I have been writing a new album for about a year now and I have 5 or 6 semi-final drafts of songs I have recorded with the intention of releasing them, I worry as the clock moves faster and faster away from my previous release and further into my 30’s, that I will be forgotten by the fanbase that has supported my career since 2015. I worry as the many instances in which I was told that I “only had until 30" to make it in this industry, circle my brain as I strum my 1960’s Gibson acoustic, I worry that this may be the end for me. Perhaps the problem lies in the fact that for the very first time in my life I am relatively stable, I’m properly medicated, and in a happy relationship, I have healthy friendships and a strong connection to each of my family members, I am, relatively, happy in every way aside from the looming sense of doom that lingers over my career. More and more, the idea of success evades me, like a small light shrinking in the distance, I watch it fade as I go further and further away from the thing I have dreamt of since I was a little girl, the idea that I would be one day, a well known artist. The reality is that I have come to the conclusion that success certainly does not come with the promise of happiness, sometimes it’s quite the opposite, I’ve seen the way that fame can isolate people, the way that scrutiny can calcify one’s ability to trust, and frankly, I desire it less and less each year. The problem with my newfound lackluster perspective on success in the music industry, is that along with the desire to succeed comes drive, the drive to do the work, the drive to be the best I can be, and with the loss of my desire of success, the encouragement to do the work has too gone far far away.

Since I was 12 years old, my life’s meaning has always been to be an artist in every way possible, to perceive the world and make work that reflects that perspective, the perspective I have on the pain and suffering, the beauty of our existence here on earth. But, now, I find myself floundering, drowning in the lack of meaning I discover in each move I make, the monotony of that cup of coffee, or the look in a stranger’s eyes, I feel completely and utterly empty, devoid of all hope. So, what do I do to pull myself out of this hollowness? I’ll let you know when I find out. I strum a B minor chord with capo on the third fret, I write down key words I hear on television programs, words like “effervescent” and “Holy water”, I write for other people’s albums, songs about the sun setting through the clouds, I listen to audiobooks about creativity and watch old movies that I’ve seen over and over again, I try my best to stay in the headspace of creation, hoping that inspiration will strike alongside old chord structures and hit a bullseye on my ballpoint pen. Like a train slowly moving over the tracks, I hope that I will soon hit my destination, a place where my music reaches the right person’s ears. I pray and manifest that I will make something great.

Trying

-A

Read more

My mother was 23 years old with a 6 year old when she found out she was pregnant with a second child, she was engaged to be married to her high school sweetheart whose baby she became pregnant with at the age of 16, a love that ended up not so sweet for the next 13 years, but I digress. When she went into the doctors office for her first physical examination the physician informed her that her cervix was completely black, not only was she two months pregnant, she was also riddled with stage four cervical cancer. She had had it for years and (according to legend) my not-so-immaculate conception had brought her death sentence to light.

Over the following months she was advised that keeping the baby would mean that she would only have 6 months to live, she was told I would be born blind, that I would be born very early because as I grew, so would the cancer and the risk of it spreading. At some point along the way, with me still growing in her womb, she had her cervix removed and her uterus sewn up. I cannot imagine what she was thinking, watching one child grow as another becomes more and more evident, just as evident as the fact that both of her children would be raised without their mother, while I grew, she wrote a journal to me everyday, telling me of the person she was and of her love for me and my brother, at age 9 I found it stashed away somewhere in her closet and cried.

So, when the day finally came, the day of my birth, June 14th, 1995, three weeks before my due date, my mother lay on the table while I was cut out of her uterus, only to be followed by her uterus being cut out of her completely. By the end of her various surgeries the doctor had concluded that the cancer had miraculously not spread, it was gone completely. She was very weak and essentially unconscious when she was told that she would be too fragile to hold me for at least three days, I lay in an incubator while she recovered, wondering what I looked like, if I had hair, 10 fingers and 10 toes, it was then that my father had decided to sneak my small body into the innards of his coat and while my grandmother kept a lookout, he bundled me against his chest as they rode the elevator to the oncology ward, he crept into her hospital room and handed me to her “this is Alexandra Savior McDermott”. So the story goes.

If you were wondering, my mother’s cancer never returned, and I’m lucky enough to have her as my best friend to this day, my brother grew up unaware of the fact that her almost had lost her, mostly focused on being annoyed by my existence haha. I never like telling this story because I know I'm not the “savior” in this situation, it’s all a series of events perhaps too miraculous to conceive, and the strength of my dear very very young and very terrified mom. Anyways, that’s how I got my name.

-A <3

Read more

I jolt out of bed at the sound of the alarm I set the night before, that distinctly obnoxious sound permeates through one layer of drugstore earplugs, I quickly make my way to the bathroom to brush my teeth, then, I proceed to my hands and knees and gather the small piles of clothing surrounding my suitcase, I don’t bother to fold them, instead I begin stuffing each soiled item into the corners of my extra large chartreuse suitcase, sitting on top, I zip the two sides of the suitcase back together."6 hours of sleep, better than the night before.” For the rest of the next 18 hours, I will be surrounded by people, on the sidewalk outside of the hotel, in the van, on the train, as I pee in petrol station bathrooms, as we lug heavy musical equipment in and out of basement venues, on stage with my guitar, as I fall asleep late at night in a twin bed adjacent to my drummer who we have affectionately nicknamed “Radish”. For about two weeks straight I was never bothered once with a thought outside of what was right in front of me, and it was wonderful.

Now, after a long flight back to LA, and six shows, I lay staring up at the popcorn ceiling of my 100 year old apartment, I spend the day floating from the coffee machine out to the back porch to chain smoke the American cigarettes I missed so much, and then, back inside to my mildly air conditioned bedroom. The truth is, for days, sometimes weeks after a tour, in the spirit of Dusty Springfield, I just don’t know what to do with myself. I surf the World Wide Web for clothes I don’t need, and binge watch reality television, I go from signing autographs in dark alleyways, to watching my dog take a piping hot shit on the piping hot sidewalk of my street, I go from my name being on the sign outside of the building, to being another faceless blonde woman in the center of Hollywood, just like any other. My return to anonymity is at once a small fracture to my ego, and a huge relief to my nervous system.

I always tell people about how much I despise touring, the exhaustion, the endless hard work, the over stimulation, but, this time something was different. After being dropped from my record label back in late October, I buried myself into a bottomless pit of depression and deep self loathing, I felt like all of my worth had been handed away at the loss of support from my label and managers, the truth is, when I signed a year or so earlier, I had told myself that if this one didn’t work out, I would quit music forever. So, then, unsurprisingly, it didn’t work out at all, and I was back at square one with no support for my career, aside from the moral support provided by my boyfriend and mother. I sat in my bed for six months, contemplating educing my own demise, unable to make myself a piece of toast, let alone muster up the energy to release another album, or go out on another tour. But several months later, like magic, there I was, thoroughly medicated, back on stage in front of large groups of people who actually gave a shit about the things that I write, and I had to pinch myself, things might not really be over for me after all. So, for the first time in my life I allowed myself to ride the high of garnering attention from strangers, not allowing the voices in my head to tell me I didn’t deserve this, because I’ve suffered enough at the hands of this god damned industry, the least I can do is enjoy this rare human to human interaction, allow myself to feel heard, because if I learned anything from that experience, nothing lasts forever.

But inevitably, with every high comes a crash, my newfound empty schedule had me mimicking the behavior of a chicken with its head cut off. My daily agenda now consists only of “take birth control at 9 pm” and “give dog flea medicine”, and I used the vastness of my empty calendar to attempt to write new music, I lay in bed with my head spinning, secretly craving the thrill of performance, the thrill of being seen. I wonder if it makes me a bad person? Enjoying the praise of strangers and the hot lights of the stage. I wonder what it says about me that I was being fed by the energy of a few hundred admirers, and most likely a handful of skeptics. Am I vane? Do I have a weak character? Am I a narcissist? Or worst of all, a woman who enjoys feeling powerful? So, back to the real world, a world of mystery novels, vacuuming, picking up dog shit and paying medical bills, throwing grocery items into plastic baskets and picking up my prescriptions from the pharmacy, and all the while wondering if I’ll ever matter to anyone else again. The monotony of everyday life is both a relief and a burden to my sense of self. I miss the days when I was important, does that make me a bad person?

-A

I was 23 years old, sat on an old sofa in the office of a psychiatrist in my hometown, after we greeted, her demeanor turned sympathetic, she explained to me that I had something called bipolar disorder, there were two types, and I had type 1. Bipolar 1 is characterized by long periods of something called mania, and long episodes of deep depression. Bipolar mania in bipolar 1 patients is generally more severe and lengthy than patients with bipolar 2, who only experience hypomania, which lasts in shorter spurts and generally does not enter into psychosis. Bipolar depression in general, is much more intense and lengthy than major depression and often lasts for months at a time, patients are usually haunted by constant suicidal ideation and feelings of hopelessness, sometimes unable to get out of bed or do simple tasks such as showering or feeding themselves. In the course of 10 or 15 minutes, I learned that my anxiety and constant belief that I was in harms way, was actually a symptom of psychotic episodes brought on by mania. I learned that my ineptitude to hang on to money was a symptom of my illness. I learned that the loss of opportunity because of my inability to get out of bed, my inability to answer the phone, take the trash out, or shower, was a part of my depression. When I was first diagnosed, I felt relieved, having more of an understanding of the pain and confusion I had been dealing with all of my life felt exhilarating, early on I had hope that medication and therapy would bring me to a state of healing, but there is no real cure for bipolar disorder, it just goes on and on and on.

A common misconception about bipolar illness is that patients cycle through moods from one day to the next, a few weeks after I was diagnosed, a boyfriend of mine ended our relationship on the grounds that my bipolar made me “up one day and down the next”, but the reality is that I’m up for months at a time, and down for even longer. Feeling misunderstood is commonplace for people with mental illness, often times when I speak about my depression, hiding the cuts on my arms and holding the tears in my eyes, I am met with “oh man, me too, who isn’t depressed with the state of the world these days?!” Little do they know, I haven’t showered or left my bed in weeks, sometimes months. In the past, when I’ve shared my diagnosis with a new friend for the first time, often they say “you know I always wondered if I was bipolar because I feel up and down sometimes” as if the stress of a corporate job compares to rapid cycling through various forms of psychotic episodes. Within my psychotic episodes, I come to believe in many things that are not there, I once found myself laying in fetal position on the floor of a motel room in Joshua Tree, California, watching little brown creatures peak out from the shower curtain, sometimes I believe I’m being watched or followed, crawling to the window of my kitchen to crouch down and peak outside where the perpetrator awaits me, sometimes I believe people are conspiring to ruin my career or relationship, and don’t get me started on the bedbug phobia (even typing the words sends me into a bad state).

Describing depression feels impossible, I’m in such a haze during my depressive episodes, it’s hard for me to remember that time. Recently, I spent six month straight under a heating pad, crying constantly, watching reruns of “Girls” and reading mystery novels while I chain smoked American Spirits, it was so bad, my loved ones gathered around me for an intervention, where in I was told I must do something to get out of it. So, I started a medication that makes me have tremors and restless legs, but hey! I don’t want to die anymore! Mania is like a wave of mass annihilation that I ride until everything in my wake is completely destroyed, I spend copious amounts of money that I do not have, piles of packages begin arriving at my doorstep, I have auditory hallucinations, and sometimes shadows turn into moving figures, I can’t sleep more than a few hours at night, and electricity runs through my body, in the past, I would douse my excess energy in white wine and call every person I ever met on the phone all night long, I say things that I do not mean, I do things I do not mean, I fall in love with strangers, I fall out of love with soulmates, I become paranoid people around me are using me, taking advantage of me, until one day I find myself spinning and spinning so fast, there is nothing left to do but fall down.

The backlash of having this illness is so prevalent within my career, my anxiety over staying in hotel rooms alone, combined with risk that a lack of sleep imposes on my state of mind, makes touring challenging. More and more, as I come to understand how my illness works and what triggers it, I find it difficult to be outside of my comfort zone, I am so scared of being catapulted into a manic episode or a depressive state, I put up a lot of boundaries around me, but lately, I worry there may be too tight of a perimeter surrounding me. I don’t like being in beds that are not my own because I worry I will get bed bugs, I worry jet lag will send me into psychosis the way it has time and time again, I need at least 10 hours a sleep a night in order to not be sent into a bad state, and the endorphins of performing send me into a crash the same way that copious amounts cocaine or alcohol do for normal humans. I am so incredibly fragile when I exit my safe space, I become a total burden to the people around me, crying backstage, crying at the air-b.n.b, physically shaking over the idea someone will break into my hotel room (sometimes I stack spoons and cups on the door handle to work as an alarm system), requiring constant comfort and companionship from members of my band, I worry often that I am an exhausting person to be around, because it feels so incredibly exhausting to be me.

You may think that the symptoms of my illness are what cause the most suffering, but the truth is, it’s the lack of uncertainty that I have towards my future, never knowing when it all will strike again, there is no way for me to fully trust myself, to trust that I can handle any situation that is thrown at me, that I am prepared for tour, or the grocery store, or next weeks schedule, because within my bipolar illness, within my symptoms, I lose myself. So, I take my medicine, and complain to my therapist, and go on my walks, and get a good nights sleep, and hope that the monster living inside of me doesn’t come out to play.

most uncertainly

-A

Every 6 months or so, I am catapulted into the depths of a sweet and sticky depressive episode, my mental illness begins to persuade me of my own lack of worth, of my own lack of talent, of my own undeserving state of existence. Generally, after a couple of months, a flurry of medications, and some odd strike of luck, I am brought back to a rational state of mind, and all of my doubts subside into the darkness of my memory. Although, this time, my doubts remain before me in broad daylight, etched in stone, as I stand at the foot of a grave, placing flowers before the dreams I once held so dear. I could lie and say I have no idea how I got here, that I don’t know where it all began, that I haven’t been told time and time again by various industry figures that I am ungrateful and undeserving, like the time I received a phone call telling me that writing my own songs would be career suicide. I could lie and say I have forgotten about the plate of fettuccini Alfredo that was pushed away from me by a manager, telling me that gaining any weight would only lead to me being dropped from my record label. I’d be lying if I said I was unaffected by the ever constant scroll of comments informing me that my entire identity exists only because of the various men who have involved themselves in my career, or that I didn’t mind when the names of these men were yelled out at my shows “Where’s Alex Turner?!” I’ve always been tempted to yell back “he’s hovering in the rafters, pulling the strings on my guitar”. I’d be lying if I said each time I have been dropped by a record label, I didn’t fall into a state of suicidal ideation, of feeling like I must be just entirely worthless. So I won’t lie when about this particular time around, when the release of my third studio album coincided with my immediate release from another record contract, “the numbers weren’t great”, “I could have posted more on TikTok”, “my management failed”, “I could have toured more”, that I don’t wish more than anything that someone would just tell me straight up already “you’re not good enough”. I can’t tell if I am breaking up with my dream, or if my dream is simply leaving me for someone much more qualified.

I write to you from the perspective of a person who is utterly exhausted by it all. My sensitive nature is what makes my art what it is, but those feelings do not dwindle with the timbre of the songs final chord, they linger and grow within me as I walk out the door, and I am left alone with them and only them. In music, sensitivity is praised until its inevitable transition into difficulty, and I am sick of being difficult, I am sick of it all feeling so god damn difficult.

Am I just tired? Or am I tired of it all?

-A

As I walked through the heavy metal door frame at the entrance of the building, I was greeted by an engineer’s assistant who guided me toward the studio control room “Hi there, we are just in the middle of something here”. I stood against a wall as the man I was set to meet continued to work on mixing a song with his engineer for what felt like forever, I stood there waiting for nearly 20 minutes until he finally got up from his office chair to greet me, he was about 55 years old and wearing a t shirt and tan cargo shorts, his flip flops made a percussive beat against the ground as he led me into the kitchen of the studio space. He pulled a bar stool into the center of the room and handed me a guitar “sit here and play me something”. I pulled myself up onto the stool and began shaking with nervous energy, I had never played guitar for anyone but my roommate. I positioned my fingers into the shape of an A minor chord as my eyes followed him to the refrigerator, he pulled an avocado out of the fridge and began to cut it in half as I started to sing, I watched with slight disgust as he pooled Worcestershire sauce into the small cups of green fruit and ravenously swallowed spoonfuls of the concoction, his legs crossed, his flip flops shaking at the end of his calloused white feet. “That’s enough” he blurted with a brashness that lacked any consideration of common manners, never once looking up from his avocado. “But… the song isn’t over.” I responded “I don’t need to hear anymore. Listen, you don’t have it. You probably never will.” My heart sank, what exactly was IT, and how do I acquire IT? “Where did you say you were from?” He hadn’t asked my name, let alone where I was born and bred. “Portland, Oregon” I replied. “Right well you should probably just go back there hon, because look, I’ve worked with some of the greatest artists in the world and they all have something that you just don’t. Maybe go back to school or something.” “Thanks for coming”. He got up and walked over to the bathroom door and closed it behind himself. The same young man who escorted me in, came to grab the guitar from me and pointed to the hallway that led to the door “have a good one”. My heart heavy, I stumbled onto the sidewalk as the bright California sun accosted my eyes, shaking, I opened the scorching aluminum door of my car and began to cry hysterically. It was an hour and a half back to my apartment in stop and go traffic. Why had I never bothered to check if the AC worked when I bought this car?! The hot air that was blasting from the vents was not enough to dry my tears.

I circled the block of my Hollywood apartment building for what felt like an eternity, until I finally submitted to parking 5 blocks over, my pace growing as quickly as my heart rate, I knew I was almost home when the Seventh Veil strip club came into frame, I climbed the stairs to my second story studio apartment on Formosa Avenue, my roommate was never home, she had a boyfriend in Orange County and I had spent the last 4 nights by myself. I walked into the kitchen and grabbed a pair of scissors, I stripped off all of my clothes and stood in front of the built in mirror of our 1920’s closet vanity. I had been growing my hair out since I was 12 years old and now, at 6 years down the line, it was down to my belly button, one last tangible symbol of my childhood. I took the pair of kitchen sheers and hacked at my hair until it reached no further than my chin, accidentally slicing the back of my neck, I climbed into the dirty 100 year old shower and sat at the bottom as the water washed over my frail 98 pound body “I don’t have it”.

The Avocado Incident of 2013

-A

I received some questions from you guys in the comments so here we go! Thanks for all of the thought you all put behind these :)

Q1:

Hello, dear! Is there anything you'd like to share so far about your 4th album? I'm so excited to see you're back in the studio. 💓 Sending lots of love.

Hello! I think this album is going to be a little less depressing than the last, I’m writing with the live performance in mind.

Q2:

Have any of your favorite books or works of literature impacted your songs and songwriting, such as a literary technique like allusion or extended metaphor? (Love you Alexandra, you’re one of my favorite artists ever!)

Thanks for listening! Good question, well I think early on, because I was so young and had such little life experience, I was taking a lot from the themes of the books I was reading at the time, which were mostly classic novels like “On the Road” by John Steinbeck, “Lolita” and, “The Sun also Rises” by Hemingway, etc. Nowadays though, I have lived a lot more life so I mostly write about my own experiences. I use a lot of alliteration and literary idioms in my writing, but you know I never went to college and I never studied literature or songwriting in a proper educational setting so I’d be lying if I said it was all more than just me winging it and hoping for the best lol.

Q3:

i really admire how how your writing has evolved across your projects, do you feel your influences have changed over time, or is it more about refining a core sound? And when you’re recording vocals, do you rely more on instinct, or is there a specific intention behind how you deliver each line? 🖤

Great question! Yeah my influences evolve sort of based on how I’m feeling in my life, I rarely listen to much of anything lately because I am constantly taking notes on how things are sonically in each song and it makes it a little less enjoyable to listen to music really. With my last album, my intention from the start was to make an album based solely on my instinct without making too many references to outside influences, and then…. I ran out of ideas. As for vocals, I am trained on how to get what I need out of my voice, so I follow that along with my own instincts on how to convey the right emotion, I don’t like to do more than 2 or three takes because I start to overthink it all and I become very frustrated, I’ve learned that your voice is living there inside of your body, so finding it in the right place inside your diaphragm and throat is the best place to begin, and then using it to orchestrate the right emotion comes second.

Q4: has there been any/what books have inspired you when writing beneath the lilypad? :)

Hmmmm… Gosh it’s been over three years since I finished writing Beneath the Lilypad so this one is tricky. But, around that time I was really loving “Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead” by Olga Tokarczuk, “Farewell to the Muse” by Whitney Chadwick, and “Small Things like These” by Claire Keegan, I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I read a lot mystery novels and listen to non-fiction books on my phone a lot, if you like a juicy mystery book for fun, I love Alex Michaelides’ books.

Q5: Hi Alexandra, I have a few questions whose answers I’m curious to hear. What were some of your earliest musical influences, if you had any? What type of media inspires your creativity the most? And what themes and symbols do you naturally seem to be the most drawn into? (both in your writing process and media consumption)

Happy to hear you are back in the studio, sending lots of love xx

Lovely questions! Truthfully, my earliest musical influences were NSYNC and Hilary Duff lol but I grew up in a household of Lou Reed and the Beatles, then when I got a bit older it was The White Stripes, Nina Simone and Billie Holiday. Paintings, photography and film inspires me most, I am a very visual person. Women’s empowerment and defying the stereotype of woman as muse is what I’m most drawn to. Thanks!

Q6: If you could collab with anyone (dead or alive) who would it be?

Nina Simone or Kate Bush!

Q7: Can your BF get you on track with LDR? A collab would be amazing!

Haha! No, I would never ask him to jeopardize his professional connections for the sake of my career.

Q8: Hi Alex, I had a question: Do you remember the first time a piece of art (movie, book, painting..) made you feel truly seen, and was that the moment you decided you wanted to do the same for others? Also, can’t wait for the new album xx

Yes! The first time I saw a painting by Frida Kahlo I was so moved and I knew in that moment that was what I wanted to do. Thanks!

Q9: What will the next album be about? Similar or different from the others? so excited for it!!

Right now I’m exploring the effects of abuse I’ve suffered at the hands of men as a child and into my early twenties and how my understanding of that has changed now that I am older, I am dealing with a lot of anger right now and trying to write about my own empowerment.

Q10: i’ve heard of artists being in three categories, a writer, singer, and performer, how do all of these resonate with your experience of being an artist in our times?

I love this question! I have always considered myself a writer first because that is always what brings me the most joy and intellectual satisfaction, after that I am a singer, because it comes easily for me, which may sound egotistical but it’s the truth. I don’t think of myself as a performer at all anymore, I have no desire towards performance, I don’t need that sort of validation nowadays. In our times, for me, expression is more important than ever, expression keeps us from silence, which is deadly.

Q11: Where’s your favorite place to go?

The forest where I grew up.

hope this works

“Oh, Marvin!”

Read more

My phone is buzzing, an incoming call vibrates from inside my dresser drawer, someone is attempting to contact me even though I’ve permanently left the “Do not Disturb” setting on for months now. I do not walk across the room to relieve my cell phone from the innards of my hand me down furniture, instead I turn the heat up on my electric blanket and turn an old movie on. There is a pile of clean laundry at the foot of my bed that has been there since last week and is now covered in dog hair from my terrier laying on top of it as he stares at me, wondering when I will finally give him his walk. Piles of cardboard boxes filled with pressings of my second album are in a stack at the corner of the room, “I’m not that person anymore” I think as I peer over at the stray vinyl casing sitting on top of the pile, covered in dust. It’s been months now since I sank into this bout of depression, it all began when I was dropped from my record label at the end of October, at first I thought I was just experiencing the backlash of simple rejection, that I would get over it soon, until a few weeks ago when I realized that my daily routine had simplified into drink a cup of coffee, smoke a cigarette, watch old movie, drink another cup of coffee, smoke another cigarette, repeat, repeat. I know in my rational mind that my depression has taken over the way my brain is functioning, but that doesn’t stop me from truly believing that I have no talent and that my future is surely doomed. I don’t even long for success anymore, I see people I know headlining festivals, being nominated for Grammys, sitting sideline at Paris Fashion week and I think “that looks fucking exhausting” and “I’d rather just stay home”. The things that I used to dream of, the things I used to strive for, suddenly seem meaningless, vapid, and self-indulgent, and given that I make my living in the music industry, this isn’t completely false.

How does this kind of depression affect my life? Well, my lack of ability to answer the telephone led to the cancellation of my April tour, I don’t even bother with thinking of alternative career choices or life paths to follow, for now the sticky warmth of my uncleaned sheets pairs with my empty schedule perfectly. Emails are stacking up in my inbox and I desperately need to see a dentist, some days start off better than others, those are the days that I set out to finally clean the bathroom and pay my parking tickets, other days my boyfriend tries to peel me out of bed to force me into having some fun, he tries to show me how good the world can be, but I usually end up hiding the tears swelling in my eyes as a plate of ravioli is placed on a candlelit table. I rummage through all of the reasons I should stay on this earth and generally am left with only one, that my mother would be broken to see me go, and then I think of all of the people on earth who are suffering in ways I could never imagine, and I wonder why I can’t suck it up and move on with my life given the lack of injustices I’m faced with each day. Usually with a lengthy stint of suicidal depression such as the one I am in, I begin to worry that opportunities are passing me by, but this time, I happily allow them to travel elsewhere. Sometimes I see interviews with other musicians who claim that performing is what makes them happiest, that they have to feel the heat of an audience to get their fix, I think about the idea of walking onto a stage and nearly vomit with anxiety. What is wrong with me? Am I so ungrateful? Do I enjoy this pain? Have I taken it on myself?

The truth is, I lost my dreams a long time ago, for years I made music with the hopes that I would have some sort of validation for my body of work, I thought “if I could just be good at this, then I will reach some sort of finish line, and then, my life will have meaning.” It wasn’t long after I left home for Los Angeles that I realized, there are no finish lines in life, you just keep going on and on until you’re dead in the ground. To be honest, I never really thought of myself as a singer, as a teenager, I wanted to be a painter, I imagined sitting in my big old creaky house and making oil paintings for a living. Then, one day I realized that I could sing pretty decently and I signed up for the school talent show, it was only about 6 months or so later, that I found myself looking over record contracts with my mom at her kitchen table. When the opportunity presented itself, I realized that this was something that I couldn’t turn down, so I abandoned my decision to go to art school in San Francisco and boarded a plane to London the day after my 18th birthday. My life for years was a whirlwind, I couldn’t believe the experiences I was having, I had wedged my way into the music industry completely by accident, and I didn’t really believe that I deserved any of it. My self worth early on in my career was as low as you can imagine, I measured the perimeter of my upper thigh three or four times a day and obsessively weighed myself morning, noon, and night, my mom used to secretly take the scale with her whenever she visited, so I hid one in the trunk of my car, under my bed, and in the back of my overcrowded closet. Once the music was released, I would constantly flock to the negative comments and permanently etch each one into the darkest part of my psyche, nurturing them like heartless little flowers in the back of my mind, constantly putting myself in check, if ever I felt I might actually be worth a damn. Inevitably, this mindset led me to a downfall, and I was suddenly forced to get my state of mind in check.

After a several year long streak of luck, things had begun to slow down, I was twenty-two years old when I was dropped from my first record label, and I found myself back where I began, living in my mom’s attic in my hometown, no manager, no label. Something in me kicked into high gear then, I snapped up out of bed each day and worked on writing songs, I wanted to prove everyone wrong, I wanted to prove that I could make a good album all on my own. I had spent ages 16 to 21 being constantly dissected and contorted by people in the industry and I had no idea who I was without the ever looming opinions of the people around me, suddenly I had been spat right out by those controlling forces, and I was fucking pissed off about it. So, I wrote and I wrote and I wrote, my entire life was committed to my creativity, I dreamt of my career reaching further despite the loss of my industry connections. Soon, more or less, it happened, my second album was more successful than my first, and I began to work on a third. I signed a fancy recording contract and hired a team, the album was released and then I found myself back to square one again, no label, no management, only this time I was living in a rent controlled apartment with my boyfriend and dog.

So, here I am again, at square one, 30 years old, three albums under my belt, and I’ve had a lot of amazing things happen in my life because of my music. But now, rather than kick myself into high gear, I realize I have nothing to prove, that this is what life is, it’s a constant cycle of rinse and repeat, and I find that I no longer crave the validation I needed when I was younger. I no longer think that a successful album will bring me anything other than a paycheck, I no longer crave bigger stages, fancier dresses, brand deals or a higher follower count. I can see that this is not indeed what life is about, if it was, maybe I’d be able to get my ass out of bed, maybe I’d be in the studio, maybe I’d be shmuzing at industry events to get myself some opportunities. Time, and my depression, has made my life look so trivial, in reality, I realize I am not a musician because it’s my passion, I am not in it for the dream, I don’t do it because it is the only thing I am good at, I do it because it’s truly the only thing I ever learned how to do properly. That’s it. So now what? I guess I just need to get my ass out of bed and just do it.

trying my best

-A

I sit at the edge of my bed with my guitar, humming a melody over a chord progression of minor notes, I hum my way through a verse and chorus, until I begin to notice words popping out in front of me, a few minutes later, there is a new song half written on the pages of my notebook. I call up my producer and writing partner (who also happens to be my boyfriend), he tells me to come into the studio that day and I pack up a bag with my notebook and a toy for the dog to chew on while we are recording. By the end of the night we have the skeleton for a new song that I’m really excited about. I always feel a rush when my days in the studio end and we listen through what we made in the hours leading up, it feels like magic that that morning, this song had yet to exist. I go home hopeful that this one will be great. The next morning I sit down with a coffee and an American Spirit and log on to my Substack, I have a direct message that is so lengthy I have to endlessly scroll to reach the end of it, someone, god knows who, wants me to know how pathetic it is that I am still trying to be a musician when I clearly spend all of my energy blatantly ripping off, other, more popular artists. A notification pings when I receive a text message, it’s the engineer sending me a rough version of the song we recorded the day prior, I plug my headphones in to listen to the bounce, and my face swells in anger. I hate it. It’s terrible, I can’t believe I wasted an entire day working on this utter piece of shit.

I was twenty-one years old when a well known music publication reviewed my recently released debut album, the article was an eloquently presented tear down of not only my music, but my character as a woman, it was so life shattering that still, now, nearly 10 years later, I hesitated to scrape it up out of the tomb of the internet to quote it here. Someone had, in only two paragraphs or less, skewed my self worth and my worth as an artist for the rest of my life, and this wasn’t some anonymous, mentally unwell teenager hiding behind a computer screen, this was a well educated professional journalist who knew exactly what she was doing. For the rest of my life since, I still haven’t been able to shake the feeling that she was most likely, completely right.

In the years following this event, I managed to steer pretty clear of negative comments and interactions with journalists and people online, I released a couple of albums and for the most part people have been supportive and respectful to me in comments or over direct messages, and it goes without saying that I made a permanent effort to ignore, at all costs, the ever present scrolls of reddit forums questioning the quality and validity of my music and of me as a person because let’s be honest, nothing kind has ever been written on a reddit forum. But to my surprise and utter shock, recently, there has been an eerily large and noticeable spike in the volume of people vehemently despising me online. I write this with a smirk on my face, because in a way I find some irony in the fact that someone is spending their work break asking Chat GPT to scroll several paragraphs to the prompt “write how unoriginal Alexandra Savior is”. Without fail, each time I am confronted with this kind of calculated and devious heckling, it always comes from a completely undetectable source. When the messages have been particularly violent, I’ve been able to find people through their emails, but, then what am I going to do? Call so and so’s boss in Manchester, England to inform them that their balding employee likes to anonymously message young women online that he’s going to gang rape them in a parking lot because he thinks their music sounds like Lana Del Rey? What good will that do? This person is clearly unwell.

I have noticed within the rise of these anonymous online bullies, that without fail, almost every one of these comments has to do directly, or indirectly, with me being a woman somehow. Comparisons to other female artists based off of my haircut rather than the content of my work, constant comments on my appearance, threats to harm me with sexual violence, declarations that the music I have written was almost surely actually written by a man, people telling me to come forward about the sexual harrasment I’ve suffered, to then theorize that my silence is only proof that I am not in fact a victim, the list goes on. It feels like every morning that I log onto social media, I’m confronted with another malignant manifesto from an angered insel hiding behind a profile picture of an anime character. Has it always been this way for women? Am I crazy to wonder if this uptick in misogyny has something to do with the fact that our president is an openly woman-hating-pussy grabbing-accused rapist? I rifle through the bottomless pit of anger and frustration before me, ignoring the self doubt that inevitably ensues when confronted with these comments. I ask myself, why do we hate women? What do these people want out of this interaction? And, how do I keep making art, knowing that this many people feel this way?

Most people would say that this kind of abuse is an inevitable aspect of being an artist who releases music into the world, which is easy to say when you’re not on the receiving end of it. I don’t think it is possible to understand, or truly prepare yourself for how scrutiny can affect you, and I’ve found it personally very difficult not to be hurt by these ill intended correspondences. Not only do they inevitably cast a shadow of self doubt over me and my work, but, these words are very clearly hindering my own capability to feel safe within being vulnerable, which I have always channeled as the main source of my creativity. I want to write music that connects with people, and now, I find that I am warping my words to reveal lyrics whose job is not to express vulnerability, but to mask the reality of how I am really feeling. I have always hated this kind of songwriting, I find this type of lyricism incredibly egocentric and belittling to the listener, when the voice of a song is attempting to outsmart it’s subject, wielding deception to protect their own dignity, it fails to do what I believe music should do, unite people. So I find myself back in the recording studio, attempting to re-record and undo the parts I wrote instinctually the day before, because, what if people think it sounds like another fringe-sporting lady singer? And what if that guitar tone is too similar to the fucking Arctic Monkeys? lol. Until finally, I’ve erased and undone so much of what poured out of me instinctually, that the product sounds more like a Frankenstein-ed version of the message I was originally trying to send, the message that I feel too, just like you. So I am stuck now in a maze of self contempt, dodging the inevitability of other people’s criticisms, knowing that no matter where I go, these kind of disparaging interactions are sure to follow, if not only in my head. I do not want my sensitive nature to calcify at the hands of bullies, I want to be open so that the people who commit time to listen to my music know that, somewhere, someone feels the same way that they do. So, all I can really do without coming off as a defensive, enraged, insecure woman of the internet, is to lay down and take it, and try my best not to let it seep into my work, when all I really want is to respond with “go fuck yourself Gregg from Manchester” and “lets hear YOUR album you pussy bitch @unodos1877656545667788”. ha.

All jokes aside, when I first discovered songwriting, I made the decision to center my universe around words, words mean so much to me and the art that I make, I piece them together like a collage, to convey how I see the world, and my connection to them is one of the most meaningful things I have found in life. I’ve committed my life to the idea that words have meaning, and now, years down the line, I am suddenly expected to tell myself that words do in fact have meaning, unless they are being used against you? How can that be right? How can any of this be right?

“Artistry in The Age of the Anonymous Troll”

love, A

I have never considered myself a performer, it’s not my favorite thing to do, what I love first and foremost about my job, is that it allows me to write songs and create small worlds around them. When I was younger I often envisioned myself on a stage, as a teenager the idea of singing in front of people was enthralling, but as I get older I find that I feel a bit silly waving my arms around and whispering into the mic now that I’ve entered into my thirties. All of this aside, performance is an aspect of my career that is inevitable, I lug heavy instruments and equipment from place to place, in and out of vans, into venues and hotels, back into vans and onto planes, around 9 pm each night that I am on tour, I pull myself onto a stage to perform a set of music I have written. I stand up there with my band and make small movements with my body as I sing a series of tunes that span over the last 10 years of my career. In front of me, there is generally a small space full of people who pay about $25 and commit a few hours of their week to support my music, we look into each others eyes and have a unique sort of interaction, within this space there is a mutual respect for one another, I feel gratitude for their presence, and they go out of their way to make me feel seen and heard. This is the kind of performance that one might say “fills your cup”, a special sort of synergy between real human beings in the name of art. Performing can feel invigorating, but it can also be sort of exhausting, see within a performance, you give, you give a lot of your self and express a kind of vulnerability that most people are never expected to show, and this can inevitably make you feel, drained. That is why self care is always necessary for recuperation after a tour or even one single performance, this means, for me anyways, a lot of time alone to reconnect to the real me.

Nowadays, as time has passed and the world has gone through some dramatic changes, there are a lot of new exceptions for artists, we are no longer only expected to perform for small amounts of money on stages for real human beings, we are also expected to constantly perform for, well our cell phones, in order to market our art. It can be incredibly lonely, standing in front of a screen, putting yourself out there in the hopes that your “post” will be picked up by the algorithm, performing, alone in a room, only to, in my experience, be greeted with a small handful of kind words, and about 4 hours of air time. This, to me, just feels so incredibly lonely, I find myself talking to my phone, hoping to be seen and heard, only to wake up the next day in a flurry of embarrassment and shame, “god, am I this desperate?”. Making short form content is a lot of work, aside from the emotional element and the loneliness it causes me personally, it takes hours to make a TikTok, maybe for me, as a millennial who carried a flip phone around until I was a legal adult, social media is not second nature to me, and I used to feel real pride within that, but now I find myself in a whirlwind of envy and pity for the Gen Z kids who were born with an iPad in there hands. “You should be posting two or three times a day”. Two to three times A DAY?! The question now is not “how can I post two to three times a day” the question is: “how can I keep up with this constant state of performance expected of me, and also, make good art?”. Performance and introspection are two opposing things, I must click myself out of one, into the other, in order to keep up whatever form of sanity possible. If I am performing, I’m not making good art, because my energy is facing outwards, and to write good music, you just simply need to be facing inward.

So, this is what I mean when I say that the algorithm ruined music for me, when I wrote that piece, I was met with a lot of people saying “well that is just how it is” “you get what you ask for” they’re not wrong, that is how it is, but am I not allowed to mention that perhaps this is not how it should be? Is there anyone out there protecting artists? No, labels expect us to exhaust ourselves with social media without providing the proper infrastructure to market our work outside of these platforms, Spotify takes our art and commodifies it, paying us less than a cent to use our music for people for free, social media takes the highest grossing artists and pushes them to the front of the line, leaving smaller acts to crumble into the darkness. So, if no one is protecting us, we must protect ourselves. Being an artist, comes with the inevitability that you are most likely pretty sensitive, your job is to be tender and open, and if social media exhausts this part of yourself, there is just no way to survive.

So, I reached out to my followers and asked if they had any questions about what I mean, I am always surprised by the response. So, I’ll pivot now into answering the questions you all had.

1. “How do you deal with the definition of “working hard as an artist” transforming from “seeking inspiration, taking risks, being vulnerable” to “playing the game, writing the catchiest hook for Tiktok challenges, being tiktok-smart”? You already touched upon this in your piece but unfortunately some responses were probably like “well you gotta play the game and keep grinding instead of complaining, that’s just what the music business is, look at X and how she rose to mainstream fame from viral Tiktoks”. How to grow a thicker skin and staying true to self?”

This is the perfect question. I never intended on playing any sort of game, I intended to make music, to make art, to show a sliver of my true self through the words of a song, and now that the success of my career seems to rely on some strike of luck on an app on an iphone, well, I’d be bullshitting you if I said that hasn’t effected the way that I write music now. I don’t want to be considering TikTok trends when I’m in the midst of writing a song, I want to believe that long form albums are being heard, I want to be genuine and fully immersed in my work, social media is like the Devil on my shoulder, and I wish I could just simply swat it away. This isn’t about stubbornness either, I don’t suck at tik tok because I’m stubborn and I want my music to take off, I just simply do not like the way it makes me feel, it makes me feel anxious and lesser than, and who wants to be forced into partaking in something that makes them feel sick? We have enough of that just in our lives as adults, as adults in a capitalistic society, so yes, I SHOULD do more, but I just hate how it makes me see myself.

2. When i read your substack, i was hoping you’d give yourself some credit regarding how we don’t know what happens in ‘the silence.’ when i put out a novel, i can see little metrics that go up or plateau, but it’s only when someone messages me or i see them at the bar and they say some nice things about the work that i’m reminded that what we do exists in perpetuity, and will exist after we’re gone. you talk about how it feels to see your followers go down, but there’s a silent accretion of people who discover your work, and maybe even become minorly obsessed with it but leave no digital footprint. my alexandra savior cd spins and only i am there to witness it. consuming can be something done in total private so this could be happening right now, as you read this, and you’d never know. you’re a shy person- probably not someone who would make a grand gesture to tell an inspiration how much their work means to you. is it not reasonable for you to acknowledge you have many shy girls (and boys like me) who are silently touched by your work as well?

I get a lot of comments from people who enjoy my music and the general consensus seems to be “why isn’t a small handful of listeners enough”? It should be enough, it should be enough to not only support an artist financially, but also, it should be enough to encourage an artist to continue to be themselves. But, social media now, and not to mention Spotify, it’s a constant cycle of hunger and consumption, a post, or a song, is just simply given less time to grow, because we are onto the next thing in only seconds. So, yes, I am lucky enough to have a small group of shy girls listening to my music, and that is beautiful to me, don’t get me wrong, but, I’m just not being paid. Yes, I am a shy person, my mom says I’m an “extroverted introvert” whatever that means, and I have had a small amount of success, I should mention that this success is completely enough for me on a soul level, I had dreamt of this all my life, and the fact that I have people who listen to my songs boggles me, I just can’t seem to make a living off of it, and it takes SO MUCH time and energy to do this job, so I guess I’ll just say this : if you clocked in every day working at a cafe, slinging pancakes and pouring coffee from a pot, you love your costumers but, at the end of the day you’re utterly exhausted, then, payday rolls around, and your boss says “oh no this job isn’t really paid, but you should be grateful because so many people drank your coffee and ate your pancakes” would you go back the next day and keep working your ass off?

3. hello dear alex! this is very exciting. I really loved your writing style and choice of words in that article :)) and I’d love to ask a question or two! what kind of self do we, as a society and individuals/artists lose when our first instinct is to ask how we might appear, rather than who we might become? what parts of your artistry feel truly yours, and have you ever caught yourself pushing and shaping parts of your art to fit and to survive in an industry that prioritizes marketable femininity? If our work is consumed in seconds, does the slow act of creation take on a new kind of courage? do you think the pressure to remain “relevant” is a modern version of the old pressure for women to remain desirable— and how does that shape the art you can make? (and sorry for my poor words.) how do you navigate the conflict between wanting your art to reach people and not wanting to commodify yourself in ways that feel untrue? In a world where successful women are often framed as exceptions, not the rule, how do you stay connected to your sense of worth when success feels strategically

   limited? when you think about younger women entering the industry now, what do you hope they learn from your struggle and what do you hope they never have to learn at all? ..that’s it! I hope I asked the right questions.

Wow what a beautiful set of question! I don’t think I’ve ever felt pressured to express femininity, I’m a pretty feminine person and I think that is beautiful. I have felt pressured to mold myself early on in my career to something that might be considered popular, but I don’t feel that anymore. For younger women, I just hope that they feel that they can be themselves And shut out the noise of what everyone else is doing and what everyone else wants from us as women. I do feel pressure to remain “relevant” yes, more than anything I feel like something is slipping out of my hands, the magic that I rely on to make my art, it’s fading with the exceptions I have to be relevant.

One of my favorite things in the world is to watch movies, whether it be in my bed or at the theater with a box of peanut M&M’s, films seem to inspire me more than anything else, so here are some that I find particularly inspirational.

Belladonna of Sadness: 1973, Director: Eiichi Yamamoto

The first time I saw Belladonna of Sadness, I was 20 years old and I had just finished making my first album, the imagery of the main character Jeanne being ripped in half by the Lord of her village sat with me for years. I chose this film as the title of my record because of its theme of the loss of one’s autonomy.

Mermaids: 1990, Director: Richard Benjamin

I first saw mermaids as a teenager, it was for sale in DVD form at the grocery store near where I grew up. I’ll let you know now that Cher happens to be my favorite actress. When I watched this for the first time I related to the dynamic between a single mother and her daughters, I myself was being raised by a “quirky” single mom, and Winona Ryders character really sat with me. This is an incredible film that exudes nostalgia.

Rosemary’s Baby: 1968, Director: Roman Polanski

I should preface this recommendation with the awareness of what a terrible person Roman Polanski turned out to be in his life. That being said, Mia Farrow is the draw for me here. Ironically, given Polanski’s later status as a literal rapist, this film depicts a woman’s loss over her own autonomy when her husband transpires to have her impregnated by the devil, she is betrayed by the people she trusts most, and gaslit to believe it is all in her head. Also, the musical aesthetic of this film always gives me chills, Ruth Gordon is one of history’s best actors, and seeing New York back then is fascinating.

Harold and Maude: 1971, Director: Hal Ashby

Harold and Maude was the start of my obsession with the 1970’s, and once again another incredible performance by Ruth Gordon. Harold is a young man who has an obsession with the morbid and morose, I related so much to this as a young girl who was always fixated on her own demise. Love transpiring between a woman near the end of her life, who wants only to live life to the fullest until her 80th birthday, and a young man transfixed with ending his life too soon, brings an interesting perspective of how short life really is.

Moonstruck: 1987, Director Norman Jewison

Moonstruck is the perfect film and hands down my favorite. Cher’s performance alongside a young Nicolas Cage is phenomenal, and it gives a beautiful perspective of the sort of family oriented, working class lifestyle that seemingly no longer exists in American culture (especially in NYC). I’m also a sucker for 1980’s New York City, so this has everything for me.

Pretty in Pink: 1986, Director: Howard Deutch

Pretty in Pink began my love of film, and Molly Ringwald was the first love of my life. Andy is an artistic outcast in a small town full of preps and cool kids. To say I related to this character as a teenager is an understatement, I genuinely felt I was her, Living on the wrong side of the tracks with a single parent, she creates an identity for herself that is completely unique and in contrast to her environment. Also, I love the 1980’s, films from this period seem to particularly resonate with me for some reason.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s: 1961, Director: Blake Edwards

When I was 12, I had a pink Hello Kitty television set that had a built in VHS and DVD player, I would buy $1 DVD’s from a basket on the floor of the Blockbuster. When I brought a disc of Breakfast at Tiffany’s home one Friday night, I had no idea how much it would impact my life. I fell hard for Audrey Hepburn, like everyone else in the world, I was transfixed by her depiction of the waif-like manic pixie dream girl, Holly Golightly. Watching Audrey glide through 1960’s New York, alone, lonely, searching for love, and being unable to commit to acquiring it, I knew there was something in her that resided in me too. Not to mention her rendition of “Moon River” being on of my favorite songs to date. Everyday for probably 2 years, I woke up to get ready for school, pressed play on my Hello Kitty TV, and let Breakfast at Tiffany’s narrate my morning routine before heading off to school.

Gaslight: 1944, Director: George Cukor

I’m sure you’ve heard the term “gaslighting” but do you know how it all started? Gaslight in my opinion is one of cinemas best films, and if you’ve ever been in a manipulative relationship, it’s a must watch for sure. Also, you’ll notice a very young Angela Lansbury.

Rear Window: 1954, Director: Alfred Hitchcock

My boyfriend and I have watched every Alfred Hitchcock film that we can get our hands on, his career spanned over 50 years, and “Rear Window” is one of his top 3 best, in my opinion. Aesthetically it’s vibrant and entertaining, and the character Jimmy Stewart plays is strangely who I relate to most in this film, if you’ve ever been consolidated to your apartment due to illness, like I have, you’ll notice a fixation on your neighbors comings and goings becomes an inevitable part of your past time. Also, Grace Kelly?! You kidding me?!

Hope you enjoy, feel free to ask questions in the comments <3

-A

Read more

Read more

It is morning in Los Angeles after the first rain of the season, most days on my city street, the mornings are painfully loud, but today it is completely silent as drops of water drip down to the cement from vibrant bougainvillea petals. Today, like most days, I sit down at the breakfast table and open my notebook, I stare down at its empty pages and pick up a ballpoint pen, I touch the pen down to the paper and scour my brain for something to write, “It rained last night, I gained three pounds, I should walk more, I should eat less, it rained last night.” I set the pen back down as a sharp pain jolts through my wrist and hand, that’s all for today I guess, I close the notebook and walk back into my bedroom, I pull the covers over me and turn on a television program.

Read more

I wake up to a diamond shaped beam of sun hitting my face from an opening in the curtains, the first thing I do is peer over to the clock at my bedside. I swing my legs over the mattress I share with my boyfriend, onto the wood floor of our 1920’s apartment. I make my way towards the bedroom door and into my kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee, I only drink half of the coffee and pour it out once it’s gone cold. There is something captivating to me about the early hours of the day, after waking up from a long night of dreaming, half in slumber, half in the real world. It feels as if I am able to see the doorway to my dreams shut tightly and seal itself for good. I set the day out in front of me, there are one of two choices that determine how it will unfold, I either reach for my guitar and notebook, or, I unplug my phone from the wall and open up my social media apps. In other words, I choose either to write down and keep my dreams forever, or let them dry up with the morning dew.

A myriad of Tik-tok stars and wealthy socialites-turned models-turned actresses-turned indie musicians, plaster the walls of my mind, as I move my thumb slowly over the glass of my iPhone 14. Almost all of them seem to be sporting the same oval rimmed fake glasses and taupe lip liner combos that are advertised to me as I scroll further. “Perhaps, I need to buy this for people to find my music?” I wonder, as I fall deeper into the trance that is swiftly consuming me. My inner monologue starts like rapid fire when I notice I have lost a few hundred followers from my profile, “what is so different about me in comparison to these girls, whose careers seem to be thriving?” “Life seems so easy for them.” “I wonder if I am too old now?” “If my music is just no good?” “I wish my parents were rich.” “I wish I was rich.” “Should I be writing more like them?” “Will I ever write again?” “Did someone put a hex on me to give me low streaming numbers and album sales?” Suddenly, I come to, gasping for air as if violently released from a deep and cynical hypnosis.

“Who the fuck have I become?” “I used to be a rational person.”

The world is crumbling, you don’t need me to tell you that, and it is not lost on me that I fit the modern trope of the “self involved-mediocrely talented-white girl with a fringe-singing somberly in cursive”. I don’t mean to imply that I am any better than all of these girls, following whatever new fad du jour is circulating social media. My problem, I fear, is that whatever fad I’ve been following, has led me astray, by becoming seemingly irrelevant. So let’s set that aside, as I continue to tell you what I mean here, about the algorithm and how it’s affecting the way I see being an artist moving forward. It seems to me, behind calculated advertisements parading as ‘culture of the moment’ hides a collective, deepening sense of impermanence and capitalistic desperation by the music industry and society as a whole. Most likely because, well, no one’s buying music, so how do we sell them something they already get for free? In this industry, there has always been the “top-tier” artists, a handful, maybe a dozen, of pop’s biggest names. The problem for most of us now, is that those names have vastly monopolized music and culture as a whole, because, the algorithm is feeding them to us, them, and only them, well if you fail to include interspecies friendships, makeup tutorials, and videos of strangers yelling at each other on airplanes. Intentionally or not, it seems as though everything in the world is combining to collectively jump the line, ahead of us little guys.

So, how does this affect the way I make art?

An album, can take years to finish. Half a decade in my case, 5 years of grueling efforts to finish a twelve song record with absolutely no budget, it honestly took so long because I was constantly collapsing into emotional exhaustion at the risk of it’s potential failure. Then, when finally completed, the music is released, or, uploaded, onto social media platforms. Only to be grazed over by a small handful of strangers while they take their morning dump. Finally, after my life’s work is given a .5 second chance at catching on, it is seemingly lost forever. At least, that’s how it seems to me. Within my endeavors as an artist, I try my best to be vulnerable and honest in my work, but nowadays, I notice that more than anything, I am constantly wondering how I can be, and stay, relevant. The fact is, the algorithm, throw away culture, and the progression of social media culture as a whole, has personally led me to a creative impotence that is threatening my future as a professional musician.

What do I have to do for my work to be seen and heard?

“Keeping up with the Jones’s”, I never really understood that saying until recently. I’ve never been accustomed to conformity, I never had to, I chose to be an artist, artists are meant to be different, we are meant to challenge the status quo and live a life of freedom and abundant self expression. The only problem with that choice, is that at the time that I made it, I seemed to overlook the fact that historically, artists are also usually broke. Whoops! Didn’t think that one through. When you’re 16 years old, which is the age I was when I entered into the music industry, you’re sleeping each night on a bed you did not pay for, in a house where you eat and live rent free, so naturally, a life of pain and struggle in the name of Art, seems quite romantic. Fast forward fourteen years, and I’m just concerned about making enough to pay my health insurance and car payment this month, suddenly, the Jones’s seem like they have the right idea.

Now, as I watch images of strangers blink over my screen in rapid succession, I wonder where all the art has gone from my life? I see so many young girls, all dressed the same, some of them posing on cars, some of them rolling on the floor in bustier ensembles while whisper-singing sexual innuendos into a microphone. As I move on from one image to another, I incur a set of knowledge I never cared to acquire in the first place. Suddenly, I know which sort of eyeliner an ex-child star is wearing to the Grammy’s. I suddenly scramble to find out how I might obtain this eyeliner for myself. “What the fuck am I saying?” Next, I watch a contradictory set of performances by musicians that are claiming to be “hard working down-home Americans, just like me!” at the same time, these people hold a place as some of our nation’s many billionaires. I watch some of the most talented and successful women in the world spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to have their skin pulled back behind their ears and stapled to their skull, to then sing three minute ballads about “inner beauty”. What are we doing?! Actually, the question has to be who is doing this to us?

I throw my phone across the room as a light bulb comes into frame over my head, this is not about how I might stay relevant as an artist, this is about how I might stay relevant as a woman, who also happens to make art. Once again, my gender identity rears its ugly head.

It is not lost on me that in this society, women, are encouraged to see each other as mortal enemies. I also understand that The System these social media platforms are running is actively calculating to prey on my insecurities. I feel shame as I scrape up what crumbs of memory I still have of my childhood, and wonder how I too, fell so victim to this patriarchal mind game. What seems to have multiplied this sickening impulse of self-comparison, is the constant merry-go-round that is having to perform for social media in order for my music to reach people, because whatever I’m doing does not seem to be reaching people, and the problem with that is, if my music doesn’t reach people, I won’t be able to pay my rent. So, I’m plagued now, with another choice, do I cave in? Slather on some lip gloss from the Tik-Tok shop, strike a sexy pose, smile to the camera “Listen! Look! Listen! Please! I beg of you!”, or, shut out the noise of instagram, try my best to create quality work? For me, these two things cannot coexist. This can’t be right? There has got to be a way to reach people without regurgitating a constant stream of clickbait in an attempt to compete with literal billionaires… What about Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Holiday, Kate Bush, Georgia O’keefe, Maya Angelou, Simone de Beauvoir, Frida Kahlo, Joan Didion? Were these women “Nepo Babies”? Did they too, feel pressured towards lip injections and GLP-1’s?

I am not resentful or bitter towards beautiful, rich, confident, and successful women in music and their careers. What I envy most, is their ability to, in some very mysterious way, effortlessly take over every inch of the space we as artists must broadcast our work through, in order to make our own living. Women should be able to be sexy, women should be able to be rich, women should be able to modify their own bodies in whatever way they please. Your body, your life, your choice. I’m not casting judgment on their characters (well, aside from the billionaires). But what is happening when talented women with completely average lineages, average incomes, average physical traits, are overlooked? And why does it seem like all of these things are not allowed to exist together side by side? Must we abide in such opposing categories? Why must we exist in categories at all? For me, it is so incredibly bleak that in the year 2025, in a world where women are meant to be given equal respect and opportunity as men, that somehow, our sexual viability still plays such a major role in the success of our careers. It is not as if any actual person is reciting this to me, in plain English, that I need to be sexier, no one is blatantly informing me that my looks could be improved, no-one is handing me a pair of booty shorts and telling me to my face, that if I show my belly button and circle a stripper pole it might help album sales, no one, other than this enigmatic force that is the internet via social media. So yes, I suppose it is all just in my head, which is spinning uncontrollably, grasping at how to conquer the beast that is The Algorithm today, in order to survive.

thealgorithmmademedoit

-A