Part 2

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.

I’m in graduate school working on becoming a therapist, and I also work full time, so my schedule is chaotic and rarely adhered to. I feel like any answer to this would be a lie.

Here are things I try to incorporate into each day, and half the time do not manage: getting up before 9, meditating for 15 minutes, going for a run every other day, making space for at least an hour of creative time before I work or get on my phone, taking thorough care of my day job (music PR), reading for school, reading for pleasure, spending time with my girlfriend, allowing myself to completely relinquish all thoughts of productivity by 7 PM. No work or school after that.

Samuel Johnson (one of my dad’s favorites) once said “A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it.” The point of this sentiment is not that you should always be working, but that any moment you can set aside can be a moment for creating.

At least one song on Male Models was written when I was distinctly not in the mood to try but did anyway.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?

My process is different for each record, but I’ll give brief rundowns of the process that led to both Male Models and Nightwater, both of which are precious to me in different ways.

For Male Models, the songs were written anywhere from 2017 to 2020. They usually start with instrumental work, guitar or wurlitzer electric piano, and I often have a loose vision in mind. For this record I wanted the songs to be immediately striking, even in the introduction. The way you hear a song come on and immediately just feel like the world is brighter.

I record the song on my phone as it comes together and then usually put it down for 2-3 weeks, or longer. When I come back, I write lyrics (usually by freewriting in a notebook, again with a vision or mood loosely in mind). Then I find a way to fit some part of those freewritten lyrics into the form of the song, usually with major editing.

The next step is bringing the songs to the band and seeing what Sean and Nick hear, which can be similar to what I imagine but just as often is a transformative experience. “A Professional'' languished in my files for a long time because I didn’t understand how it should feel for the band. It very nearly didn’t even get attempted, but we had some extra time and I threw it at them and the band just brought it to life instantly.

For Nightwater, I worked alone with the four track tape machine, in long gulps, usually at night which I never do. Sometimes I’d compose a small piece first and then lay down a skeleton of the song before layering other instruments over it. Sometimes I’d just hit record and play. It was a very fluid process and I rarely let a song stretch over more than one session. I tried to start and finish each song in one breath.



It was a way of taking myself in the evenings, when I started to tire out and was liable to stare at people yelling at each other on the internet, and pulling me away from online nonsense, turning that vulnerable state into something beautiful instead of letting it open me up to poison and despair. As a result the music was very pure and non-connotative, like …water.
    
Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?

I love to be alone. I love to play or listen to music loudly in an empty house. It’s like teleportation. I’m totally lost. I love people and treasure my friendships, but it’s rare for me to be able to fully relax in company, and I’m afraid that applies to music too.

On the other hand, music rarely sounds better than when you don’t know what it is and your mind is free from judgments and connotations, so I’ve had really transcendent experiences listening to music that other people are playing, often in cars.

I have absolutely vivid memories of hearing Donny Hathaway’s “Jealous Guy” cover, Wilco’s “Misunderstood” and Floating Points' Kuiper EP for the first time, all on drives where someone else had the wheel. At the time, some of them were things I never would have put on, stylistically, and yet I absolutely fell for them in the moment.



They were all moments when it felt like a door opened, where music was enough, and my ego fell aside.

How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?

Any good artist is a barometer of their time, and I try to allow that.

I try not to shy away from writing about mundanities like cell phones or subway rides because they are huge parts of our lives. I hope that the music itself provides a positive and uplifting experience for anyone who listens. I hope that the lyrics, which can be quite dark, are a balm for anyone who’s feeling low. I’ve needed that many times in my life and I’ve clung to both sad and ecstatic music as a healing force at different times.

Music is one of those things that can’t really be explained. Sure, we can analyze its structure and its effects, we can scan people’s brains while they listen, but really I think we all know that there is something beyond what we understand about the power of music. It has a massive capacity for emotional healing, communal joy. That’s why it draws so many people to it, even at a time when the hazards of a life in music are much worse and also duller than they’ve been in the past.

The more everything in our society is measured and explained away and shaved down for efficiency, the more our free time is co-opted by a feeling we should be laboring, the more essential music will be. It’s more vital now than ever, even as we degrade it with the way we treat our musicians.

Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?

I could write a novel here, but suffice it to say that no piece of music I’ve ever made has not been bathed in most of these topics.

I suffer from a kind of permanent loneliness that is hard to discuss clearly with those who don’t feel it themselves, and in the songs of people like Jason Molina I hear an echo of that which is deeply soothing to me, as sad as the music itself might be. I needed to hear that especially when I was much younger and hadn’t yet found the people who I could love and who would love me.

An existential climate crisis hangs over us all, we in the US are caught up in so many mechanisms of living that are destructive and yet there seems to be no way out without renouncing society, which even someone as misanthropic as I am cannot tolerate. Music is how I process these anxieties but also how I find community and joy and love for other people.

A lot of the music on Male Models specifically comes from what I’ve seen of masculinity in the modern US, how there are a lack of outlets for positive ways to be a man and a villainization of maleness in general due to a seemingly endless stream of horrific acts by men. I can’t imagine how confusing it is to grow up as a boy now, and I see people veering off into cultlike groups where their hatred is fed until they go on to commit the kind of violence that makes people write men off entirely.

It’s an awful cycle of entitlement, fear, recrimination and ultimately violence, and it has to be broken. We need good men and those of us who are men need good ways of being.

How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?  

I’m wary of knowing too much, or rather, I’m wary of thinking that we know more than we do. I don’t really like to combine music and science. I treasure science, honestly, but the respect for mystery I approach music with can’t easily coexist with a feeling of what is known.

Think of it this way: when I set out to write a song, sometimes I find myself playing a well worn chord progression that has supported thousands of songs. At times, it sounds worn out, but at others, it sounds entirely new and I can hear the new music in it. Factually, it is not new at all, but it is much better to be able to put that out of your mind until you have written your song.

I have a friend with perfect pitch and writing songs is hell for him, every turn of phrase immediately reminds him of twenty others. He cannot suspend his disbelief.

All respect to those who enjoy combining music and science, I believe there is fertile ground there, but not for me.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

I’m not sure what the point of making those distinctions is.

I don’t think of coffeemaking (which I did for money for many years) as an art, but there are people with knowledge of coffee that is thousands of times better than mine, and if they consider it an art, that’s fine by me. I love to cook for people and that’s definitely an expression of my love for them, sometimes in a more effective way than a love song, but I think that different mediums are better suited for different things. I wouldn’t make a coffee about my fear of death.

I wasn’t raised with religion, but I am religious by nature, and I think that’s what finds expression in music for me but has no place elsewhere in my life. I don’t believe in God, but that’s a statement of faith to me, inverted faith sure, but I would never claim to know.

The only thing I feel sure about is that humans don’t understand much of anything on the larger scale. As science has progressed, commonly held beliefs have been constantly proven wrong. This is how science is supposed to work, but it also means that at any given time, people are wildly misunderstanding the world around them.

All this is to say that I think mystery and magic are things that exist in music for me but rarely elsewhere.

Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?

I honestly don’t. I’m sure there are brain science explanations, but I think there is something deeply rooted in humanity (maybe in all life) that makes music a fundamental part of us.

I have read that for children who have undergone extreme trauma that has impacted their development, rhythm is something that is missing. Music classes, even just learning to keep basic time, can create a major improvement in this area and increase physical coordination. After all, the first thing we hear is our mother's heart. We’re born into rhythm.