Me. Skinny Atlas’s basement. January 2021.
Field Notes
From Isolation
Entry 004
Been feeling so damn lost and restless lately. I can’t lie. Maybe it’s quarantine burnout. Maybe something bigger. I chip away at the new music either on my own, or at Skinny Atlas’s studio which is a short drive away, every day all day. And I mean all day. Fall asleep thinking about it most nights and wake up to immediately work on it. In a lot of ways, that’s what fuels me and gives me energy in my life. But I want to start releasing this music and sharing it with you guys, because that’s when it really feels like all the work pays off. The cycle shifts, the long days become gratifying. When the music becomes bigger than just me…I realize how much we are all connected in the world and only separated by very thin lines of communication.
So I bought a $25 film camera to dust off another passion of mine while I make the new project: taking bad photos. I’ll be documenting all of the early morning solitary walks, late night convenience store runs, thrift store instrument dives, and DIY recording setups…all with the skill of a myspace photographer in 2007. The point is simply to document everything. To show you guys more of what I am doing all of the time and to give you a bigger lens into my world.
The theme of the new music is largely about “finding yourself” and how we have pressure to do that by a certain age or certain stage of life — I’m still searching for the person I am and am still becoming who I want to be. And that should be okay. Still have a vision of a better version of myself that I know is on the way and that I’m working towards. These songs will capture the experiences that have challenged me in that process of self-understanding, that brought me down to rock bottom, and how I am managing to pick myself up again. I think that overcoming these things is an infinite, endless process. It takes a lifetime. It’s an illusion if self-actualization or arrival at happiness ever appears to happen overnight, for anyone.
Some snapshots of the past few weeks — this is how I make music and wander with my friends:
Skinny Atlas, nowhere town parking lot. January 2021.
Wandering. My temporary home for these few months. January 2021.
Give it all that you’ve got. Give it all that you’ve got. Give it all that you’ve got.
Over the next few weeks I’m going to be tying together a lot of little preparation pieces for the launch of my new project. There are still a lot of pieces to put together, but some things are close to being there. It’s now time to hit the ground running with making these ideas a reality. Eventually when my ideas are locked in and close enough to finished, I’ll be sharing a schedule with you all that will include everything. I want you to know which dates you can look forward to and to provide a little bit of forward-looking optimism in this bleak year. I want to decide on an EP name out of the 10,000 I have on the table, design the album artwork for the singles and the full EP package, start sharing the teasers on all of my social media sites, launch a recurring online hangout room for all of us to talk about updates and share art that you guys make, I want to launch one big interactive plan I have for you to be a part of the making of this project, put a nice bow on the coffee chats I did all throughout the fall, release one last merch drop before the big music announcement….and then, and probably only then, will I feel like life has begun.
Hang tight, I promise it will be worth the wait.
Season of change right now.
I hope you are hanging in there and keeping your chin high.
MUCH LOVE
D.O.
Nowhere kid from a nowhere town with fresh nikes. January 2021.