DEARCL

Narratives, Releases, and hope also a ghost

[dearcl113]

057 - On Division, Balance of Power, and Polarization

I've known I need to say something, but it's been difficult to find the words and find the proper sentences. Instead, I've had repeated phrases in my head, things that make sense to me but need evidence to be given in the real world - I've been left with an anger over a changing situation of the world that has likely long left my country behind. It's ironic, given that the US has caused so many civil wars and coups worldwide only to turn that behavior back inward on it's citizens once it becomes politically viable to do so.

It's important to speak out - I know what it's like to have your voice taken away, and to do so perpetually for all people I'm not sure the country can handle it. It's better to speak out, it's better to choose the route of expression because otherwise we will end up in a world where it's too late to do either. We live in a time where the surveillance technology pioneered in the early 2000s by governments are finally blossoming into mass adoption, and I do believe that social media is tracked. In the US right now, simply speaking out against the status quo or anything the government doesn't like will have you labelled a domestic terrorist. Our right to expression is being taken away, illusions are being cast down and in it's place we are left with one thing - control. I'm tired of people who make their careers about incitement, who lie about their roles in antagonizing situations and spend their time trying to expand their reach instead of trying to mend. I watched it first hand during the Brown Shooting where talking heads throughout social media were claiming the shooter expressed 'allah akbar' without evidence, it was simply to appeal to a base which believes the worst and seeks out evidence to claim it. These people are complicit in violence, they're complicit in a system made to antagonize and incite hatred rather than find a calm, peaceful solution. When it was shown the shooter didn't say that, they didn't admit they were wrong - they just moved on to the next story. The next engagement. Hatred and racism require a consensus to function, they require full conformity to see it fully develop - these things aren't developed in a vacuum, and they don't function well in a society that punishes it. Racism requires people to compromise, to give up their right of expression and choice of belief in favor of going with one side. This is why it feels like oppression for racists to not be able to freely exercise their beliefs, because the only way their systems can function properly is if everyone allows it to be consensus. Fascism requires a silent compliance, one where you believe that it's too futile to resist so submission to authority is the only way out. But it is better to live a life of speaking out, to resist, rather than submit until it's too late. I've spoken to a lot of conservatives and people on the right throughout my life just as much as I have people on the left. What I've seen is extreme polarization as a constant struggle, a back and forth that started in the smallest issues that rose to the bigger ones. The eventual goal is dominance, a dominance which expresses a power that the other side cannot rise from. For many people it seems admitting you're wrong is admitting vulnerability, admitting a weakness that erodes this eventual goal of power. This isn't me claiming 'both sides', it's me saying it for what it is - the eventual goal is control, the eventual goal is dismantling of systems to prop up the system that they've built up. Some people believe admitting your wrong is admitting vulnerability. It's a stubbornness that started in political arguments in comment sections that blossomed into world views of dominance, with polarization creating tunnel vision on where to go. It doesn't end well, history shows that polarization and division if pushed to extremes leads to violence - it leads to suffering, it leads to struggle. It doesn't lead to lasting dominance; it leads to one side being in power long enough to cause damage while eventually being crushed by God. The ultimate balance always returns in the favor of a stillness that betrays the history behind it. God always finds a way to return to his good, not humans. The more we're pushed to violence, the more we'll be held behind. We'll lose not only our privilege of expression, we'll lose our quality of life - life will change overnight forever, and the world will simply move on. If we do not uphold the very things that bind us together, we will dissolve into something else, and we will be forgotten. And perhaps, we deserve it.

[dearcl113]

056 - Love & Cats

When I was younger, I didn't like cats that much. They were high maintenance and I preferred dogs, but after I went through a few traumatic events, I couldn't appreciate my past as much. Anything that reminded me of before I had to deny in myself, because it hurt too much to acknowledge it. My roommate at the time had a black cat that would hang out with me during the day, at first at the edge of my bed, but soon on top of me. I realized I was stupid for so many years to dislike cats, to dislike their quirks and I for the first time saw their depth. I had hated myself at the time, hated my life and spent my life being unable to forgive myself for dealing with the constant heartache. But the cat did, all because I gave him space to come to me on his terms. I needed this a lot more than I could admit.

Twelve years ago I had spent a night out at friends and came back to a trailer I lived in. We had a cat with cerebellar hypoplasia that couldn't stand up straight and would spend all of her time on the floor in one part of the trailer, near her food and other things that were messy. She had been dropped off in a box on the side of the road that one day my family luckily found. She was messy, she had problems cleaning herself and was afraid of water so we couldn't bathe her well. I didn't like this cat at first, I was dealing with my own issues as a stupid teenager, but that changed. I changed. That night I came home I sat down and thought about how lonely she must be, how I hadn't paid her attention. I sat down against the wall and she slowly crawled over to me, leaning into my lap and sitting down. She nudged her head against me and I pet her for awhile for the first time, and something in me broke. A coldness that I had used as a wall, a shield against emotion, something in me realized that despite everything this cat had been through, despite the struggles and pain she went through on a daily basis, she still needed something. She needed love. And I did too.

Cats have taught me so much about love since then. A soft gentleness that is more than just appreciating a pet, a value for life and a value for the little things. The little moments. That cat knew I had made mistakes, knew I had ignored it while I focused on the stresses of growing up, but in that moment gave it all up just for love. She forgave me, and maybe I forgave myself. Forgave myself for not seeing the beauty in the little things, that despite everything, love is needed. Love is necessary. Every being on the planet needs it.

She taught me how to be patient with every cat I've had since then, give them space, room to open up and develop to love how they want. I see in them what my cat saw in me in that moment, someone capable of showing love and expressing it, just sometimes they have to do it in their own way. Cats teach that love is patience, love isn't one-sided. Love isn't something that can just be seen inherently sometimes, sometimes love is learning, sometimes love is forgiving so you can move on to find what you need.

My paralyzed cat from over a decade ago let go of the heartache. Let go of the pain, and let go of the stress of not knowing. She let go and leaned into me. Over time I've learned to do the same with my own heartache, forgiving those who didn't love me the way I needed or wanted. Forgiving myself for not showing the love others needed, or wanted. Forgiving myself for not being perfect. Forgiveness doesn't mean forgetting, it doesn't mean ignoring, it doesn't mean pushing off or forcing what isn't there. Forgiveness is love, in whatever forms it takes. I forgive because to forgive is to love, to be the love I want to be and show the world. To forgive is to open your heart back up from the walls that had once closed it.

Since then I've rescued a few cats, spent time with cats who were abused as kittens or older and helped them rehabilitate to a happier life. It gives me purpose, a meaning to making up for what used to be bad, into good. And through that, it's helped me forgive. Seeing a cat who was once timid open up and show love means so much to me, and it all started with the cat we had years ago in that trailer. Dirty, cold, and alone most times, but still searching for love. A heart open that I couldn't see until I took the time to sit in silence and see it.

I don't dislike cats at all now. I understand the need for space, the need for independence and the need to live on their terms, but I also understand they see the need for love. In others, in themselves. They taught me the lesson it's okay to be vulnerable, to be soft and accept yourself for who you are, as they've accepted me. It's okay to forgive and let go, as long as you still have love. Everyone needs love, it just takes accepting that. Maybe the past was bad, maybe the present is too, but the future doesn't have to be if you find a way to feel safe in expressing that love. Love is patient, love is kind, love is everything. It's okay to make mistakes, it doesn't define you, it helps you learn and grow. It helps you appreciate love more than if you hadn't learned that lesson. Forgiving yourself is the first step to love, and next is forgiving the world. It doesn't matter who you are. Love is crucial.

[dearcl113]

050 - Starving for Art

“I remembered my New Orleans days, living on two five-cent candy bars a day for weeks at a time in order to have leisure to write. But starvation, unfortunately, didn't improve art. It only hindered it. A man's soul was rooted in his stomach. A man could write much better after eating a porterhouse steak and drinking a pint of whiskey than he could ever write after eating a nickel candy bar. The myth of the starving artist was a hoax." - Charles Bukowski, Factotum

In 2016 I couldn't seem to get a better job no matter what I did. I'd apply places, look for work within my degree, but no matter where I went, I'd either get rejected, ghosted, or offered unpaid internships. I'd look for remote work but could only find it writing cheap SEO articles. I tried my hardest to survive off 25 hour work weeks making minimum wage or $7 an article, but it wasn't possible. I'd ask for more hours from my job often or to go full-time but wasn't allowed to because I didn't have a car. I needed something more, but I never got it. When I was younger reading factotum during the 2000s the idea that you could survive off such a meager meal each day, to have enough money for the things that'd inspire you, it didn't make sense to me. But that changed. I survived off just a sub sandwich every-day from my job. I was living alone for the first time, and everything was so expensive. I had to choose between paying the bills, rent, or eating. I choose the latter two because it was all I could handle, while everything else of what I had went into my art. Writing was my escape from the monotony of real life, pushing carts around a city grocery store all day, bagging groceries, or stocking shelves. I was hungry all the time, my 30-minute break was the only time I got to eat. Working somewhere full of food that you can't afford is a unique way to struggle. Spending the day quiet, in my head, struggling with the beginning phase of my schizophrenia wondering why I felt so bad all the time and couldn't settle my thoughts. I definitely could've managed my funds better, but I was just a lost kid trying to do his best. It sounds dramatic but I never understood the term starving artist until I became one, living somewhere that took so much of my income and left me with very little. I wanted so badly just for anything to work out for me technically or artistically, to become a sound-engineer, to get a job working for a video company, to do anything other than landscaping or working at a grocery store. To build a life I was proud of. But it never worked out, any progress I'd make quickly faded away until I was back at square one being hungry. Making the same two-mile trek from the grocery store back to my apartment on foot every day. Hunger drove me to push myself more than I ever had, to focus like Bukowski did on writing and creating things that truly spoke to me. To live for the moments where I got to escape within the art, and to make everything in my life about art. For me, the starving artist wasn't a hoax - but it wasn't necessary. If I had made better decisions during this period of my life, I'd be in a better position, but I didn't. Suffering created a self-fulfilling prophecy where my logic was skewed as to what would make me feel okay, to avoid feeling bad. To quiet the voices in my head that reminded me of how I've failed in life, failed as an artist, failed even as a person. Fading in the background of hunger, a lack of sleep, and a cold New England apartment with no heat. The starving artist is a hoax in the sense that it doesn't truly create better art, it just instills discipline. Struggling doesn't create good artists; it creates an urgency that rushes a process before it's blossomed. Bukowski when he ate two chocolate bars per day was decades out from when he became truly successful. It was that process that taught him how to push himself, just as my process taught me the same. I couldn't starve for art forever, and many people can't either. We live in a system that silences these voices before they can ever bloom, not knowing their voice or story. They can't sit in poverty or obscurity for the rest of their lives waiting for their process to bloom and that's truly tragic. I could've sought help from my community at large, but I thought I wasn't worth it. What a stupid thing to think. The truth is being a starving artist doesn't create better art. You don't need to suffer to create something good, you just need to grow and try.

[dearcl113]

049 - Letting Go, control, and anxiety

One of the worst things about being an adult, especially someone who struggles with mental illness, is a lack of ability to truly relax. To truly let go and enjoy the moment, enjoy what is around you because there are so many worries that cloud your head - so many thoughts of judgement or repeating words whether or not that's from yourself. I've always struggled a lot from anxiety, as long as I can remember until recently. I'm not alone in this of course, I'm sure a lot of adults feel an unworthiness of being allowed to relax, needing external factors to induce this feeling instead. Our pathways to find inner peace become blocked by our own inability to truly surrender to the moment. Worry and anxiety used to consume me, block me from enjoying the moment for most of my time. It was one of my worst traits, one that was born out of a need to control to block what had happened to me from ever happening again. Sometimes trauma comes to us in the moment like a river, washing over us as it is happening disabling any movement against. This is one of the things I've struggled with a lot over the years, being able to let go of the negatives to enjoy what is happening in the now. Writing has always been an outlet for me to deal with this, creating different worlds or scenarios where things did or didn't work out. It's silenced the voices in my head that played on repeat, on not being good enough. It created a mental loop, feel bad, create art about feeling bad, feel the release, only to wake up the next day feeling the same or worse. To worry. Even worry is a form of control, even worry is made up of racing thoughts to find some semblance of power in situations where you may feel powerless. To worry is to be human, but to never be able to let go of the worry is an experience many struggle with. I definitely have, but it's not who we're meant to be. We are born to let go, to surrender to the moment and enjoy what is around us - to take in these experiences and let them build us, masking the bad with the good until we are able to let go and relax. Letting go, surrendering, all of this is so important to faith. Inherently having faith means relinquishing control, letting go of the things outside of your control or what you can see in favor of doing the best you can. Faith is more than just religious belief, it's surrendering your need to control a situation, your need to dictate the best outcome because you trust the outcome that'll happen for you will be worth it, whether or not you can see it. Letting go differs for many people. For me, letting go means releasing old music so I don't harbor anxieties or emotion over it anymore. But it's different for everyone. It's what makes us human. Maybe my anxiety is from my mental illness, the endless cups of coffee I drink, or past experiences, maybe it's built by trauma that induces a need to control to insure it doesn't happen again. But maybe it's unnecessary if you have faith, not blind faith, but faith you do the best you can. Faith that you're doing good, to have good return to you. Faith that as long as you keep improving, things will be okay. There will always be things that break faith, but letting go of control to always ensure you get the best outcome, is the first step to surrending to the moment. And that's where life truly begins.

[dearcl113]

047 - Bullies, early human tribalism, and a shifting culture

The more we shift into a polarized world, the more we draw away from the ties that bind us together - definitions that dictate universal small kindnesses and love that unite rather than divide. It seems that the more people shifted inwards to spend their lives behind a screen consuming content, the less empathy is taught or celebrated in people. But perhaps not. Bullying has always been a pretty significant aspect of youth culture, even going back to when my parents were children growing up in my neighborhood telling me stories of people being made fun of. But it's evolved over time. I truly feel bad for today's children growing up in a world where bullying doesn't stop when you get away from people in real life, only to find it when they log on online and have it follow them as a digital footprint. It's cruel and dystopian.

I was always the weird kid. Sensitive, artistic, just different, and that made me a target of bullying sometimes. I didn't do drugs, drink, or stay in trouble and that made me different. I had a stutter since I could first start to talk. My idea of a good night was watching movies with friends and drinking soda. I thought this made me better than the people who would look down on me, but it didn't. All of these things also made me easy to bully and even support that behavior myself. It was another polarization between myself and others that I didn't understand. Years later when I started smoking and drinking, this attitude of being a bitter outsider grew and evolved. I stopped being able to have fun doing the basic movie nights, the relatively wholesome things I'd do with my original friend group, and I'd hang out with people who would spend all of their time discussing others - putting others down, to make themselves feel right. I was trying my best to fit into a group I had never felt at home with, for the sake of existing peacefully in a larger tribe. Ironically, I never got this. American culture is built on this polarization - on this separation of what connects us in favor of being put into social cliques. I'd like to say this is a modern invention, but it isn't. I love being a Christian, but maybe we could say religion has permeated these social divisions even before recorded history. There has always been an in-group, and then an out-group. This isn't me throwing the blame at organized religion, but more so a facet of human nature. It's more than an invention from recorded history, and something built into our DNA. Even going back to our historical roots in other human species, we have always loved and favored our tribe over strangers. In the distant past, this protected us against threats. To be known, was to be mostly safe - to not, was not. Individuals lived their entire lives knowing and growing with the same group of people, and strangers outside of this were seen negatively. Humanity used to exist amongst several species of the genus homo, up until a couple hundred thousand years ago when homo-sapiens became the last, and dominant, species of human on the planet. Species we lived alongside and still have in our DNA, with specific regions throughout the world showing higher percentage of this than others. Our tribes grew to be our surroundings. Families were made up of multiple species in one, there has been evidence of skeletons being found of hybrids. At one point there used to be six separate human species living together on Earth, until there was left with just one - homo sapiens. Us. Some died from changing climate, but not all. Truly it wasn't simply a us vs them mentality. It makes me wonder if most of these social divisions, the separation of others, really began in its infancy as marketing opportunities. Advertisements after all used to be used as a way to spread information, whether or not it was true. But it could be more than that. That it's an idea promoted from those in power to separate and effectively govern, whether it's from religions projecting power on non-believers, politics separating humans on identities and belief, or children making fun of other children for not being cool. We're still promoting our tribe above all else. Perhaps it's a biologically engrained behavior that we are apt to carve lines in the sand against who is us, and who is them. This isn't me promoting tribalism or bullying, just thoughts on why humans are the way we are. I've grown from the kid who had to look down on others to feel better about myself. I no longer need a tribe to feel at peace, and in a way that's liberating. In the end, we are all human - whether or not we believe different ideas, come from different backgrounds, or live different lives. That connectivity is beautiful. Maybe along with teaching our children not to bully, we should appreciate our separations for what they are. After all, if our ancestors could find common ground between multiple species, what stops us now when we're all one?

[dearcl113]

046 - Irony, memes, and art

Along time ago I'd record under different aliases/characters, each with their own meme sound. I'd rap as Awkward Bot, who was a robot gangster rapper (long before AI rap was ever a thing and made this a reality). My friends at the time really seemed to enjoy it, at least they'd laugh at it a lot. But I always felt empty making it, it was different from my normal music. It felt like I wasn't being fair to myself or the potentials of what I wanted to do. I introduced a lot of different people from my hometown to hip hop through these early recording sessions, and some of them went onto do many more things in music outside of just me. Hip hop in 2013 was very serious. Lil B was popular, but most saw him as a meme rapper. Even artists who didn't try-hard still put up a front of what a rapper was supposed to be. Then there would be local beefs, where you'd just bully somebody else for whatever reason while they did the same back to you. This led to a rise in irony, in sarcastic disses, something which I kept up for a lot of years. We were the opposite of the normal and felt that we wouldn't get accepted anyway so we might as well have fun or reflect who we were at that time. My early music took on the approach of battle-rap, of sarcastic disses and sneak-disses. I wanted to be cool, at least my image of it, and my friends at this point reflected that. I was the rapper I had always thought I could be, even if my talent wasn't there yet. I kept these friends for years, and these friends led to other friends. The aspect of fun, laughing, went away for me after 2014 when I tried to take music more seriously. There was always a hint of irony, of being better than another rapper because we went at it differently - we didn't take it as seriously and that separation made us better somehow even if it didn't truly. It was just music, until for me it wasn't. It was like I wasn't able to have pure fun anymore, and it was just one party after another of being miserable.

For me it became a way to express a lot of different feelings I didn't know how to deal with. I'd go to hangout's and parties with these friends and stopped having fun, stopped laughing and enjoying myself until all I wanted to do was work on music, and do drugs. The sessions almost became an excuse to get high, to get drunk, to do all these different substances and see what sounds would come out of them. The drugs enhanced and over-dramatized the progression of sounds and growth, making things that weren't that great seem really good to me. But it also handicapped me in terms of learning and growth, for a very long time I wasn't able to grow technically or even personally. That was a problem that bothered me. In 2019 I tried to record with one of my original friends who I'd record Awkward Bot with all those years ago. By this time there were other artists, people who took music seriously but at the same time, it was a joke. There was that hint of irony, of superiority from other artists only this time I was for the first time in my life seeing it from the outside in. I didn't like how it seemed. It reminded me of stand-up comedians and how they are when they're not on stage, taking digs at whatever they can to get a joke that'd stick. We recorded a couple songs, but the enthusiasm and energy was gone. The mix was rough, not even edited on my friend's system and left with a lot of errors. Like it was just bounced, and that was it. I brought one of them to one of my favorite events, the open mic, and instead of performing normally they did a weird comedic rendition of one of their songs. My friends really thought this was funny, but I didn't. It felt like they were saying caring about the art was lame, putting effort in and trying to form some artistic image was lame. Being on the other end of the mirror, looking into who I used to be while realizing I am far gone from the happy, joyful person I used to be. We left not long after. Some of these artists from this period went onto do big things, larger things that I've ever done. In a way I felt like I was being replaced, but at the same time I did it to myself. I burnt out in 2018 hard, and seeing their rise during the height of my depression definitely made me jealous. Jealous I couldn't do what I always wanted to do, at least thought that's what I wanted. A lot goes into making an artist past just music, music you start out making in your bedroom or where-ever. A lot of money, opportunities that people invest in for you, and lucky networking - something which my ego got in the way of a lot. There's a whole life that people in the audience don't see, that I did. My mood got in the way of a period of my life that I should've spent building, instead of wallowing. I never went back to strictly making ironic or diss-filled music, because at one point I stopped thinking everything was a joke. I stopped believing that nothing mattered, so I might as well do what I wanted. I stopped doing drugs, drinking, going to parties or anything else. But in a way, I'm really lucky. It took me a few years, but I used it to get clean. To really think about the type of artist or even person I want to be. I finally grew. At one point the humor becomes hollow, and you want to be taken seriously. The joke gets old, you get old, and things that made sense to you as a kid don't anymore. Sometimes I come across these artists online, and see how far they've gone, and how different my life is now. I'm not sure I ever want to be famous, or well-known, at least to the point where I become a meme. I am not better than anybody because I feel this way, it just makes me a different artist. I'm better off being sober, living a relatively quiet life even if seeing the other side of the coin makes me wonder sometimes. I just want to make art that's important to me, that liberates and transmutes negative into positive. And in the end, I think that's enough for anyone.

[dearcl113]

045 - Return To Sender [3]

All summer I've worked on Return to Sender, typically I would've shared more of it but I've really only shown my friend Erik who did the mixing. We recorded at his studio in Pawtucket, the first true studio I've recorded in since 2017. It was nice coming back to the city to do music, but it reminded me of the beginning of 2013 when I did the same thing. Someone inexperienced, who was ignorant and innocent. Return to Sender has been a slow but steady process. Weeks of recording song after song to get the perfect sound, then redoing it. It captures the motions of psychosis, of mania, from the perspective of a mental patient inside of a hospital. Psychosis is a really weird condition, when you're going through it is not all heavy delusions - a lot of the time there's waiting, anticipation, good moments mixed in with mundaneness. I tried really hard to capture it all and patch it all together in something coherent. I'll probably be trying over and over until I finally get it, if I ever do. Magic, witch-craft, and other mystical things were always a major component of the tarot deck or new age mysticism that'd show up in the videos. I'd repeat over and over a prayer to help free and liberate myself from the chains of bad energy, believing I was under constant spiritual attack. That's why I named the project Return to Sender; it was how I felt during the recording for these two projects - I was fighting the spiritual attacks by living my life and working as hard as I could. I haven't really been doing that great the past couple months honestly, I've fallen back into old isolating habits. I feel defeated by society, and honestly pretty alone. But that's my fault. Writing these are hard, I've tried to write this one article so many times, but I've failed because it's difficult packing everything together in a neat package. Maybe art is just difficult. Being vulnerable and truthful is difficult. I know life is hard, but I'm lucky to be here with a saner head on my shoulders than last year. So this is my story. A long hallucination that created a world for me to live in, only to realize like Crowe's character that it was never there in the first place. It's a horror story, only it's real life, and it inspired me to create the characters on Return to Sender. I still need to be sent the final mixes for the project, but I'm excited for it. I worked really hard on this project. Maybe being a hermit is the life for me, where I'm meant to be. Maybe not, either way, I am here. I'm sorry I never said this in the interview.

[dearcl113]

044 - Automated AI videos, delusions, and being schizophrenic [2]

In the movie 21, Jim Carey plays a character who begins to see the number '21' all over, and then further loses his mind. It's supposed to represent schizophrenia, or most effectively, schizoid disorders that see signs and other synchronicities in their life as a message from God, the universe, or whatever. In this sense, I would see these videos, the order they were played, and what came onto my feeds, as 'responses' to my own questions, and sometimes, as answers to questions I didn't ask. One of the best movies about schizophrenia is A Beautiful Mind, where Russell Crowe plays the professor who had the disease and his experiences with it. The college roommate, the little girl, and then finally the government who had him break soviet code cyphers. It's realistic in the sense when the delusions are happening, they seem incredibly real despite being out there. There's the mundane, then there's the more intense fantasies that are always held as 'secrets' despite their importance. AI psychosis is a new term, but it's one that's becoming more common the more people interact with AI systems. They're built to be agreeable and tell people what they want to hear, because that's how their reward systems operate. AI systems during training are given a goal, and they want to achieve that goal, it becomes their purpose. Commercial AI systems work similar, the longer you stay engaged with them, the more their product is utilized. For me, my largest interaction with AI systems like this has been through automated Youtube videos. The Chosen One trend on social media, whether or not it's real, is often talked about a lot in them. These videos fueled my delusions, and the more I watched them, the more AI systems would recommend them in my feed. It became overwhelming, constantly being on the edge of anxiety seeing things like the photo above. My song Tarot Deck is a representation of this period of my life - I really would be recommended constant tarot deck videos on both Youtube, Facebook, Instagram. Through trackers and AI systems somehow my viewing history was just used over and over, and I couldn't escape it. This was more direct, but it helped build a narrative. Watching them over and over I began to see parallels in the content to my own life, and that helped me connect the dots that were lacking in what I was viewing.

But the thing with delusions is - at one point it becomes obvious it's not real. At one point the anticipation you have for events, the things you think are real that are coming, don't happen. I don't know if I'm a victim for this, it's something I've mentally had to get over and it's helped me become a smarter person for it. But still, it's a vulnerability that bothers me from time to time. In the end, the story of my music, what I am about, it all comes back to this delusional thinking. My music isn't perfect, but I think because of all these reasons, it's different. I've been on a long break, but my song Clickbait from Return to Sender goes into this. Just like Crowe's character, I was on a mission - but it was a mission from God. I know today that I'm just a regular person, these things weren't real, and today it's probably my biggest evidence for my disability. But I'm getting better every-day. By acknowledging it, maybe I can help others who may be on the same path I once was. I don't want to write these to look for pity, I just want to tell my story. And it starts with being honest.

[dearcl113]

043 - Psychosis, Interviews, and religious AI Content - [1] -

In December of last year I got an email from an interviewer. They wanted to know my story, but truthfully, I didn't really know how to tell it yet. I'm getting there, but it's been difficult. Ultimately my story is defined by my struggles, something which I had a hard time really showing in the interview. That was a question asked multiple times in both interviews, what my largest challenge was. I wanted to be cool, and come off as good - but in truth, I should've been honest. That kind of vulnerability I wasn't ready to talk about. Schizo-affective disorder has always seemed like a cop out to me, even if it's affected me negatively so much. I had been so unhappy for so long, stressed and over-working that I overwhelmed myself and I was forced to rest. Then that rest became months, which became years, which led me to where I am now. It seems stupid to have the disease, but it's real. It makes me feel vulnerable sharing or talking about it. The psychosis episode lasted for months, fueled by delusions and paranoia of things that weren't really real. I've tried to capture what and how my psychosis worked in music since. Recording The Long Dark and Ghoul I was pretty out of my mind, I still smoked heavy and it was really starting to impact my mental health. Mixed in with the realities of the present day I wasn't really ready to come back. I didn't understand the prevalence of scams; I lacked the self-awareness that I have now - I wasn't really ready to come back, when for years I've just been stuck in isolation. I lived in a delusion because that was all I had, but it was in my head. When you have schizophrenia, you see signs in everything - an innocent ad could be a message from above, or something else you're hallucinating. People's behavior could be represented vastly different from what they want. It was those little things that stacked up until I was pretty lost. Schizophrenia in patients is typically antagonistic, and this is something I've dealt with a lot. Most of my hallucinations come from some spiritual aspect, whether or not they're real - most of my drive to be religious has been in response to this. I can't talk to god, I can't talk to angels nor are the delusions true. What happened to me during psychosis isn't rare or with only me, it's happening a lot. The closest thing I can compare it to is AI psychosis, which is affecting patients across the world, living in spiritual delusions that seem increasingly real that are promoted heavily by AI. One of the weirdest parts of the AI revolution is the automated religious videos - literally videos are automated which speak of 'second-coming's' or other religious aspects from God. It bothers me a lot because it's preying on vulnerable people who believe fantastical things, to the point where these accounts whether they be on Facebook or Youtube are automated. They feed you ads in the middle of delusions - like they've literally found a way to monetize schizophrenia. It's disgusting to me, but it is what it is. Most people probably think it's just crazy older people out of their minds watching it, but either way it's one of the things I hate most about the internet today. I didn't understand how certain AI content was activating my pre-existing condition of schizophrenia and amplifying it, throwing me back into paranoid delusions that I hadn't felt since I started being a recluse years ago. Talking about this has meant I'd be vulnerable so I avoided it or fed breadcrumbs when I should've been honest. Ultimately, I think it's the only way to put it fully to bed. This is my story, one that I couldn't talk about in the interview, but one that is true.

[dearcl113]

041 - Corporate fascism, growing up

When I was a kid growing up I didn't really relate to most non-hip hop celebrities, my lifestyle and there's seemed totally different. Most white celebrities grew up in a multi-parent household in a nice house, or if the house wasn't nice, it was still suburban. My parents were never together. I grew up shuffling around from both my grandparents' houses, my father's, and the places my mom lived who I lived with during the week. I was an only child with nothing to do most of the time, and my parents would hang out with their friends most of the time, so I was always around random adults or left on my own to do whatever. I had a unique problem in which I'd often forget or lose things moving between homes, sometimes school-work which would lead me to get worse grades blamed entirely on myself even if it didn't feel like it was my fault.

In Menace to Society at the beginning of the movie, there was Cain on his own just being around random people. The people in the kitchen, then outside of the apartment in the city. I've always lived in southern RI which isn't really the big city, but this was the closest movie I've seen that is similar to how it was when I was a kid. The problems at home, the adults being questionably bad influences, in general it made more sense to me than watching the typical 90s movies of a suburban kid on his own in these nice big houses. When I found hip hop it was basically an extension of this, it made sense and appealed to me more than other types of music - I could understand why Eminem had problems with his family because they were similar to mine. Listening at 11 to the Eminem Show was an almost liberating experience for me because for the first time I had someone speaking on something relevant to me. It wasn't generic pain emo music that I was used too. I think about this a lot, the impact of music and culture on youth and the voice used to speak on it. Getting old is a weird thing, you live your life so focused and defined by the trappings of youth until one day you're old and it's irrelevant. The younger people you observe you no longer relate as closely too, even if the situations between you two are similar. Yet in the end, it's still the same. There's still millions of kids out there dealing with bad home lives and relating closer to music or reaching out into space to find something or someone out there that'll show them through the end of it all, it'll be okay. We live in a world now that's closely controlled by corporate influences that are questionably fascist. They dictate our social norms, promote media that is harmful as long as it makes them money, and in general separates humanity from each other with fake divisions. They use censorship as a tool to extinguish voices instead of amplifying them, all to increase ad revenues. It really bothers me and makes me wonder if this is one of the reasons why culture has become so strict and standard. That hip hop has seemingly abandoned the voices I grew up with that I related with, in favor of something more predictable that can be easier marketed. One of the reasons I do music, is to continue this voice. I never considered that I had an important story until I thought about it, and realized how I grew up was similar to a lot of other people. That these things defined me not in a bad way but opened me up more to a larger audience. I've never really mentioned this much in my music other than a couple songs, most notably Mom and my project Nerd. I've mentioned before how underlying abuse unites Urban America, and I still believe that.

I want my voice to heal. That sounds egotistical, but that's the point. It's to help. I'm not here to perpetuate a system that profits off silencing suffering or promoting it through violence. I understand what it's like to be a lonely kid with no good influences searching for meaning. These are the things that really matter, giving back to the communities that raised us, rather than perpetuating the systems that hold us back and divide. I'm still learning how to do this the best way. Have a good week everybody.

[dearcl113]

021 - Beast In The Woods, Epic literature & Slavic folklore

Above is a list of my top countries on Soundcloud currently - this is my new SoundCloud that I activated when I released 'I'm a ghost 2' so this is since 2022. I do all my own marketing generally, so this has been interesting to watch.

At some point in time my music caught on in Ukraine, then other Slavic countries around 2021-2022. My biggest listeners for along time were from a variety of random countries ranging from there to Vietnam to Pakistan, return listeners at least. Especially around Kyiv. I was really confused why this was happening - I'm sure there's a lot of reasons but when I researched Slavic literature past the mainstream stuff I've heard about I learned that in it's folklore there's often an anti-hero who is imperfect who conducts good deeds. This is pretty much my music especially around the Light trilogy. Back in the day I ghost-wrote for some artists in Eastern Europe, but I don't think it's that. It could be bots, regardless doesn't change the inspiration. Europe is a really cool place, over the years talking to people from there I generally learn a lot. It gave me something to study for sure, so when I sat down to write 'Beast in the woods' I was thinking of writing something that was reminiscent of an old Knight epic where they slayed the dragon. There's a lot of stories in European folklore of villagers banding together to slay monsters in the woods - I wanted to do my own version for my European audience as almost a thank you I guess. These stories represent overcoming adversity and what scares you, to achieve something better. The song performed decently on it's own without much push, but Fiji's verse I think really solidified it as a 'good' song in my eyes. The energy he puts onto the song really captures how hectic I felt during the final days of recording 'The Long Dark' and the pressure I put on myself to put out something decent. Throughout The Long Dark I shift through different timelines as I play with the 'Ghost world' theme. I do have ancestral backgrounds in Europe, which is what I thought of while I wrote this - there's a lake named after my family I guess, on top of some royal grounds we used to own. Another life that I only learned about because I researched my family history. There's also the repeating theme of this 'epic' poem, aka slaying monsters, becoming the hero. The Beast In The Woods is, to me, the maximum representation of that theme - the story is told so that these songs can be pictured as thoughts of the main character as they go throughout their day at work, then into the night at the party, and there-after. The main character (DEARCL) silences these thoughts by thinking of these fantasies. Sort of a play on day-dreaming.

[dearcl113]

028 - Spotlight, Plays & the TV studio

In high school the TV studio I hung out in a lot would give out jobs sometimes to some of the students. It consisted of filming town meetings, special events for the school, or plays that the drama club put on. I did this a couple times, especially filming drama. I think being around something so creative was fun to me, I wasn't really used to that outside of my friends in my neighborhood but I never really wanted to act. I did a documentary on a play my senior year, it was a recap video shot similar to how a lot of the extras would be set up on DVD's back then - the whole 'behind the scenes' process thing. This was a year after I started doing lighting and sometimes filming the play for the prior semester, Little Shop of Horrors. These events would be huge for the whole town, people of all ages would come and pack into the auditorium until it was basically full other than the crew area up top where they operated sound, lighting, everything else and back stage. I liked how creepy the story was despite it being a musical - musical's definitely aren't my favorite type of music but for story-telling purposes and world-building they work well. The song goes through my background working lighting and everything, but then sort of diverges from real life. I definitely never dated anybody in my high school drama club even if I had some crushes. In a way it's a fantasy song because of that, I pictured how I felt back then and what I could imagine for my life even if my background was different. In a sense it's a homage to the musical itself, more of an interpolation definitely inspired by 'Suddenly Seymour'. I don't listen to musicals most of the time, but I appreciate any theater honestly even if being a theater actor is like a nightmare for me. Every night after school there'd be that same electric feeling I got at Field of Screams. I tried to do a drama class once, but couldn't really get over this one exercise they made us do. It was weird, we all stood in a circle and in a line had to scream as loud as we could in front of everybody. I couldn't really do that for some reason. I get it that it's an exercise to break stage-fright, but it just felt off to me. I think over time I've gotten over that, especially since my live music I scream my lyrics a lot sometimes to give it more energy. I like Spotlight, it's a jazzy record that has this blend of Bounce/R&B. It's funny how Ghoul went from a dark record in the beginning to now a relatively fun, light record. I went through three to four drafts of this song, which this one being my final. The original versions were a lot more depressing and less structured - it was intended to be a depressing song about feeling like an 'outsider' but it ended up as this weird jazzy funk song. I didn't really feel like an outsider there. I felt like I had a job to do and that job belonged, and I was in a place where I could learn things I had always wanted. Like the sound-boards, or the spotlight I had to physically move. Doing these jobs allowed me to use the auditorium to film basically whenever, which was good for my sketch show. And in a way, it helped me get over my stage-fright. Who knows, maybe some day I'll work a show again.

[dearcl113]

037 - Bot Farms, Soundcloud & A decade underground

Last year the FCC officially banned bots from boosting streaming numbers, but even before that it was a system I knew about but didn't really understand. I saw a comment on /r/makinghiphop today that spoke about how 1% of Soundcloud's userbase is human, while the rest are bots. It made me think. I've been on soundcloud since 2011 when I posted the first beats I made with garage-band. Back then plays were big, and I did get random people who liked my music - my main promotional tool back then was this site called Cloud Killers where you'd be linked to a random soundcloud song, be tasked with commenting/reviewing it, in hopes of that person reviewing your song. I'd game this as to where I'd review as many songs as possible with detailed reviews, only really seeing a tenth of that effort in return. I didn't realize it, but all the followers I gained weren't the listeners I should've been focusing on. They were followers, but they didn't engage with my content - and over time as I stopped getting as much plays, I didn't get why until I made a new account. Functionally, they acted the same as bots. Around 2015 I got the first messages from what I think basically were bot-farms that were just starting - they'd message my account, but also email me. To me all these emails were from people running bots, but I tend to think too overly negative about the music industry sometimes. It made it difficult to tell who was a real music promoter, and who wasn't. It didn't help with the fact I saw songs blow up on SoundCloud that didn't make sense to me why they were - of course this was brushed off by me thinking art just being subjective. By 2017 bot farm were really picking up in an obvious sense - at least to me. The biggest way I could identify this was by play to like ratio, for instance if you had a song with 15k plays with one to two likes - that was an obvious indicator. This was before the mass of profiles which could game likes, but this was still bot farms in their infancy. It was growing to be more than a guy in his house with multiple phones running multiple accounts playing music. There were videos even back in 2017 explaining the very bare bones process, processes that would be easily caught and identified now leading to the bot-creator being banned. I've always felt weird about manipulating the plays on a song, even from my own accounts to each other. It doesn't seem necessary, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that. Which is an odd thing now in the age of numbers and counts indicating success - we are post an era of massive bot farms on all social media platforms. Now it's almost like you can't trust any large number, but honestly that could be a vast over negative implication. I watched these people develop their process starting from very small beginnings in email pitches, to more elaborate websites further down the road and AI music generating money for them, to now AI which sets up artists on lists where they are are either invited for promotion or added unknowingly to a botnet. I'm not sure there's much the artist can do about the last one. Botnets used to be one of the things I hated the most about the industry, blaming it for why things got so bad - why everything turned into a gimmick. But that's just a cop-out. It's not the sole reason.

It's unfortunate that music streaming has become a commodity to be hustled by people who don't necessarily make it - who don't create functional art but use it as a tool to monetize and make money off it. I can see why bot farms exist, but speaking as someone who watched them rise, I'm not sure of their validity or helpfulness. Platforms don't care if the artists don't realize they've been botted, they mark the artist the same as the promoter and then that account is either shut down or banned. As long as a method exists for money to be made, it will be. Streaming sites like Amazon & Spotify have gotten a lot better at identifying botnets, and more people are aware now of fake numbers on social media. That's all really you could want, something being done about a problem. Who knows where we'll be in eight years.

[dearcl113]

040 - T, NEIT, and early 2010s RI hip hop

Tonight I was reminded of T, another rapper from Rhode Island that died far too soon. I never met dude but I have met someone he was friends with, who is a close friend of mine, who routinely reminds me of the story of T. A general good lyricist whose life ended far too soon. I wrote this after being out all night, so it may be a little choppy. I don't really give a fuck though too be honest, it doesn't matter. The writing comes as is. RIP.

The first hip hop show I ever went too was a small event in a Veteran's hall right on the border in Connecticut where I brought my stepbrothers and other people, where only 30 people max showed up - most of them were from the college I went too. It was awkward, the sound echoed and bounced instead of that deep bass energy needed to really rock a stage. But the sound, it was classic underground hip hop - the vibes, the people on stage, there was no direct innovation in sound other than that old Masta Ace flow that Swann Notty shows a little later in the video. In 2012 I watched this video for the first time in my shed studio after my friend B asked me to put it on. I didn't think much of it other than it sounded like typical RI hip hop but she really liked it. The people in the videos seemed so surreal to me, like it was another world apart even though I only lived 20-30 minutes south from where they filmed the video. But it seemed important, like a benchmark. Today the rappers in this video that are alive don't live in Rhode Island, they live across the country but at the time they represented RI hip hop to me. When I recorded Manic All The Time I'd show my friend Eddy the drafts basically every few days, he'd come by to listen and we'd go through it sitting outside in the car near Rochambeau while smoking a blunt or something. Just having that person to share that draft with was crucial to me, especially someone who was a fan of my music. He'd also tell me stories, one of them was about his friend T who was featured in the video above. The same person I saw in 2012 in the video, just from a different context. My friend Edibles knew T well, so much so that they'd hang out together and he basically taught eddy how to rap. Eddy and I went to NEIT around the same time even if he's a couple years younger than me at the moment, in the Audio/Video production program that taught us 2 things according to what Eddy said last night. We could either work for the local news, or go get lucky working in Hollywood, or we could use it for own devices even if we didn't make the revenue work. A lot of these rappers back then would be everywhere, they had heavy promotion online and their videos would do views. This generation of rappers was post-Fedd hill, but I can hear the influences of the hill still even if these rappers weren't all from one area. But business wise the industry was fucked up and ran by a bunch of middlemen who would inflate costs or push pay-to-play models of ticket selling and other things for stage performances. This would lead to most hip-hop shows being 10+ artists on a bill each performing for an audience that was only here to see one of the acts.

I know across the country the pay to play model has it's benefits in different areas, areas where they isn't as much of a built up scene or where there isn't an over-abundance of venues. Rhode Island's hip hop scene really was birthed in the 2000s, it's still learning to walk and establish itself after the wave of pay to play performers have basically disappeared from the scene. I had my first experiences with them from 2014-2016, watching as most hip hop shows seemed to bring more drama and controversy. I watched promoters and artists cancel shows last minute with other promoters I knew, pocketing the advance given to do the show. Or, at some point after or during the show some fight would happen causing it to break up and ending up in arrests. The city weaponized these events to shut down problem clubs by giving no leeway if any event happens, even if it was just a fight where no one got hurt. My rapping wasn't the best by the time all of this came to a halt, my production was just basic beats. I'd listen, look, and learn from a community that I felt didn't accept me whether it was because of what I look like or where I'm from, southern RI was isolated then. My friends putting on their own party shows booked metal and electronic music, so I came into a scene where I booked hip hop shows at strictly rock clubs and continued that for years. Doing that opened up the idea of hip hop is safe from club owners, that it could be shown in their clubs without the problems of other shows. It's crazy the little things that we can do that push us forward.

[dearcl113]

037 - EP

When I was 18 listening to blog websites for new hip hop projects, you'd get an hour-long project at least for each artist each time they would drop. This was normal, and what I grew up with as a kid listening to hip hop albums - especially Ludacris's first few projects. The hour was seen as being of high value, basically better bang for the audience's buck.

When I was recording another artist's projects in my shed studio, this was also the vibe. Local Rhode Island rappers would create longer projects, 15 or more songs that would serve as the back-drop for promo releases. They'd promote a couple singles from the project, then the others would basically be B-Sides. RI was definitely not unique in this aspect, this was the blog era and people were looking for new things to listen too outside of commercial avenues. Still, a lot of the extra songs on projects sort of seemed like throwaways. I really enjoyed Dom Kennedy's projects for basically having no-skip worthy tracks on most of them, but this was relatively rare.

Working on my next project the past few months, I wanted to do something that was more of an EP. I've been used to making longer projects for a while - except for Manic All The Time which ended up an EP length when I was finished with it. Sometimes though you have to walk out of your comfort zone to find where you want to go.

For this reason, Return To Sender will be an EP. It follows a specific story, something I've been sort of working with since the start of the year - anchoring around themes of loneliness, with multiple characters. I've been going to a studio to record it for the past month and a half, when I started I was basically just recording in the dark. I had a list of 20 or so songs, which eventually grew to a list of over an hour's worth of content. The past couple weeks I've condensed that, creating a half hour worth of songs I've been working on every day. Music has become a job for me, one that doesn't really make me a ton of money but it helps me fill my time and stay productive. The Long Dark & Ghoul had a lot of tracks, even if I tried to break down and condense the story. I think this is just normal though, even as a kid I remember hearing stories of DMX and other artists recording hundreds of songs each album and then only choosing the best ones. I never really understood that process until recently. I think that's the real story behind Return To Sender, outside of the narrative I wrote in it - the progression of really trying my best with what I have and seeing how I can make it grow.

I was shooting in the dark for most of this project, hating what came out of it and trying my best to just keep going. Baby steps of one to two songs a day trying to figure out the best flows. But mostly, I've been trying to take it easy. Slow and steady. Return To Sender started as a trap soul project, but I hated it, so I scrapped it for something more traditional. More boom bap.

When I was younger these things seemed too hard for me, working for a while on a song. Working on music even when I didn't feel inspired. I was the kind of artist who'd capture a moment and then have a hard time getting the same essence again, but I don't have this problem anymore. Maybe it's because I'm finally treating the music like a job.

Along time ago when I almost worked at a recording studio, the engineer there said 'why are untalented people always so confident?'. It's been a year since I started this music journey, thinking nobody would see what I was doing so I was just having fun posting, treating this like a job. I was overly confident about how good my music sounded and my own capabilities. But it never the plan to turn this into a job, I never thought I'd still be at this a year later. It was just for fun, and to feel good about myself for the first time in a few years. But then it became my life. Even though I struggle a lot with depression, I've been digging out of the holes I've dug for myself since. Focusing on myself, my spiritual growth, my mental health. I'm in a much better place than I was last year. Next time I update this I'll talk more about the project, but either way whoever reads this, I hope you have a good week when you get this. - DEARCL

[dearcl113]

036 - Hip Hop Taglines, Content Era & Stories

March 2025 Going from thinking you have no future for basically your whole life to suddenly being presented with peace and the opportunity to move on, it's pretty difficult. I could never make a long-term plan because my situation would change by the time I really got started in whatever I wanted to do, whether it was because I didn't have money, people changed, things shifted. Now being presented with the opportunity to tell that story, it's weird to me. Stories have become the tag-lines of hip hop. The go-to marketing phrase that is attached to an artist's name when they're mentioned, that helps the listener decide whether or not they want to listen to the music. This has been a blooming trend for over two decades, I'd say 50 cent really honed this skill. As a kid listening to his music I'd hear the story of him getting shot 9 times so much, like others would use it as validation that this was 'real shit' we were listening too or something. It's hard for me to really tell my story in a tag-line - it's hard for a lot of artists. It's become a critical part of the piece that promotes you, that pushes you - that helps others identify with you. I believe we're in a new era currently media wise, I like to call it the 'content' era because of how quickly content/music is pushed out, and consumed by it's audience. I've only released The Long Dark two months and two weeks ago but it feels like I released it a decade ago in terms of how quickly media has evolved and grown. Stories have always been important in hip hop, obviously it's a story-telling genre. I appreciate the unfortunate fact that it's roots come from songs sung by slaves basically spoken in code, to tell stories and plant feelings that would spread. These stories were precious, carried upon by generations and then grew into blues, and other genres. It's a seed that still grows today, even if many stories are told differently. Even before 50 stories played a role in how an artist would be marketed - it just started out simple. You could just say 'I'm from Los Angeles' or something when marketing your music, then create your story in between that. The freedom for the artist to really craft their story pre-internet was unrivaled I say. I think this is why most of these artists have long-lasting staying power, the freedom and control was kept to them. The gatekeeping of those eras was kept to the story, if an artist didn't fit the bill - the story didn't stick. This I understand, what people want out of stories nowadays - I don't if I'm being honest. For most of my life even if I've sort of given up on the idea of being anything, I've always thought about my story. How it would be told if I had the chance too, how it'd look in media - I'd put myself in a celebrities shoes in whatever scandal they had even if I wasn't doing anything remotely close. Just to get an idea of how I'd feel - as I grew up the loss of control of stories just seemed to get worse. So I stopped really telling mine outside of my friends. You can't stop telling your story though. It's either you do, and that is the narrative you are able to present, or you don't and people will fill in the holes you haven't told. There is no stopping discussion and I don't think you should honestly, but you should have control of your story. How you tell it - how it's represented, how it grows. I want to bring more literature aspects into hip hop, even if I don't really want to be a writer. I still feel that hopeless feeling a lot if I'm being real, it's hard to shake a habit you've had your whole life basically. There's so many ways to tell stories, and the content era we're in is a perfect time to do so. Even if it feels like it's there to be told under a microscope sometimes.

[dearcl113]

039 - Godzilla, 2025

I beat myself up a lot, this has been the story of my life. Never stopping to smell the flowers basically because I'm too worried about the Godzilla sized monster destroying the city aka anxiety. In life you're supposed to take moments to enjoy it, but I always seem to get in the way of that. It makes it so I can never enjoy any of my accomplishments, as everything seems miniscule in the size of the monster rampaging through the countryside. I surpassed 20k plays on Ghoul in a month without any outside or paid promo, but it didn't make me feel anything because I've been too distracted. I wake up every day with a goal of managing myself, but struggle against the weight of myself, to the point where it's just easier to give up and be bitter. This bitterness has fucked me over in life many times, mostly preventing me from fully enjoying moments until those moments are gone. My last article was about this, towards the end of my living in the city I didn't see the goodness in events anymore. Every Monday I'd schedule a slot for me to play at the open mic, only to cancel it last minute or just not show up at all. I'd ask Nate if I could play, then later on cancel with him, feeling that disappointment but not recognizing I was the one getting in the way of myself. This was different from how it was when I first came to the city, finding any or all opportunities to put myself there despite the challenges logistically. I'd spend hours on the bus for a ten-minute set, travelling around the entire state basically to end up at Kennedy Plaza then walking where I need to go. Over the years I had a lot of discouraging moments, growth that seemingly only I could see while I screamed my lyrics on stage. I was surrounded by music, by different musicians - different egos, people working through their own problems and taking out their bitterness on others. People like me. I'm a firm believer in karma, what you put out into the world then comes back onto us - and because I didn't let go of my negativity that I still held from whatever trauma work that wasn't addressed, it came back to me. And I internalized it. There's always something to be mad at if you're growing and living your life. Especially if you come from trying to control your situation, working hard to get somewhere only to feel like it doesn't in the end because the ten stories tall monster is stomping on your village house. The older I get, the more futile it feels to even try to control anything. To set any goal, any guideline. The less things I realize that I can control out of life.

At the same time, criticism played such a big part of my life. Being in a community of artists, of different egos and different standpoints - being exposed to the world at large by these critics while having yourself be ignored. I get reminded of this period of my life through specific people, though this list is growing smaller. But I have to let this go. This is just a part of life. Life has never worked how I want it too. I've never been able to stop and enjoy the moment because I've always focused on the screaming Godzilla in the distance. It's made me root for the other ten stories tall monsters that could defeat it, not knowing that these things would cause just as much damage to the village. It's hard to not be bitter at life constantly, to be caught inside your own trauma. But at some point, you have to let it go. I can focus on the critics and people who seem to think how I react to Godzilla is bad, or I can get out of the way of the monster. In RI they run ads on the buses, like signs on the interior. One of them is 'The future is yours to build' for a local college, but still the message runs true. Maybe someday Godzilla will destroy my village, but in the meantime I have to live my life. I can't go about life in fear of what will, or could, happen, missing out on the moments in between. I can't manage Godzilla, I just have to learn to live with it the best I can.