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legalize it

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i think nostalgia in the way capitalism wields it succeeds in disarming us of imagination, when imagination is our most potent weapon in the fight against capitalism

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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

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is California sober related to sober from music 2?

in a sense yeah

i think california sober is funnier tho sober gets a bit dark in the 2nd verse it was a weird time in life

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spotify canvass for “tripping by myself” by me

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spotify canvass for “legalize it” by me

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STONER.

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music is lowkey super fire

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june 13

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is there anything u guys wanna know about the new album

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STONER™️ my third album June 13

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crazy

original song by Estelle Allen, vsq/midi/ustx is by me

Sorry not sorry I'm obsessed with my new toys (English voicebanks for TTS UTAU we've been working on since 2010)

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STONER™️

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I’M LOWKEY MOVING MAD PARANOID

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DOPE FIEND

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I was wondering how you started making music? your albums along with underscores have been my favorites for the past year and I think itd be cool to learn how you started :3

always grew up around it — my mom loves telling the story of how i couldn’t sleep unless there was a song playing on cassette tape (hashtag 90s baby) and i’d wake up screaming when the tape stopped lol

i started playing piano at age 7 but i think the thing that really cinched my path was when i began taking lessons with a guy named Glen Fisher. Glen was our version of Jack Black in school of rock, a longtime working musician with a loose style and sense of humor whose approach entailed putting different kids together in bands in order to teach them how to love music as a social activity. not only did i learn a ton of songs that would go on to inform my style, but also gained an extremely valuable skillset that i pull from every day. i know how to communicate ideas to other musicians, how to jam and improvise, and the etiquette necessary to land and maintain a gig. the main reason i wanna win a grammy or something one of these days is so i can thank Glen on a public stage and let people know that this man is the heart and soul of so much music to come out of San Diego. there are many other extremely dope artists (nuffer, sahara grim, back to the shed, dark dazey, crystal rose) that have also emerged from his tutelage and we collectively owe our whole life path to him putting us all together.

in terms of producing music, when i dropped out of college and started my former band Fashion Jackson we wanted to be able to release music quickly and decisively. i was the one most keen on learning the trade, so i took it upon myself to figure out Logic out of sheer necessity.

all this is to say that i think music education is SO FUCKING IMPORTANT!!!!! my peers and i were fortunate enough to have lessons with Glen within our means as kids, but as budget cuts further siphon arts funding from public schools i find myself constantly hurting for all the kids with double the talent and drive i have, who will have to overcome many more obstacles in order to chase this dream. hopefully if i keep busting ass i’ll be in a position to give back to my community and clear the way a little bit!

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a (kind of) brief part 2 to what i wrote yesterday

i am ashamed to realize i missed out on identifying probably the most crucial thing the souls games have taught me and many others of my like: you don’t have to do it alone.

sometimes you’ll come across a challenge in life with a really big boss health bar. it will have a seemingly inexhaustible aggro range and you might feel completely incapable of identifying where the combo string ends. don’t get me wrong, there’s value and strength in overcoming yourself in order to overcome an obstacle — some obstacles, however, are made quite traversable by the simple act of summoning an ally. we’re all on this fucked up journey together, sometimes as parallel lines and sometimes intertwined.

time is convoluted, and the bounds of our subjective realities are very often worth dissolving in order to combine those realities. you probably know someone not too far away whose build is perfectly specced for the giant monster blocking your way. some giant monsters in life are even designed with co-op in mind.

the souls games and by extension life on earth itself are hero’s journeys that will whittle away the bullshit until you’ve leveled into the person you were always meant to be. they are also, at their best and arguably most fun, fields for jolly cooperation :)

you go hollow in these games when you lose hope, same as real life. and just like in these games, i believe the git gud mentality is a sorry trap at best and a hollow (no pun intended) grab at some sense of meritocracy. there are certain personal challenges that may be like a sword saint isshin or orphan of kos, something that can only truly be bested by one’s own dedication and willpower. this is akin to breaking toxic cycles of behavior or learning to accept responsibility for one’s own actions. however, i think life is way more chock full of godskin duos or dark souls 2 gank squad havel reskins. these would be things like going to the dmv or piecing together the practical bits of a creative endeavor. yeah it’s fine to go do those things by yourself, but why the hell would you?

love is the single binding force between the nodes of reality, and really at the end of the day it’s the thing that makes life worth living. and just as you can call upon another player to vanquish those stupid gargoyles, i urge anyone reading this to put a sign down for someone in need. it’s dark times right now, yet together in navigating this fucked and strange world i find us collectively to be oh so grossly incandescent <3