reporting from the hole inside the hole

i knew i was pushing myself too far, but i felt no option but to keep going...

hello, my dear reader…

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.

felt seen by this cat on the way home. wanted to lay next to her, but i think that would’ve probably upset the owners lol.

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: