Track one.
In 2024, my partner and I moved together to our home in North Portland. Right outside the window of the room that serves as my part-time studio (which is also a part-time office and part-time gaming space) I have a beautiful view of the upper 100 feet of a hill in Forest Park, so named for its, well, forest. One of the great pleasures of the past year has been watching that hill change in response to our little micro-climate. From the bright summer days lighting the trees’ brilliant green leaves, to the cold fall evenings turning a small sample of those greens into brilliant yellows, then oranges.
My favorite part of this transformation so far, though, came with winter. Those orange-leaved trees would eventually fall bare, but for each deciduous tree, it seems there are at least twenty evergreens blanketing the hill. Each morning, whether I am taking a neighborhood walk, or if I’m driving myself to work, I see the hill doing its best to poke through the clouds and the fog, and I see the St. Johns bridge cut into the sky, towering over my neighborhood. It has quickly become my favorite landmark in Portland.
Each evening, on the clear nights, I see the hill and the bridge form an ominous silhouette. The lights atop the bridge’s spires casting an eerie red glow, and the trees on the hill look like fur covering a slumbering beast. As a self-proclaimed night-owl, I cherish seeing the stars show themselves above that dark shadow.
I struggle to describe the anxious feeling that these sights provoke in me. Danger lurks in shadows, of course. Yet the bridge stands defiant and the trees still grow, despite the chill, fog, ice, and rain cast on them.
I need to remember that.
I was initially motivated to write this post in response to Meta’s Terms of Service changing, allowing overt discrimination toward LGBTQ people (since I needed something to point people to as I leave the platforms); I need other venues to share my thoughts, and I believe that my own website is the best venue.
But more importantly, maybe, I’m motivated to write this post because I want to share what I do, and how this feeling is directly inspiring my music. I am inspired by dark synthesizers, by soundscapes, by dense percussion, by anything which can capture the bleak-but-powerful feeling of thriving in dark times.
Right now, it’s only my friends reading this, if anyone is - as a treat for staying, here’s a link to my latest track. It’s a song about industry, church, running from those who would seek to do you harm, trains (!) and resiliency, inspired by a painting I saw at the MoMA when I visited in October. I don’t know much about visual art, but the way this painting made me feel claustrophobic made me want to break out of it. I hope you enjoy it.
Lastly, while I have you here… I implore you to keep paying attention to the news and to what this government is doing to the most vulnerable people (in healthy, measured, and productive ways — doomscrolling isn’t always it).
I want to call some specific attention to attacks on the transgender community. From banning “X” gender identifiers on passports for non-binary people, to halting gender-affirming care for trans children and teens, to removing the “T” from “LGBT” on the federal government’s travel advisories website, to Meta’s aforementioned on top of the pre-existing horrific murder rates against transgender women especially… we need to pay attention and speak up, donate to trans fundraisers, something. All of the media and the “opinion” sections of major papers keep calling this something of a “boutique” issue to deprioritize, but these are lives at stake. Let’s act like it.