I curled up to watch Tokyo Sonata last night, and I watched Ritual (2000) this morning. The themes and the characters of both films felt so close to home to my own situation, that I was shattered by the experience of watching both of these films. In Tokyo Sonata, a husband and a wife at the end of their rope after his job loss, cry out “how can I start over?” as they hit their individual rock bottoms.

In Ritual, an unemployed aspiring director becomes enamored with an emotionally stable woman and makes her his muse, and they spiral away further from reality together. He realizes that she is unstable in a scary way and not just in a romantic way, and the pedestal he put her on shatters. He pulls away, and she expects that she will be abandoned as she has been by everyone in her life, and starts acting out more. But after some revelations, he chooses her as she starts to heal. She finally confronts the things that happened in her past and while she’s still an extremely broken person, she’s not completely disconnected from reality anymore.

I knew I had a thing for early-aughts Japanese dramas that were more mood pieces than strongly anchored in narrative, but now I am completely hooked. I compiled a list of some of my favs, some that I hope to watch soon. August in the Water, All About Lily Chou-Chou, etc have formed a universe in my mind, one I never want leave.

I know escapism isn’t always healthy but right now I am finding a lot of comfort in it. I feel like I did when I was younger, when I was hungry for art that resonated with my experience. As I’ve grown more jaded, I’ve felt less convinced in the power of it all, but it’s only grown more important to me as life becomes more uncertain. Sometimes I feel like expression is the only thing that anchors me to reality. And I know how thin that line is, especially when I feel uninspired. When I am empty, I feel like a ghost floating through reality, anchoress and unmoored.

I had a striking conversation with a bookshop owner in Istanbul. He told me art was more real than reality to him. I had never heard someone else express this, and at the time I wasn’t sure that I agreed with him… I wanted to ask so many questions but some things got lost in translation and he said he didn’t want to talk my ear off, and despite not having any agenda, I didn’t want to loiter in his tiny space. We talked about Pomegranates, Turkish noise music, and his poetry and acting. He recommended Winter Sleep to me and told me I have a friend in Istanbul. I went on my way, content with this moment of connection despite wanting more… I hope I left an impression, maybe a piece of me will ignite something in him. To search for more, to create more.

-A

And I did, express it. I think that’s all there is to art, really. It is a moment in time, as fleeting as it all is, art can freeze time in the expression of it. The alchemy of that fascinates me. How do you capture everything? How do you know what’s true? But I found that there is no greater truth, it’s all just emotion to me. And emotions don’t have to be “true” or even real, they are simply a movement, a stirring of the soul... Do you question all of your movements, or do you just let your body move as it may? Then why do you question your expressions so much? They are just a movement in time. It’s so simple, really and yet...

I’ve questioned myself so much that I sat on this completed record not for months, but years... And maybe there’s something to be said about being “ready” to finally share it all, but I don’t think I am more ready now than I was before. I think the distance helped me overcome someof the extreme shame I feel around my work. Enough to say enough!! It’s now or never, bitch (lol).

Now I have an album release show scheduled in May. I could cancel, delay the record until the fall, but I have more music I want to put out, and I think it would be good for the winter. I’ve accumulated so much unreleased material that now I have a second album after this album, and I am not counting the album I threw away, or the hundreds of demos, etc... I haven’t wanted to write new music, partly because the psychic weight of this unreleased music is too much to bear. I can’t make anotheralbum, I’m full up. I hope the reward of getting this material out once and for all, is that I feel free to create again, a blank slate.

Some people fear that. But to me it’s my favorite part. The open expanse of experimentation, I can become anything. I can free up my mind to learn. Maybe I can sign up for music lessons again as a reward. Or maybe I will shift from music altogether. I enjoy being untethered, and feeling free in all the possibilities.

Currently, I do feel quite tethered. I have to somehow get this album mastered, edit 2 music videos, and make some sort of trailer/ promo thing for the album. I have the artwork, it’s a photograph, but maybe I should add some text/ graphic design? I like the idea of just having a still image, a photo to speak for the work, but maybe that’s harder to market...

I need to practice for this album release show too, I haven’t performed these songs in a while, and some I never have. I don’t know if I can pull it off. I have “time”, a month, but time is slippery... but I trust my ability to work in bursts. I will do nothing for some time and suddenly, everything at once. It’s stressful to work in this way but this is how I’ve managed my entire life. Maybe one energy type is not worse than the other, we’re just different.

-A

i have felt very tied down for some time, i don’t have any real ties, or any reason to feel tied down, but i’ve also never felt like i could justify picking up and leaving either. my day to day responsibilities felt so heavy already, so could i just leave it all behind?

anyways, I wanted to share a very old demo I felt nostalgic about today:

it’s about this feeling of being in transit… it contains footage of my train ride from glendale to denver on the california zephyr, it was my first time on the Amtrak and even though it’s a very ineffective form of travel (what would be a couple of hours on car was 8+ hours on the train), it was a gorgeous ride, I spent hours in the viewing cars staring at the changing faces of the rocky mountains

I realized how much I forgot this feeling. I’ve almost forgotten how to be, how to look around, how to let go… and how much the liminality of going places forces you to be here and now.

so I write + share in an effort to let a bit of this forward momentum carry me, and maybe i will share more soon…

yours,

ACH

ps: I also managed to update my site for the first time in a while, I am quite proud of it, check it out!! you might find some cool easter eggs if u look around…

https://hojascirculares.com

it seems the fall is starting to truly roll around, a much needed change here in texas. i’ve taken some time off and i’ve been spending my evenings listening to the rain outside my window, feeling cocooned in its safety.

i feel joy and inspiration arriving in my body again, as the changes outside have become a catalyst for things starting to shift within me. things that felt stuck and stagnant inside me feel released, questions and doubts that felt unanswerable inside me are finally moving in the direction of revelations.

i felt nowhere close to an epiphany, drowning in my holding patterns, and now they are cascading, each revelation leads a doorway to the next. maybe it is the changes outside, but maybe i needed to sit with these doubts for a while, i needed to be patient.

maybe its turning 30, the age i was dreading, i felt it would be the moment that becomes all too real, that shatters my childish illusions and artistic idealist dreams, the moment my soul would die so that i could become a functional, realistic, and pragmatic adult so my mother stops worrying about me.

and well… what actually transpired is… i turned 30, and there was no grand explosion of my ego, or the life i’ve led up until that point. what i felt instead was a giant invitation, and permission to carry on as i was. if anything, i felt like the insecurities that plagued me, of time running out, finally dissipated– as i felt released from any timeline, or deadline at all. i want to stay a freak at 40, at 70, at 80… i felt the landscape open up before me, in a way i hadn’t felt since i was maybe very young, like 16 or 17… the truth is i lost a lot of hope in life and myself at 20, and the last decade has been a battle of dealing with unresolved trauma, and the heartache that came from throwing myself into relationships in an attempt process said trauma, only to recreate and relive it. my 20s were a mess.

at 27, i walked away from a lot of things, and resolved to be alone and deal with what’s inside me, to stop externalizing my healing and hoping to be rescued by some love, or even artistic success. i went inward in a big way, but i kind of got lost in the fog there too. the isolation became suffocating at times, and i forgot why i went inward. i think 3 years later, it feels like that fog is finally lifting. i did need a container, a break in order to heal at that point in time. for the past year or so, i’ve finally been in the process of “coming out”, and i am starting to feel healed enough to show up as myself in a way that feels healthy and authentic.

so while i’ve felt like i’m just doing nothing, failing, stagnating, i’ve been doing a lot! i’ve been: working full time, playing shows, making youtube videos, preparing for my album release (more on that soon), making friends, and taking care of myself + my home. i felt really scared for a moment there, because i felt like my well was running dry and i was becoming completely burnt out trying to keep up with everything. so i decided to take some time off for my birthday to rest and make progress on my projects.

i felt like if i didn’t slow down, the burnout and the fog would swallow me whole and i would stay as listless and uninspired as i was feeling, forever disconnected from my inspiration and what brings me joy.

i feel so much relief as i feel it return, i find myself in this exhale of time… this liminal time feels so safe and comforting to me because gives me the space to remember. i’m creating in the pursuit of this mysterious, ineffable thing that i keep chasing, and i feel myself communing with it through sound, through words, through images. it never leaves me. i know! how gothic and romantic…

-A

some sounds for the fall:

And it’s true, things are okay at the moment. But I also feel suffocated by my own skin. I am restless in my reality, and it’s not enough to just be sated—I want more than just to exist.

I realize that everything I say is always about this, but I truly think the things we bristle against are our greatest teachers. So this eternal, aching doubt inside of me is also guiding me towards the things I need. The more I doubt, the more I feel pulled to step up to the dry erase panel of my brainspace, and erase the chatter. If I can just step out and ahead of the noise, then I am free.

There’s still so much I need to learn from this teacher. So much doubt I haven’t dared to rub up against. I am currently going against the current, the idea that I am alone in this universe, fated to be misunderstood. I am trying to open myself up to community, despite a big part of my sense of self being all about what I’m against. Groups of people are scary to me because they mirror my not belonging so loudly. But I am seeking, and trying ways to meet that, and perhaps I just belong by not belonging. Maybe every gathering needs those who are not always at the center of it all, to fill that negative space around the light.

Oh, and I know, I know that casting myself as the honorary specter looming in every space, doomed to the shadows of not belonging is also a limiting belief pushing me back into the comforting smallness of my doubt. But I have to start somewhere. I know that when I step out of my discomfort, I can be charming, even gregarious, and I can become a part of the light in the room too.

I write to you from the edge of a leap of faith I’m about to take. I could crash on my landing, and end up bleeding. But I could make something beautiful too. And maybe (!!) it’ll be seen, and understood, and it’ll be lasting. The dream: creating an echo in someone’s consciousness that ripples outward, and shifts the energy of their interior. The stir inside them becomes loud enough to cause another ripple that creates a chain reaction. A quiet whisper inside of me becomes a knowing, and grows hungry until it’s seen. And I do, I do, want to be seen.

I hope this letter finds you well, my dear reader. I am hoping that on the other side of this threshold, I will find myself in the desert, making art to share with you under this upcoming full moon eclipse. I am building my dream, with bare and misguided fingers. And my fear of snakes won’t get in the way…

What dreams can you make into reality on this full moon? And no dream is to small, as the effect of bringing into reality can be cumulative, and end age old blockages. The magic of reality creation has to start somewhere…

-A

(written while listening to this on a loop):

i am writing to you from the hole. the hole inside the whole. nothing stays here with me. i am not dead, but i am not alive. i’m just ashes on scorched earth, an empty field.

after my last performance, i felt like the rubber i had stretched too far snapped and i collapsed into complete exhaustion. my whole body ached, my head was pounding. i had no energy or will to live.

i knew i was pushing myself too far, but i felt no option but to keep going. i couldn’t back out of the performance i had worked so hard to prepare for, i couldn’t call in sick at my job since i was already covering for someone else. on the way home the night before my set, i felt an exhaustion so deep that i thought i could just lay on the sidewalk for an eternity. thankfully, the heat forced me to keep going, and i made it home.

the day of my performance came, and although i wanted to rest all day after what felt like a particularly grueling closing shift, i had to get myself ready. i have done this enough times that it’s become a science of sorts. shower. paint my face. practice a bit more. pack my cases, make sure all my cables (there’s a lot of them) are wrapped, and pray none of them crap out on me when i get to the stage.

i get to the venue, and as tense as i can be, while also being glad i can see some friends i haven’t seen in a while. but since i kind of assume no one will come to my shows, i get more nervous because i don’t want to disappoint them. this manifests as an extreme form of social anxiety. my heart is pounding and i am sweating with each interaction and conversation. i’ve gotten pretty good at hiding my anxiety so i carry them well, but still. there’s a war in my mind (s/o lana del rey lol).

i wonder if anyone ever feels this level of anxiety at performing or if i am just not built for this. my impostor syndrome kicks in, and it forms the best nightmare fuel cocktail with my social anxiety, mixing with the humidity and heat of texas in july. my scalp is soaking wet with sweat at this point.

the time for my set/ up sound check comes, and i have 30 minutes but more like 20 since the night is running late. i throw all my cables on a table. it feels like a race against time as i forget what all of them correspond to, pray that i have enough outlets to connect all my blinky modular shit. i feel like i have gotten better at navigating this, but the anxiety and heat put me made me feel like i was trying to do it naked, slipping on molasses.

when its time for soundcheck, a user error causes the crowd to be blasted with feedback. i want to be buried alive at this point. but a part of my mind is also laughing, at the resistance inside me compounding as more resistance. in a way i have to surrender to the resistance in my body, i can’t force it to be aligned, i just have to survive through this.

i made it through my set, and although i couldn’t lose myself fully, i was able to let loose a bit during my favorite part of my set. where i just go fully improvisational with noise and vocal looping. i think it’s my favorite part because there’s nothing to mess up really. my songs are structures i have to follow. and this is just a mass of sound. i don’t have to follow anything, i just have to build a mass. and being on a proper sound system, it truly becomes physical. i lean into the bass frequencies the most. i call this “the ritual”/ “the flood”, which builds on “primordial wound”— a song that is a being in itself, and has transformed every time i play it live. i have been attempting to record this new version of it, but i think its still evolving. it’s sentient, and knowing.

when i create in this way, it feels like the truest form of what i do, because it doesn’t have to confine to anything. it’s alive, and it becomes a mirror of what i want to say, what i feel like i have to say. in a way i am trying to express and find ways out of the Archon, this material world that has us so bound to it. when i enter the space, i feel like i can breathe for the first time. a kind of weightlessness reaches over me, and i feel like i am guiding an ascension.

i think, yes, more of this. let go of the outcome, get out of the way, and just follow this. i want to, and i will. i’m still not sure what i am doing with this music thing, or i how built i am to handle the highs and lows, to balance it all, but those small moments of weightlessness are what make me grateful to feel alive.

<3 from the hole,

-A

**written while listening to this—very restorative and hydrating record:

i’ve wondered if getting older is the process of becoming more solidified in yourself, like when you’re born you’re just a cosm of possibilities, and as you grow the smoke dissipates to reveal a figure, standing still.

but that feels too close to death to me. there’s too many people i want to be. i want to be an herbalist in north carolina. i want to be a sound artist touring around europe. i want to be an avant-garde filmmaker. i want to run sound for experimental plays. i want to be a jungian analyst. i want to get a youth visa and spend a year traveling in new zealand. i want to make a documentary about my local diy music scene. i want to start a podcast to interview artists about their process. i want to learn how to make zines. i could go on and on. possibilities of lives i could live, and want to live, stretch out before me. then i think, you’re turning 30 this year, don’t you know all the doors in your life are closing? and then i shut down. i sink into bed, annihilated by time.

i don’t want to be bitter. i don’t want to be cynical, but my heart has grown more reserved. i think of all the times i’ve put myself out there and it’s backfired, and i think, see? you flew too close to the sun. you can’t have everything.

i guess i am greedy to want it all. i am a hungry ghost, a holy vessel just passing through. i only have this one life, and i feel a desperate hunger to experience as much as i possibly can.

i started rewatching the OA last night. and it’s insane how much of that show went over my head when it first came out, and how eerily similar it feels to my experience over the past few years. i think that the show is ultimately about (and it has so many sweeping, grand themes, GOD) belief. when did you stop believing that our existence is just a thin veil sitting on top of eternity? we just skate the surface on everything that could be, and all we have to do is pierce the veil. this threshold is what interests me, and what i am seeking.

i think of myself as a small girl, in my strange seeking, keeping a box of things i found precious for some reason and putting it somewhere hidden. i created a secret language for myself. i called them “SICNOS” (purposely misspelled spanish (signos) for symbols/ signs) — i made the connection recently that i was creating sigils + accumulating talismans. it was innate to me, this secret world of symbols.

and now i try to recreate that world, i arrange my creative space in a way that feels like an altar. it’s a creative practice, and a sound practice yes, but it’s also a ritual. a portal i create so i can enter it. so i can walk towards the threshold, and maybe, just maybe, i get just a sigh from the other side. a whisper on my shoulder. the feeling of hands wrapped around me, holding me still. i am being carried by something bigger, and much older than me. then, i close my practice, i exit the portal. i’m back in the physical world, where everything feels so heavy and impossible. i long to go back.

when did you stop being open?

-A

written while listening to this on repeat:

but the process of attempting to be seen? to even feel a fragment of that unconditional love?

it’s the process of being a social contortionist. if i make these facial expressions, will they like me more? i’ve been in this process for years, my earliest memories involve somehow noticing i am doing something that is “off”, then being detected, then acting accordingly to change my demeanor so that i am not detected.

and just when i think i am succeeding as a social chameleon, i am charming but not too schmoozey, i am light but not too vapid, i listen with intent and offer anecdotes to show my empathy—i find out down the road that actually my performance wasn’t convincing enough, and i am still being excluded, i’m still disliked. moments where i was too blunt, i forgot to change my naturally flat affect as to not seem rude come back to me as examples that i need to sharpen my performance even further if i am to be convincing enough, to finally, truly be accepted.

but accepted for what? because this contortionist dance doesn’t get me any closer to feeling a real connection with anyone.

and if i expand this to other areas of my life, i see how initially i was afraid of truly showing up as my full self as an artist, because i feared being misunderstood. it’s like i imagined a box that i had to fit into to “make sense” to others, so i felt like i could only share and perform within that box, and anything else would need to be too different or too confusing, and alienate this imaginary captive audience that didn’t even truly exist yet. i was restricting myself to conform without any feedback to do so. i just thought that’s what i’ve “ought” to do.

***

i’ve spent the last few years largely alone. and the space this solitude has provided has allowed me to sit down and finally notice these patterns, and start shedding them like an explorer chopping vines with a machete in a great wilderness, only to find more entanglements illuminated my my lantern.

we are in a collective hermit year in 2025, according to tarot. this has always been one of my favorite tarot cards, and if i were to get a tattoo it might be of this image. something about moving in solitude, in darkness, only guided by a lantern really speaks to my experience. we’re in this greater space, this wild unknown, but all we can see clearly is what is in front of us. all we can do is follow where our intuition leads. and the process of that, is what is most exciting to me, because what i ultimately strive to do is to drown out all the outside voices, the excess and interference of the world, and in turn to only be guided by what’s inside me. because where that leads is where i want to go.

-A

(written in a flow state aided by 4 shots of espresso + this sublime and majestic autechre song) —

It’s hard to believe we are in the latter half of this year already. The solstice is always a good time to take an inventory, I had subconsciously been feeling really restless and stuck, and was taking everything about my life into question. My job, my living situation, my creative practice. I felt this need to quit NOW to move NOW to put out my damn record NOW but I felt a resistance dragging me and I realized it’s okay to examine and pause, to act later.

I have a big fear of stagnation, I think it’s because my environment growing up changed so much. I moved cities and homes a lot, and never had a sense of a true childhood home, except maybe my grandma’s and aunt’s homes in the small mexican town I grew up in. I knew the fig trees would still be there. I know the avocado tree is still in my grandma’s yard. I always wondered if people that have this knowing rooted into their being are less incongruous with their being and their external reality. Like the knowing offers a solid base to act upon. But my knowing is more scattered, and thus I am acting from a more ravaged and mangled place.

I spent my weekend reading about the floods in Kerville county. This sense that your entire reality or existence, can be washed away, within a few minutes was absolutely staggering to witness. I think it broke something in my wall of empathy, where I can feel a bit numb and emotionless, but the magnitude of that was wavering inside of me. It colored my days with a weight. And when I spoke to my therapist, they concurred and said they felt this weight and grief too. I wondered how many of us carry a collective grief without being 100% aware of it. Is this collective weight and malaise rooted in something more? I feel we are inevitably linked to each other, whether we like it or not. And I suppose we can ignore everything that is happening, because it is a lot. But I don’t think we can ignore the way that even the sense of it can enter our mind in other ways, our dreams and our bodies know.

***

A lot of the work I am doing now is in rebuilding the connection to the knowing inside my body. I have a tendency to try to process everything mentally and intellectually. It’s like if I don’t arrive at the right conclusion intellectually, because there is not always logical or obvious conclusion, I get stuck because I have a more difficult time connecting to my inner intuition and inner knowing. And rather just accepting that this is a fundamental flaw inside of me (which I did for a while), I am choosing to work on it. Still, I have to arrive at this my own way so I’ve been doing a lot of reading and studying in this area. One thing I’ve really loved is ‘s Coherence Compass. The way they wrote about intuition being like a resonance, or a sound in your body made something in my broken circuitry finally fire off. So as I keep this practice in mind, I think I will finally get somewhere with this.

***

I write all of this to say that sometimes changes can be very subtle and too internal to be witnessed from the outside. As much as I want to take a big leap now, I see that I am changing and evolving in time. When the time is right, I won’t have choice but to act. A lot of things have to be this way for me, I don’t know why. I don’t have to justify it, because it is just about knowing. And although my connection with this knowing feels fractured a lot of the time, every time I trust it and act upon it, I feel I am healing and reinforcing my connection to it. I’m learning to trust the impulse, which can actually be very small at first.

The other day, I felt this impulse to clear my space. I went through everything in my home and got rid of a lot of stuff that had been weighing me down… Greeting cards. Bills I’ve already paid. Dead wasps’s nest on my balcony (I had really been avoiding that one). When I was done with that, I felt I had entered a new space. But my external reality was still the same. Still, there was an opening. My living room felt lighter, because the area around my windows was less cluttered. Everything was the same, but it was different. And this all stemmed from a silly small impulse to clean my wallet. Yet, it rippled out and transformed my space, and my relationship to it.

I still find myself at a lot of thresholds, and in a lot of ways I feel at a loss with how to deal with them. But I trust I will move in the direction I desire.

As you find yourself at this post-solstice threshold dear reader, what do you want to shed? What do you want to keep? Where do you want to shift your compass to?

Until next time,

A

I suppose I haven’t spoken into this portal for months and months. I guess I hate anything that feels like an obligation, I’ve become so deathly allergic to the idea of it that for a good few months I’ve just been existing and barely doing what it takes to survive and that has felt like enough, at least what my exhausted brain and body could conceive as enough.

Deep down I knew none of this was true, that eventually I would have to pull myself out of this sepulcher and step out into the light somehow, again…

Deep down, I had started to feel a shift rise. At first, it was just a longing—to feel everything again. The need to know more. The want to need to know. The ache, the pull.

(of course Ethel Cain has made an entire video that highlights this in vibrant detail)

It was very quiet at first but the shift from Pisces into Aries at the end of March slingshot me into outer space. I played my first show in eight months, and it felt like a dream to have such a warm and inspiring night of music again.

April 14th, at Dadalab

Things have quieted down all around me since then, but inside I’ve been churching, and wanting more for the first time in a while. I thought that maybe the light inside me had died, and that I didn’t want anything with art anymore. It is easier to stop showing up than to be exposed. But a world where no one shows up as themselves is too bleak to exist in…

Anyway that is it for now. I will probably remain quiet and share when I feel able to. But inside I am burning and I am nurturing this small flame. Maybe it’ll grow…

-A

it’s been a while since I felt called to write on here, and with the year ending I feel the need to close out + reflect…

i am recovering from illness and while that took me out for a few days it allowed me to rest and slow down enough to take stock of where i’m at with my creative projects and what goals i want to focus on. i came to the honest realization that if i ever want my record to see the light of day, that i need to act on it, so i decided to spend my 5 days of isolation and bedrest to go through all my files and finally admit to myself that there’s a high probability that it’s my project is ready to be mastered. once i made this confession to myself, things moved rather quickly, and now i have a folder sitting on my desktop, labeled, fades where i need them, levels not clipping, and all i need to hear now is yes. and i feel close to this yes.

the yes i need is more of a permission, the permission to let go, because over the past two years, this project has weighed on me, and it has been on the back of my mind constantly. i have been in a strange limbo with it, where i have sat with it and worked on and off on it for months and months, and i never felt i was allowed to declare it finished, because, well, what if it’s not good enough? what if someone sees through me, calls me out, calls my work lazy? and more importantly, if i can’t live up to the ideal i build an ever rising pedestal for, am i failure, will anything i do ever be enough? will i ever be enough?

and this is why i need to hear a yes. because the idea of never being enough is a constant threat to my well-being. so sitting on this work and never feeling like it will be enough was a siphon to my energy, because the idea is there and it drains me, it threatens me when i need to sleep and rest and do other things, because i like doing other things… so i knew i had to stop the cycle, and declare it enough, even if i am not sure.

i feel much lighter since i made this declaration. and with the end of the year nearing, and the days growing darker, i feel a lot of joy in feeling a lot of permission to simply be with the liminal, not to fear it. i am absorbed into the womb of this limbo, where i am allowed to start regenerating, rebuilding, until a fire beings inside me again and i can restart the cycle, as i only pray to this…

i hope this solstice finds you warm, safe, and full of revelation…

-A

oh and since it is that time of year maybe i should share some records i enjoyed or found interesting this year…

• nicolas jaar- piedras 1 + 2

• beth gibbons- lives outgrown

• diiv- frog in boiling water

• elsa hewitt- chaos emeralds

• chelsea wolfe- she reaches out to she reaches out to she

• the smile- cutouts

• alexander gregory kent- teaches dust to reason

• tummyache- egosystem

• autechre- AE 2022-

today i shared something new into the world, it is called THE KNIFE:

and yes, it is in all caps as I feel it is a very bold statement from me… and as much as i want to cower and hide from the impulse to share what i produce with the world—i had set this date in mind after I mastered this track this summer + shot a music video, which I hope will be out soon on my channel…

I produced, mixed, and mastered this track on my own. and i state this simply to emphasize how much i pour into every release i make. i do not feel a sense of entitlement that the work that i do has to have an equal amount of response as the monumental effort it takes… but yeah, releasing music in this day and age is a very jarring experience. what starts as a very private, sacred, and ritualistic experience is suddenly out of my hands and i fear all kinds of judgment, because what i make comes from a very deep place inside me.

making this track was very cathartic to me, as it describes the cyclical nature of a toxic relationship, which is another form of addiction, a theme that is very close to me… it’s about how one can desire to embody an abuser as a way to take the power back, but in reality it only permeates the cycle of addiction. but that is all i will say about the song, i would like the rest to be up to interpretation.

i had a very interesting breakthrough recently, strangely that the very part of me i had always been disgusted and ashamed of is the very part of me that needs the most protection. the constant voice of doubt in my mind that needs comforting and reassurance at all times, that is hyper-vigilantly scanning for signs of rejection or that i am faulty, comes from a very small part of me, a very vulnerable and tender child. and i dismiss it constantly because it needs a lot, and it demands a lot, and instead of reassuring it, i get mad at it for needing reassurance. and i share this because of how much it colors my process. and how difficult it makes it to finish things and release them.

but now that i’ve had this clarifying breakthrough, i am hoping it will color my process through a brand new lens, and that it will put some ease into it and expedite what has felt stuck or in the dark for so long. i am hoping to dive back into producing and finish a few more things to share soon.

anyway, i hope this letter finds you well, and this Samhain + whatever wild transits are orbiting around us lead to clarity, movement + breakthroughs… the veil is thinning, can you feel it?

-A

I cannot believe the summer is almost over, it went by like a cosmic blink. it feels like time is more elastic than ever, stretching through my fingers like molasses and then turning into sand….

i played my first show in a bit this past monday (8/26), only the second show i’ve played this year, perhaps not my last… and i truly had a blast, which was unexpected. leading up to it all the things that could go wrong did (equipment issues and transportation troubles), in true retrograde fashion. but the show itself went by like a dream. i guess i could fixate on what went wrong but i can’t shake the feeling of elation i felt once i truly released and let go and really allowed myself to take up space, something that has always eluded me.

i think the good winning combination of toxic shame + impostor syndrome has always made performing feel quite volatile and terrifying. i’m afraid to be in front of people sharing my vulnerability, of taking up space because who am i to believe i have any power? or that i even have anything to say? even if its just for one moment… at times i’ve even felt guilty for the art i share, like it’s a burden to all my friends who pretend to like it and me.

obviously i know how insane that sounds written out. i’ve had some pretty major breakthroughs this year that have finally allowed me to break through those mental chains and barriers, but it is work. and all i feel is elation and relief that those thoughts were as quiet as ever on my mind when i performed. i just felt so free. and empowered, for the first time in a long time. overcoming shame for me feels like moving into power.

i think getting to this place required me to spend a lot of time on my own, truly growing comfortable in my own skin, which i avoided through escapism for many years… and now that i reached that level of personal self-acceptance i care less about what people think about what i do, and more about carrying myself with integrity + care.

wrote this as I was listening to this (2 brilliant long-form pieces by alex kent from sprain):

hope the dust settling around you post-retrograde finds you all well + that whatever comes next is exciting + feels right,

A

The time period between this recent equinox to the capricorn full moon has been a bit of a blur. I started working full time, which hasn’t left a lot of energy for creativity, I’ve been in a bit of a grief/ survival mode as my body adjusts…

Today I’ve been revisiting some of the songs that emerged this spring, at the apex of the eclipse… I had released all expectations from myself and found free-flowing experimentation, and I really love what I made/ want to continue that thread…

They provided a great relief and beautiful contrast from the very goal-driven and precise work I had to do to make progress on my record—which, while it emerged from experiments, it emerged as an entity that demands to take form and quite aggressively bullies me towards the platonic ideal… it has been exhausting and thus I only open that door every now and then. Once the form wants what it wants, there’s very little input from me, it’s not a creative process, it’s a sacrifice and an act of devotion and service.

What is different (this time) is that I don’t feel like a martyr, and I feel like I can set boundaries and only extend this act of service when I have the space for it, otherwise I’m allowing myself to do what I want… which currently is nothing, and sometimes it’s mangling tape loops and trying new Ableton stuff.

If this type of language is exhausting to you, I do apologize, but I do think a lot about how we are in relation to our work, and like all relationships it takes trust, boundaries, and respect, otherwise they can become at worse abusive or life-draining, and this is something I have been working on in terms of practice for quite a while, but it is a practice…

On the horizon: I will probably play a show in August, so I’ll probably return to announce that…

Other than that, I’m trying to give myself space and silence and rest when I can—so the unknowingness can call me back to it, I love it the most…

i wanted nothing so i went to the desert

finding comfort in the deep unknowing

is it possible? what is possible?

it all escapes me, it all slips through me

i want this untethering, i am complete

-A

I have been navigating some challenging waters since the eclipse—after I performed live I felt incredibly drained emotionally… I had also found myself recording for long stretches of time and making leaps and bounds of progress after a long period of feeling stuck and futile… all this release has me feeling emptied out.

The good thing is that I am much better at coping with periods of drought than I was before, I have more tools under my belt and I am more forgiving of myself when I feel uninspired, and I have come to enjoy the feeling of the void— because it calls out to be filled, which leads me to seek and seek!

What am I seeking currently? New sounds—I am listening to a lot of strange and unfamiliar music. I will share some finds from my digs later… I am spending hours browsing rateyourmusic, which is a goldmine for weird shit and I feel like a kid in a candy store discovering esoteric and experimental records, the weirder the better. The process of digging is quite enchanting and life giving.

I am tentatively returning to practice which looks like being surrounded by pedals and my synth on the floor, looping vocals and recording into my trusty 4-track tape machine, howling glossalias into the night by dim candle light. It feels very intimate and rewarding, and I am not sure if these nightly purges will ever see the light of day or reach any ears, but they are restorative and activating all at once.

I do feel a schism, a divide, and I am not sure how real that is—between the states of raw creation, where I feel like an animal howling into the night, or like some unknown entity is reaching into me and through me—and my egoic / human animal need to be understood, which manifests as wanting to create things that fit more into a structure or a narrative. Anything that I make that I intend to release, whether I like it or not, has to go through this loop—and, much like a tape loop, it creates a sort of disintegration or entropy where the initial spark or chaos has to be made into a form, and the journey of that is a sort of tragedy.

Journeying through that dark tunnel creates a lot of tension for me, so much so that at times I feel extreme amounts of tension in my body and anxiety as soon as I hit record, or when I have to perform — I feel the strain and it becomes a sort of knot in my hose, I struggle to vocalize fully, my playing becomes clunky. It’s something I have a lot of shame about, but now I am simply noting it and seeing what adjustments can be made. Currently I can only feel safe making music in the dark, which has its own challenges (I can’t see shit lol), but I am honoring that with my candle-lit jams. I feel myself able to unravel in the darkness, I enter the alchemical portal of release.

I am trying to dig deeper into what the tension is about too, and I think it’s about feeling like there is a right or a wrong to these things, a binary. The expectation that there is a correct way to perform immediately contracts me. When I write a song, I want to do it justice and I fear if I don’t, that I am a mistake because I faltered. I just wonder: does it all have to be so heavy? Maybe that’s why I am dipping a toe into noise stuff, since there’s truly no wrong way to do it. It’s a very healing ethos.

I am not sure what the right answer to these things. All I have is questions, and the opening they are carving out. I’m hoping asking is more like a seed than a fruitless husk.

-A

Here’s some finds from my digs:

hypnotic, spiraling turntabilism

haunted occult sounds

ritual in a hidden cave

Are we still the same? I don’t feel the same, but I am still here. I feel a bit at a loss for words, I wasn’t sure I’d get to write a missive this month… but I have experienced such a profound transformation over the past few weeks that I wanted to at least try to document some of it…

Post-eclipse, post-show, I feel a renewed clarity of what my purpose is, if there is one… I’ve been grappling with my identity and my purpose for many years, and I’ve felt a deep insecurity and discomfort with the (perceived) chasm I experienced—between the deep desire to create things and share them + my impostor syndrome and a relentless and brutal inner critic. Every time I’ve played live or shared a release, I’ve gone into a deep shame spiral, I’ve wanted to disappear and delete everything. I’ve thought, everyone who’s been nice to me about my work actually hates me and if they don’t I will let them all down… It is a paralyzing, soul-crushing cycle.

I felt myself almost dancing and flirting with the cycle after my show… But then the transformation of the eclipse was more relentless than my inner battles. I stood transfixed by the absence of light in the sky, the birds as they hushed, the sounds of people around me gasping and screaming as we all stood and witnessed this—the mathematical odds of seeing such a spectacle alone are mind-bending… And as soon as it happened, the light returned, the birds began to sing again as if it’s dawn, and time began to march at its usual pace. But I didn’t want leave that stillness. I wanted it to wash over me, to magnetize me with it.

I immediately started writing as soon as I got home and I haven’t stopped since. It is new work perhaps, different from the project I started last year, but it all falls under the same umbrella of transformation, I believe. And now that I’ve done some processing and healing—the painful things that happened to me make more sense. I remember when, heartbroken and lonely, I stumbled into the record store and picked up Scott Walker’s Tilt—how a simple moment of small curiosity was a catalyst for me to begin to understand what my voice is, what it is I that am trying to say…

I realized, that for whatever reason, I’m here to examine and process pain and darkness + to create from it. That all of the work that resonates with me does share a common thread, the thread of mystery, of the shadow.

I know it sounds a bit simple, but finding this clarity feels really reaffirming in what I am trying to do and say. I don’t feel that deep insecurity anymore, I don’t feel like what I do is fruitless anymore. I am sure those feelings will return (because they always do!), but I feel like this knowing can ground me when my inner critic returns, when I feel unstable—I can find my home again in the velvet tenderness of shadow.

(source — amazing read, btw)

If you are reading this, I hope you are finding stillness in your transformations. I made a playlist for digesting the eclipse if you’re into that:

-A

It seems that after a long period of stasis things are picking up again. I had a pretty major breakthrough in my work that allowed me to break through some of the barriers I had preventing me from working on my album. Some were outside of me, but mostly it was internal. And I do think that process had to be what it was, and I’m glad I was patient enough to sit with my work for 7 months before reigniting it.

While this natural flow picked up I got asked to perform and I said yes to it even though I don’t tend to agree to shows unless they are at least a month out. But the way I’ve been working already had me thinking of a live set so I really just had to put these ideas into practice…

I still don’t know how to feel about performing. But I realized lately that a lot of the pressure I feel around releasing comes from the fact that since I’m not performing those works, in my mind the recorded version is the only version that is in the world. And that puts a lot of pressure on that still frame of an idea, it has to conform to the ideal that I built up in my mind and that is a lot of pressure for anything that has to exist—because anything that exists as an articulation of the inexpressible will be fall short, will be a failure…

So instead of continuing on this resistance against the current of a standard of beauty and perfection that can’t and won’t exist I am embracing error and failure. As soon as I let go things poured out of me in a flood. I have been gifted a tape machine recently and now my desk is piled up with tape experiments, reversed tapes, tape loops, recordings of abandoned songs—all deliciously imperfect. I am joyful in my experimentations and I’m delighted by the fragility of tape, as soon as it's recorded it’s already in a state of decay. It can be volatile and unpredictable and frustratingly limited. It’s similar as my fascination with film.

Overall I feel like I’m in a good place, my feet feel like they are on the ground, even if the ground is shifting and chaotic. I’m letting go of what I think has to be. And with that, I feel like I can move forward, swan diving into Aries season with no idea of what the other side of it will hold, just the air surrounding me flowing with fire…

Current obsessions:

• Autechre— I have been listening to them nonstop, they recalibrate my brain through their pure commitment to the joy and curiosity of sound. My fave is currently Column Thirteen from the NTS sessions.

• Coil— Still on a Coil kick. I listened to Cold Cell several times in a row for hours. It felt like a healing ritual of forgiveness and feeling.

• Perfect Days— I was lucky enough to go see this at a movie theatre, and I recommend you see it if it’s playing near you. It seems Wim Wenders continues to change my life (as he did w/ Wings of Desire last year for me). I think it was the embodiment of everything I’ve been feeling and a roadmap to everything I want to feel more of.

Wishing you all a gentle and transformative eclipse season,

-A

Oh! and here’s the info for the show: 3/28 at Chess Club.

pisces is to not only grieve but to let it outside of your body

lately i feel like i just want to howl, i want to scream, i need to let sounds out of my body until i feel i am inside a womb or a maw and i am held and disarmed, in loudness and power — i want the sounds to reach out of me and become physical entities that you can feel and taste— to be hypnotized in a ritual of repetition, to go to places i didn’t know existed or were possible, to feel submerged in the depths, carried by the waves~ becoming a silence

the mouth of silence (2/14/24)

i want to enter the mouth of silence

can’t escape the hum

it says more more more

i want a different song

a steady pulse

duration (1/26/24)

it’s about the space in between

the cadences, the grace notes

i belong in the space in between

in the persistence of grace

hang underneath, drip awnings

<3,

-A

i am finding it difficult to feel grounded since pluto entered aquarius, reality feels stranger and stranger, a certain psychedelic magic is in the air and synchronicities are abundant, the universe feels like a jester winking at me as i drag my feet through the mud, lost in my usual depressive patterns, and i cannot help but to laugh and feel joy again, the universe is too full of mirth at times not too—

maybe i am going insane, or maybe reality is growing more absurd, as the systems that have been in place that are clearly so dysfunctional start to grow more desperate, like a child throwing a tantrum… we all know this isn’t working anymore but we still have to be in this liminal space until the new reality forms—one that is actually just, embodied, nonviolent (and i do believe a better reality is coming for all of us, despite how bleak stuff feels)

my most important goal this year is to seek beauty, because i realize that it is a state i can move and work towards—whereas my default state can sometimes be one of hopelessness, spiraling anxiety, seeking beauty can be a life vest against the spiral, it brings me into the now, and i notice the light and the trees, and i feel a flood of beauty and magic, and then i feel as if my day is fully lived, from feeling a flood of beauty for one second, and suddenly the concern of whether i matter doesn’t matter so much anymore, i’m just a being here to experience a blink of life (and i don’t want to close my eyes yet)

“…I saw the line of mystery and fire, which is a surreptitious line. A note exists between two notes of music, between two facts exists a fact, between two grains of sand no matter how close together there exists and interval of space, a sense that exists between senses—in the interstices of primordial matter is the line of mystery of fire that is the breathing of the world, and the continual breathing of the world is what we hear and call silence.” — Clarice Lispector, The Passion of GH

Current obsessions:

Film: Hourglass Sanatorium (a psychedelic polish journey through time, I want whatever is in their water and air!!)

Sound: Wall of Eyes-The Smile, 154- Wire, Health and Efficiency- This Heat, Loom- Katie Gately, Cenizas- Nicolas Jaar

Misc:

• Thinking of time and it’s relationship to sound, and how our perception of time might alter it, how our experience of a space creates an extra dimension of our listening **

• Thinking of cycles and patterns that repeat in our lives, are they echoes or delays, are we in a spiral or a loop?? at times I feel an experience is directly parallel to one I had years ago, and it feels like a trial I have to keep repeating until I break through

** more on these thoughts later, there might be a part two to this letter as i continue to digest and chew on these bigger thoughts and theories…

Anyway, happy cycling~~~

-A