I’m writing to you from the Montreal Airport’s new Air Canada Café, waiting for my flight back to Virginia, where I’ll be working with Ben and Miss Isabel on additional vocal tracks for my upcoming album. I needed some space and a little peace of mind… My HQ studio is a wonderful place to give life to any and all of my craziest creative endeavors, but it’s always a challenge for me to immerse myself in the type of writing process I yearn to lose sense of reality in and even more impossible to remain entirely consumed by the invisible I chase whenever I’m staying there for a few consecutive weeks at a time. I have to find balance in the totally unbalanced stream in which I lie, between chaos and serenity.
Beauty comes with pain, and pain comes with pressing my spirit to the brink of insanity, of total emotional collapse. To get in that state, I completely shut down — at least that’s what I’m trying to do. It’s sometimes difficult to understand for people around me, as such sufferings are seen as unnecessary for those who care about me… But it’s how I can touch the intangible elements I long for. Otherwise, it goes back to the notion of how good or bad a song, a poem, a movie, or a visual is, a subjective gradation that I’m completely alien to. Not only do I not care about that, but I despise it… I’m looking for something else. I appreciate Monet, but I’m a Francis Bacon type of guy.
That being said, I guess you wouldn’t be surprised to know that I already deleted entirely finished records in the past, stopped extensive pre-production sessions, or decided to re-record a significant portion of an album’s arrangements, all because it wasn’t “it” to me. It’s as simple as that… And sometimes, a project needs to be done or very close to completion for me to know if it’s “it” or not. It’s crazy, I know. It’s not the best way to make friends or to keep those who are still around, but that’s how much I value the authentic nature of a project. I’m well known for “hiding” some of my songs as well… It drives my bandmates mad. The kiss of death for a song is usually this: “This song will be a monster hit!” And while I know it’s true, this is not the reason why I’m writing. So whenever I feel like my art is primarily seen as a commercial entity, I usually move on to something else pretty quickly or turn the song into a 38-minute avant-garde version. And no, it doesn’t help keeping friends around either!
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not about some self-sabotage or career suicide, but personal integrity. A high school friend asked me recently if I was afraid of success, recognition, or fame. It’s a fair question… I tasted all there was to experience in that regard (to a certain extent) during the hey days of my band Your Favorite Enemies, and no matter how grateful I am (and will always be) about that fructifying season of my life, I’ve never been happier than where I presently am. I don’t fear success, I just don’t have the same definition of what it is. That’s why I have the utmost respect for Angine de Poitrine, way over some pre-fabricated hit artist. They never changed, remained the same, and are even more fiercely independent than I am, which is not a small accomplishment! Again, it’s about integrity… By design there’s an expiry date to most sudden phenomena. The countdown is already on for them, and they know it, so better play the game your way, with your own rules. You’ll never have any regrets if it’s truly about art… Otherwise, go and grasp as much as you can while you can. Better be you than any other cash sucker… I suppose!
In fact, I was somehow happy to know that Jackson Pollock, one of my favorite American painters, had his game-changing avant-garde piece, Number 7A, 1948, sold for a record-breaking price of 181.2 million dollars this last Monday, which made it the fourth most expensive work ever sold at auction, according to ARTnews. Of course, Jackson died almost 70 years ago, and it’s an ultra-rich of the world that managed to buy it… The point isn’t about art trafficking but about following your muse as an artist, regardless of what people may think, of what others may expect, or of what may satisfy them or not in the creations. When I hear individuals say that artists never truly reap the benefits of their work, I totally disagree, as a true artist redefines themselves. That’s where the revolution lies. If the modern world is filled with celebrities and “things” generated by computers, I believe that one’s life transformation is enough to add tiny fragments of light in the collective darkness we can otherwise only endure through our dopamine-brain-rot intoxication. As goes art, so goes the civilization. Everything is there.
Ok, I’m digressing again. So I’m going back home to re-immerse my heart and soul in the midst of my songs, which has been quite arduous and laborious to do as of late. I’ve been working on the visual art for my upcoming tour, singles, and record entity while doing several interviews for the release of From the City to the Ocean and defining the outlines of other significant projects that I can’t wait to announce. No matter how profoundly thankful I am for everything I have the privilege to be involved in, it wasn’t easy to maintain a certain sense of affective seclusion. I’m not what you can identify as good company when I’m that deeply engaged in writing and have to get out of my attempt to maintain a tightly hermetic bubble over and over. It clearly doesn’t help the album’s deleting potentiality, that’s for sure!
On the bright side, you will be happy — and maybe reassured — to know that I sent everything related to my upcoming album’s first single to every streaming platform earlier this week, so it’s too late for any “deleting catastrophe” at this point… And if everything goes according to plan, which is always a big “if” in my case, the recording should be completed by May 31st. Therefore, I’m truly impatient and intrigued to know what type of “mysteries” the upcoming 10 days will allow me to discover and be consumed by. Besides the foreseeable blessing there is for me to share the blooming elements that such a painful labor will deliver, it’s the whole evolution of a project’s gestational period that matters… Little do I know when it all takes place, but I can feel myself evolving in a significant fashion as well, reminding me that it’s the principal reason why every single one of my creative affair leads me to the brink of total emotional and physical collapse each time I dive ever deeper into the unknown, that I’m being deprived of control… Because when I do, I see myself morphing, transforming, transfiguring into someone new… “me.”
Pollock stated that “Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.” If it’s true, I dare add “But any honest architect of his own existence can transform his journey into a project that will allow his whole entity to eventually become free, first, from the fear of constantly leaning towards subversive evolution and, ultimately, from the so-called safety that the world’s status quo has been selling us aplenty since its foundation.”
And if I constantly fear and doubt, constantly resist transformation and oppose self-rebirth, I guess the ultimate benediction comes in the fact that true “sounds” don’t obey the dreadful laws of gravity… It’s the “call of the void” bearing a self-metamorphosing opportunity with it. I hope I’ll find that kind of sounds like I so often do when I tame the noises I’m usually immersed in on every occasion I have to come back to the mountains… It would mean that you’ll be able to hear and dwell into it as well. I’ll have to manage my “deleting” tendencies to do so…!
Life creates life!!!
Your friend and brother
-Alex
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