Sai

idk what to do with this space yet

[b-sai-des]

An Interview with Lilith (pt1)

Earlier this week I had a really in depth and insightful conversation with a good friend of mine from high school, Lilith Santos (they/them), an experimental hip-hop producer studying music production at Berklee College of Music in Boston. They’ve been doing a lot of really interesting work with their solo albums and collaborations with different artists, and I was really grateful to hear from them about a variety of different topics like their collaborations, their personal journey as an artist, elements of their particular approach to production, and their personal philosophy as an artist and a person. 

We started catching up on what we’ve been up to. Lilith said that they’ve been busy with a lot of classes, but they’re doing some upcoming shows in Boston as well.

I’ve gotten to know Lilith pretty well these last few years, and one of the things I’ve always admired about them is their authenticity and sense of community. In our big and close-knit high school friend group I’ve definitely felt this, and Lilith spoke a lot here about the way that they look at things and how that’s shaped and been shaped by their journey with music. 

I know you've been working with a lot of different artists lately, like Annie Elise, Maz, Ghais Guevara, and asoookha. Is there a particular story when you met one of these artists? What was the start of one of those creative collaborations? 

Home page of Ghais Guevara, a hip hop artist from Philadelphia

Oh, for sure. I could give you the answer right now. I could do it for all of them, actually. It's not that deep. If we're thinking chronologically, then the oldest person that I know from these two, it has to be Annie, Annie first. Annie is someone that I met online during the peak of the COVID pandemic and all that whole jazz and stuff. And it was a Discord server that I would regularly flock to because I did moderate in that (laughs) as lame as that sounds. Jokes aside, I am very proud of doing my role in the community for that amount of time. And actually, Annie is the person that convinced me to go to Berkeley to begin with. 

Oh, wow. 

Yeah, she was the person that was actually willing to encourage me to audition, do all the stuff that I had to. But it kind of just started off on like a very mutual basis. Like we had friends of friends, she was at Berklee at the time before she dropped out. And, you know, we would talk a lot, but nothing really would suffice until I really got into Boston.

Now, maybe it was like a couple months before I got to Boston. And keep in mind the mindset that I was, I just had gotten out of like an eight-month relationship and she had just gotten out of like a three-year relationship. I told this story to a lot of people because it's really funny how we ended up coming with this idea [their music project, The Heartmenders] to essentially cope with our loss of partners, but also the gain of our fruits of a new life, essentially. And what happened was I was visiting Boston beforehand, just to kind of check out the school, visit Annie and all that. And I remember the first night that I arrived there, I'm driving over to her place, I'm trying to find parking and I get a text and she's like, “Sorry if I seem upset today. I just got broken up with.”

And I'm like, holy shit, that couldn't have been more insane timing than what happened to me. So, you know, being a friend first, I listened to her. We went out to get pizza,  it was like this whole, it was a really nice night. I look back at that night with such fondness and joy, but in retrospect it really was the start of everything. 

Cause I remember she would text me two months later, on and off talking. This was after I got into Berklee. After she helped me with my audition process, the year prior, she was like, “You know, well, since my ex doesn't have the performance privileges to be with me anymore, do you want to perform with me?” Already getting a gig opportunity before school started was crazy to me, and I'm so fucking grateful for this moment in our friendship. I'm very grateful for her in general. I can tell you that I'm grateful for all these people. When I got that opportunity, it was such an easy thing to say yes to, and I'm so glad I did. 

It was at Bill's bar, for a Breaking Sound showcase. And it seemed like the biggest thing in my life. Now it's like, you know, footnote of the past, but it's like one of the biggest things that happened to me. And in that period of time of moving in, getting settled into school and figuring stuff out before the show, we were like, “Hey, let's just make some music together so I don't have to just perform like all your stuff – no offense, I just want to be able to perform some of my stuff as well.” And she’s like “Yeah, sure!”

Stream and Save CRUELTY / SOJU - Distributed by DistroKid

I feel like we were super lucky in how we caught lightning in the bottle that day when I was making beats over at her house and we were laying down vocals. She was so easy to work with. She really knew her way around the DAW [digital audio workstation], I was still more or less an amateur. I'm still a student in my craft, I'm still learning how to do all of that stuff, but, you know, seeing her work inspired me to figure out a work process on my own, work harder on my stuff. And we would just end up sending a bunch of shit back and forth to each other from the summer before I moved into Boston. 

I think the important thing was that the relationship, the friendship, was already established. So that made the work 500 times easier. Being able to work with her on that, get like devil's advocate on certain inputs, but also just being able to rock out and like have no stress and making shit with was probably one of the biggest blessings I could ever receive, and it definitely did carry into how I treat a lot of my collaborators and like, you know, how much I want to do, see the chemistry, you know, whatever's up with that.

And, you know, Annie and I have been like really close friends since I still keep up with her from time to time on the phone. She's super busy nowadays, but she always makes time to respond and do all this stuff with me, so I find myself grateful.

Annie Elise and Lilith Santos are The Heartmenders.

We're working on a new album right now. We're taking our time with it.

That gets me excited, because the first EP – I was blown away by that.

And that was like, those are really old tracks. Actually, I'll send you the old demos right now, I think it was on a fucking Medium article. I wrote about it in the Medium article. I do talk about the entire story in a lot more depth. I'm really glad I wrote about it. It was a really fun exercise (laughs). Yeah, it was just a fun time. It's really funny looking back at my previous heartbreak, and I don't feel so strongly about it right now. You know, it's just kind of funny knowing a time where like I deadass wrote about it, and it was so cathartic for me for no reason. 

I can give you another collaborator too, which one are you the most interested in? I could do all of them. 

Yeah, whatever you feel most interested in talking about. It sounds like you have a really good repertoire and a good relationships with all these people. It's cool to hear that kind of camaraderie that's there that you have with all the people that you're working with, and it sounds like a really nice community there.

Oh, for sure. For a lot of things, especially in school, the one thing I have to remind myself at the beginning was that I'm here for the school. Obviously, I'm here to make my parents proud. And it was already a crazy journey, becoming a musician, taking it seriously, and then actually going to a school for it. But the more important thing that I'm here for is the community. I mean, I've made some amazing friends. I could like, talk so much about them, you know, just how true to themselves they are, and how much they inspire me to keep working on things and do things a different way or see things a certain way. It's honestly super inspiring. 

maztypebeat | Instagram, TikTok | Linktree

View maztypebeat’s Linktree. Listen to their music on Spotify here.

One of those people is Maz. Now, Maz is someone I met recently in the whole grand scheme of things. I became very good friends with him like a year ago. He's like one of my closest homies I ever made at the school. And we met off of a beat battle for the Berkeley Hip Hop Club that I was recommended to do when, you know, everyone was still trying to find their friends for college, their roommates, and be like, “oh, like I have this thing in common, too.” I didn't meet him there, but a friend of mine was like, “Yo you should join the beat battle. The guy who runs Berklee Hip Hop right now is judging it, and I think he would be really cool for him to see your work.” I took him up on the offer. He really liked my work! 

And we kind of knew of each other, but it was really when we met in person – a lot of the stuff, especially for all these collaborations, except for one, really blossomed after meeting them in person after they're really getting to know them as a person. I'm a very social person. I try to be at least, and, you know, (laughs) it definitely shows. 

Now, the funny thing is with Soul Snatchers, that whole EP was just tracks made for fun. And we somehow just worked our way into a really nice, concise circle full of ideas and such. it's just really easy to just make something, put down vocals, and then be done with it. The surprising this about this was I exclusively produced it. Another great thing about the collaboration was that I had Maz there helping me with the beat as well. Maz already is like one of the greatest working producers I know at Berklee. Like, he knows how to mix, he knows how to engineer, he knows how to experiment just enough, but also keep it in the realm of like, digestible. You know, for someone like me, that's a bit of a task! So seeing Maz do it and also being a part of his band helps too. It's amazing. And I think the main thing I got from this was that we were just having fun. A lot of the music that we make is never really that deep.

There are certain things in the production that Maz wants to fulfill every time we have a session. And whenever those prerequisites are filled up, I get to do whatever I want. So it's kind of taught me a lot about restraint. He's very set on what to do. He's very clean, thorough, efficient with it. It inspired me for my own production, just kind of honing down my process even more to like almost on a molecular level, especially for just like basic ideas.

It's really nice. I have like a mini Maz in my head sometimes telling me to make split decisions or not, and then just sticking with them until the end of the song. 

It seems like from all your collaborations, you kind of picked up things from them, and you've learned from each of them. I was also wondering, for your most recent album, distant benevolence – I was struck  when you released side B, because I could definitely see how you and asoookha had two distinct styles, but they kind of came together on both side A and side B.

Yeah! Ah, oh, man, ah that collaboration was a lot of fun! So they mentioned this in their YouTube description of the actual tape itself. They literally uploaded it like a day ago. In the comments, he does recall the story of when this first happened. Originally, we were friends of a friend. Shout out to TEYO. If you're reading this, what up? That kid is fucking talented. And amazing.

TEYO! on Spotify

He was the one that brought asoookha and I together. I remember hearing off of one of his tracks. I think it was "the lights dim as I live." It's a good song. The production on that was like, absolutely stellar. And like hearing that come from an 18 year old, right? Fucking wild! Like I was making stuff at like 18, but I don't think I ever sounded like that good. So I was like, okay, I had to see what was up with this guy. 

I get invited to the discord server and I immediately make friends with this dude. Asoookha is awesome. We have a lot of the same interests. We're both into the same, like DJ and HoloLive, VTuber shit. It's a, it's a really funny thing to bond over. But at the same time, like our shared love for these like weird ass interests, like anime and like VTubing and like just weird fucking unplayable video games, it really brought us closer.

Youtube upload of Distant Benevolence Side B by asoookha.

And this guy's in Australia. Now keep in mind, this is not my first rodeo with a long distance friendship– I have this friend named Allanah, crazy voice actor, who I met a couple years ago over the internet and across the sea. So awesome. Like just such an awesome individual– Asoookha lives all the way in Australia, so I know how this shit works already. I know what kind of times to be up at. I know when to hit them up, when to not hit them up type of deal. And it was just really easy for us to get along. 

asoookha

existence precedes essence. https://soundcloud.com/faketo 17

And one day, I think it was like maybe a couple of months ago, they were like, yo Lilith, do you want to just like make a collab album? That would be really funny. And I was like, as funny as that does sound, I think it would sound pretty good. So I went along with it. And I think for the entire time, asoookha was just not expecting for this to work out. Like, it was just going to be like another, like, “Oh, like, you know, we'll say we'll do it, but we're never actually going to do”, but we, we kind of came in and swept! It was such a crazy display of a two way street I've ever seen, especially from Boston all the way to Australia. We were really on top of our shit.

And that's what was like, so surprising about it. And, you know, our styles are super different. I'm very – I don't think my stuff should be perfect at all. I don't want it to be perfect. That's against my whole being as a producer, my style. Just having the weird dichotomy of like, super clean, nostalgic beats from asoookha and like this dirty but like raw and emotional stuff coming from me, it was like magical to me, hearing everything front to back. We thought about the track order and stuff together. And we just realized like, it would sound good if we just went from one emotion to the other, just like quite literally had two sides of the tape dedicated to each of us. It was kind of easy from then on.

I'm very thankful to call myself his friend. He's probably one of the craziest, talented producers out there in terms of sampling and finding stuff and getting really deep, like deep into that pocket.

I was surprised to hear “X-Wing” being sampled in one of the asoookha tracks on side B.

“video games SUCK?” 

Yeah! The way he utilized Denzel Curry's vocals from X-Wing and kind of just completely flipped it.

The band [CENSORED (sorry, no sample snitching)], I think it’s a flip of them, if I recall correctly. But like, no, they're just, asoookha’s kind of crazy with it. Like they, like a lot of people just kind of slap on rap acapellas onto beats, and they’re the only couple of people that I know that can do that super well. But it surprised me to hear asoookha just threw their thing on that. Like, I mean, I don't do that a lot anymore as much as I used to, but I've been thinking about it more and more now. It's just kind of inspiring. A lot of the people I'm very grateful to. I'm so fucking grateful to be in this position that I'm in. They just kind of proved me wrong in a lot of ways. That's really all I can ask for from people! Like just prove me wrong! Show me I can do something a different way. That's really it.

I could definitely see both of your styles, there's such a beautiful synthesis on the final product. So yeah, I definitely, I definitely see the fruits of that labor.

For sure. Oh man, I'm gonna have this new whole list of shout outs right now. Shout out to Eli. Shout out to VVN. Shout out to Kyle, my boy Kyle. Shout out to Maz. Shout out to fucking Nate, man. Shout out to Quinn. Shout like, I got so many people to shout out. I don't even know if I can fit this shit in. I got so many people to thank for like, in terms of music stuff. Cause you know, it's just you know, this industry is already hard as is, as an artist being solo. Having a community just to kind of back you up and uplift you when you need it, but also being able to give that energy back and uplift that back to them: that is like one of the things I live for. Friends and family are awesome.

As for your upcoming shows, where are you going to be playing at? 

I'm doing something for the Women Producers Showcase at The Loft at Berklee. It's going to be a nice little show, not too much. Then I got like a little thing going on at Bencils Live. It should be on the 18th, if I recall correctly. it's going to be like a whole 30-minute set party kind of vibes. But I'm just going to be doing my thing. I don't know. It's just going to be a bit hectic in terms of preparation. I just go by feeling to be honest (laughs).

One of the things that's clear with Lilith is the sense of gratitude she has for the people she works with and have friendships with and the opportunities she's had. Lilith really values the nature of collaboration, and they've learned from each of their projects with different artists and friends.

After this point, our interview turned more towards Lilith's personal journey and their specific style. Lilith explains the significance of their artist name and their journey of coming out as nonbinary along and their personal philosophy which carries over into their personal style. Go to part two.

[saiemptyspace]

A video I made a while back, sharing it here for Revenge of the 5th! "One Blazing Moment"

It's based on the passage from Matthew Stover's incredible Revenge of the Sith novelization, the scene when Vader is suited up for the first time. If you haven't read it I highly recommend the book, it fleshes out a lot of aspects of Anakin's development and it goes into the heads of many other characters. I used clips from ROTS and some other movies/shows, too.

[dragonofthedeepspace]

I know people like to interpret Paul as an outright villain of the story and while that's not unreasonable, I personally love another interpretation.

It doesn't matter if you are a kind person with good intentions, it doesn't matter if you are smarter that anyone else and it doesn't matter if you can literally see the future, NO ONE has the right to hold absolute power over other people.

Systems with strict vertical hierarchy cause oppression. There is no way around it. Even that one guy who you think is better than that shouldn't be put at the top.

Paul being portrayed with many positive character traits doesn't muddy the message, it enhances it.

[saiemptyspace]

The Power of Dune: Part Two’s Final Act— Stepping Away From the Messiah

Stunning photo by Jack Davidson

So I didn't think I would be talking about Dune in my first post for this page (considering that I intended it to be more Star Wars focused and also since I haven't read the Dune books yet), but the final stretch of this movie has been on my mind ever since I left the theater a few weeks ago.

(Spoilers for Dune: Part Two)

It's strange in the sense that we are suddenly distanced from Paul, and also in that the climax seems to accelerate the story faster than ever before. So far (in both movies), there has been a pretty strong focus on Paul and a very deliberate pace that let all the plotlines simmer. It’s a masterclass of immersion, both technically and emotionally. The humanity of its characters aren’t lost in the many elements at play. Paul is a character whose empathy and how it makes him conflicted with what is placed before him make him quite likable. Spending so much time with him, Chani, and Stilgar makes us grow attached to them, not just because they’re the heroes, but because they feel real. And yet we’re pushed away. In the third act Paul's dark transformation happens swiftly (you’d initially think from how it’s shown the water of life turns you evil), and by the story’s end we only see Paul from a distance in the eyes of other characters, unable to see him resolving the concerns we’ve wrestled along with him, unable to get a good read on his motivations anymore. The final battles with our heroes happen rather quickly as victory over the Harkonnans and the Emperor comes pretty easily. On one hand this shift could feel unsatisfying, and the first time I watched the movie I was a little unsatisfied. But I’m not here to say this is a fault of the movie; in fact, this shift results in something greater happening, and it’s the most powerful triumph of Part Two’s story.

By the end, even when we do zoom in on Paul we're not sure what's really behind his intensity. (All the Dune screencaps are from Dune Perfect Shots 4K on Twitter).

Dune’s story up until this point, from what I know about these two films at least, is all about complexity, discerning the many variables, the need to carefully monitor both these variables and one's own behavior. The importance of mastering oneself. (This video by Alt Shift X talks about this really well, and it definitely helped me understand this aspect of the story better). But Paul’s tests, like the Gom Jabbar in Part 1 and the worm ride in Part 2, carry not just that significance but also the danger of a prophetic horror being more and more certain. Therein lies an irony - you can gain power but tied to it is something much larger that’s out of your control. This becomes pretty key to the whole story, and there’s something I was reminded of that helped me put all this into perspective. I brought this up in my first-time watch review too, but I think I have more to say about it now. But bare with me as this might end up being convoluted.

In one of my classes this semester we read the poem “The Promised Land” by Gabeba Baderoon, and I was really struck by this image that it alludes to called the Angel of History.  Described by Walter Benjamin based on the painting Angelus Novus by Paul Klee, it depicts an angel whose wings get caught in the winds of a destructive storm “blowing from Paradise.” It’s trapped in the storm’s momentum going forwards with no way to escape. All the while, its head is permanently twisted backwards, forced to watch the wreckage of the storm, named progress, gathering below it. From what we discussed in that class this disturbing image suggests that all the events of history, all that we do or achieve or create, is not a series of events affecting each other, but instead one ever-building catastrophe barreling forwards. Both the Bene Gesserit’s century-spanning machinations and Jessica’s usurping of it all by birthing a boy. Whether the Harkonnen house or the Atreides house controls Arrakis. All of these are merely before a future that’s larger than any of them individually; the messiah and his holy war will come regardless. Even if it’s towards her own end rather than that of the Bene Gesserit, Jessica still uses their propaganda to facilitate his rise. The two houses end up converging anyways in their family trees with the Baron, and Muad’dib Atreides embraces it, merging the two families’ ideologies like the Kwizatz Haderach was always intended to. Whether his sudden ruthlessness is him embracing his desire for revenge or actually a strategic choice after sifting through the past and futures laid out, we’re denied of knowing for sure as we look at him from afar, and this denial by the film questions if the answer even matters much. The Angel image and the movie’s narrative dispel the idea that we have the capability to easily fix things when we make progress. It’s a notion that renders reasoning or means as having little ability to empower, envisioning us all moving towards the same horror anyways. It suddenly renders all the complexity of the plot and these competing ideas and factions inconsequential. And I don’t mean that in a bad way — it’s crucial to what the film is really getting at.

"We're Harkonnens... so that's how we'll survive. By being Harkonnens."

“You of all people should know there are no sides, Reverend Mother.”

Now, it’s fair to question the nihilistic bent of this (are we in the real world truly powerless to stop to this continuous catastrophe???), but the Angel of History and Dune use the stories they put forth as cautionary tales where that all-encompassing bleak endgame are meant to deconstruct our notions of progress and control. If we are powerless to shape history, how strong is the power we wield? And how good is the power we wield? As we strive for “paradise” and celebrate attaining it we often forget what happened as we got there, and we fail to see where we really are. If the reasoning for our actions doesn’t empower us, the effects of them in turn are even more debasing. The Baderoon poem that alludes to the Angel of History does so to examine this too. In its discussion of the end of apartheid and the ushering in of a democratic South Africa, “The Promised Land” weaves in the legacy of the jazz pianist Moses Molekelwa, who, despite influencing the poem’s speaker’s attitudes towards social progress (and appearing as an idol in that sense), is shown as getting off the hook in the eyes of history for strangling his wife to death. The triumph of his music is remembered while his wife’s murder is willfully forgotten, and the poem concludes that “our forgetting is also our home, which is why we will never leave the old country.” Baderoon warns of when the celebration of progress doesn’t factor in the ugly parts we still carry with us into the future, and her allusion to the Angel of History works to convey that danger. (Obviously the real anti-apartheid struggle of South Africa is very very different from the story of Dune, and I wouldn’t want to compare them to each other. Dune’s exploration of complicated progress instead speaks more towards the dangers of charismatic leaders and the co-opting of a cause). The only thing I want to highlight is just that Dune, Baderoon’s poem, and the Angel of History all hone in on the need to not lose sight of the now. 

This is why the third act’s shift away from Paul works so well. The film doesn’t show people “forgetting” necessarily, but we do see them caught in the fervor without acknowledging what’s happening to them. Paul is an exception in that he sees it all: his arc sees him changing his perspective on the destiny laid ahead and taking control to ensure it happens on his terms. He doesn’t really turn evil, but since we’re denied of seeing past his new icy exterior as he looks ahead with his prescience, the film instead turns us back to the now, like the angel looking behind. We're with Chani now, the only (non-psychic) person who’s seeing this all. We already believe in Paul’s goodness. If we were to see what Paul sees and fully understand his reasoning, it would make it easy for us to downplay the costs. The story thus has us focus on the consequences of Paul’s path beginning to gather in real time, the Fremen being exploited as they are led into a coming bloodbath by their messiah.

And this is the sadness of it all, right? Things that were once honorable, like Jessica protecting Paul like she promised Leto and the legacy of Leto that Gurney hopes for Paul to carry with him, are twisted into foul and manipulative actions. Good intentions and real connections, like Paul’s empathy, his and Chani’s relationship, and his and Stilgar’s friendship, all give way to the storm.

The quickness of the third act’s events compounds this danger. The path Paul takes may be the best possible option after considering all the variables, but the story doesn’t revel too long in the glory of his successful leadership and strategy.

The awe-inspiring images speak not to just heroism but something volatile and intoxicating. It's not that the film oversimplifies the moral dilemmas at stake, but by letting the big battle, Gurney slaying Rabban, and Paul slaying the Baron happen all too easily, it removes the focus from only being the powerful exploits of Paul and the Fremen and adds emphasis on how they become like Harkonnens and how the Fremen become entrenched in Paul’s conquest. The Harkonnen bodies are burned like the Atreides were before them, and the Fremen Fedaykin ultimately fight carrying the Atreides banner instead of their own. They lose sight of this fact as they place all their faith in Paul, their cause and faith co-opted. It happens so fast and it can’t be stopped. We’re caught in the momentum of the storm raging, pushing us forward, and at the same time the film adjusts its focus to ensure that we don’t forget to recognize the consequences of Paul’s choices. This is what I find so compelling about this movie — we’re given a story that details the complexity of all things and also ultimately denies complicated factors and necessary evils of becoming excuses that wave the wreckage of progress away.

Hopefully this was enjoyable to read and wasn't pretentious or anything! Lemme know what you think about the movie!