The whole world is changing, it's slow churn is palpable, shuddering our walls and creaking under our feet. A global pandemic coupled with the lightning-charged focus on ferreting out and destroying broken systems which thrive in deathly capitalism and racism. It's an intense volatile cocktail. It feels like something monumental is on the horizon. Times like these, it's difficult to focus on making music, making art. The world just seems too big, crying out for attention and our actions. Sitting in your room strumming an A chord or dialing in some string patch on a synthesizer is not what's important right now.
For those who follow me on social media, you can probably attest that I do not post a lot in general but in these current times I have felt compelled to post even less and relinquish what little space I occupy to more relevant important causes. This a pretty good list of them, with People's Breakfast Oakland being another one I would want to add. I also do not feel as though I can appropriately speak on the civil unrest with which the streets are heavy with. Being a person of mixed race (half white, half latinx), I still believe I am light years away from understanding what the immigrant experience is (specifically non-white immigrants) and especially of course the black experience. I feel great empathy for those two types of people in the United States. It is plain as day that the cards are stacked against them and in fact the system in which the U.S. operates wants to exploit them then stomp out their existence. I cannot even imagine what it is like to deal with that every single day of your life for decades and decades. It makes perfect sense that this rage and anguish would bubble up and explode onto the world, as we are witnessing now. It is long overdue.
See, here I go, it seems hollow and shallow to now write on the goings on with my music. Almost with perfect timing, leading up to California's Shelter-In-Place order, Ssleeping Desiress was on an exciting foreseeable trajectory. We had a small So-Cal tour slated for end of March and first week of April 2020; highlights at Part Time Punks in Los Angeles with Automelodi and a slot up in Portland for Out From The Shadows Festival. We also had shows in the works until June and a radio feature on KDVS, UC Davis' college station. All that got crumpled up and thrown into the waste bin. I do not lament it at all. What displaced it was way bigger than this, I completely understood. The only thing that made it through all this collapse was the 2nd record: "Exile House" via Onderstroom Records again. It came out here in the States mid April. The music on this record are more deliberate songs as oppose to ideas and experiments that have the feel of songs. I started writing using a guitar, trying not to play into a specific genre. It was the parameters I set for myself harkening back to my previous post: dispense with clunky cliche identifiers and only try to execute strong ideas. I think it was more success than failure but I will let you be the judge of that.
In terms of where I go from here...I have a lot of time on my hands. I'm trying to stay sane while writing a new collection of songs. I am deliberately not fretting over them as much as I did with older material but still, I want to present them as best they can. Hopefully I can catch one of Bandcamp's fee-waive days as I have a ton of demos but nothing ready to share yet. I hope soon so please stay tuned. Thank you for reading.
