on august 20 of 2024 i carried a pair of m audio speakers up jilted concrete steps in the muggy los angeles heat, and walked into ember’s apartment for the first time.
we didn’t know each other super well yet, but pretty much based on vibes she’d entrusted me with assisting in the production of the album she’d written. this album and the creation of it deserves its own story as both are immensely special to me, but for now it’s the cornerstone of the scene we’re setting.
the first day ember and i made music, we worked on pandora. the opening track of the album is a suite of sorts — opening a capella in the first two syllables before riding the chords of an old piano through church bells and LA hills and drunken showers and the parallel realization that you are as full of shit as he’s ever been, and that the presence of hope beneath the frenzy of a dying relationship brings along with it scary questions that would take their own album to answer. it’s a beautiful piece of music and one of my favorites, ending in this really haunting and slow descent of the production to a coda on a solo vocal.
we were working on the outro to the song, and there was a lyric that stuck out to me. ember mentions listening to caroline, no on a long and aimless drive that eventually spits her out at the beach boys memorial in hawthorne. in figuring out how to animate this sequence musically (we landed on a tremolo guitar coupled with some playful oohs), ember and i found a strong sense of kinship in our love for the beach boys’ music and our shared admiration for brian wilson.
throughout that week we’d talk at length about brian every so often. not just his music or ability, but specifically one quality he seemed to have about him that colors the arc of his life story in a really peculiar way. it seems that for better and for worse, something about brian made everyone around him feel a visceral need to protect him. his family and bandmates, his partners, his management, and also his fans.
ember described it as “the way you feel about a kid who’s constantly about to walk into traffic.”
i think that’s what i’ve always been drawn to and felt seen by in brian’s music. when you listen to pretty much anything in his repertoire, there’s a potent vein of naive innocence that pierces the teenage symphony to god surrounding it. an undisturbed curiosity and amusement in how fucking awesome the music is and where it could possibly take one’s ear next. brian crafted masterpieces in the studio with the very same gusto an 8 year old would wield in order to assemble a fearsome cyclops from bionicle parts.
as a former bionicle building 8 year old who has been trampled by a horse, almost suffocated to death, battled chronic insomnia and severe anxiety and long periods of isolation and depression, flitted in and out of various addictions, grew up to be a trans woman AND a musician, i deeply relate to the sensation of everyone who loves you feeling as if they need to protect you from yourself at all costs — and sometimes that the only way to do so is to take the wheel so you don’t crash the car.
it’s a disposition that complicates a lot of one’s relationships. you end up being kind of awkward and slow with tasks and social situations that seem to come really easily to most people, but the trade off is that music sounds utterly fucking supernatural. i KNOW what it’s like to feel as if the entire world thinks you’re a little dumb and will choke on a battery if left unattended, and then go sit in front of speakers hearing an arrangement or a mix come together or a lyric or melody finally click and in that moment, precisely knowing your place in the universe. i wouldn’t trade it for anything and i don’t think brian would either.
3 days ago i woke up to a single text from ember that simply read “🖤”. it had already processed by the time i opened instagram to brian’s face, and i immediately began saying “no” over and over while frantically facetiming her.
after we debriefed, i called my mom and cried. like UGLY cried. the crazy thing is i don’t even think it was a sad cry. it was like the kind a baby does (damn, on theme) before it knows any other way to communicate. my body simply acknowledging a sensation it lacked the ability to intellectualize.
i am so thankful for brian and for the music he left with us. it is so beautiful and important that recorded music exists where, in the very fabric lining songs about cars and girls and teenage heartbreak and dreams and vegetables and demons and scary thoughts, you can hear and feel just how explosively the person who made it loves music itself.
you might not have been made for these times, but i personally am so grateful i was made for the ones where your work and spirit exist so vibrantly in the air around me.
thank you brian <3 safe travels
jacobvanloon
dededos
dailybridgerton
theartofmadeline
origamiaround
ellievsbear
romaincrisis
blakekathryn
