It’s probably best I start with where I am and why. As I’ve fallen back into the habit of anxiously refreshing the front page of my news app, waiting with bated breath for the next sign of the end times, I’ve done it, predominantly, from a perch in the hills of Nice that my girlfriend and I have deemed “The Lost & Found Terrace,” an L-shaped balcony outside our room, furnished from what’s been left on curbs or sold for under 15€ on the French equivalent of Craigslist. It didn’t dawn on me until recently that perhaps its name is made even more appropriate by its proprietors: one of us back home after running away, the other far from it – home – and questioning its existence. But the skies are mostly blue, the sun never so oppressive, and the winds come in off the sea before a storm, so we always know when to take in the furniture.
For those of us who have escaped tragedy these past six months, there’s become a sort of shorthand for how we share our stories with a world so marked by destruction and death. “All things considered,” “I really can’t complain,” are now commonplace in every interaction, and I’ve had more than a few conversations about that sneaking suspicion of the other shoe dangling perilously overhead. The truth is I’m in love and, while not free from troubles, I’m only rarely jostled on an existential plain by anything other than what I see on my smartphone.
Of course, this is privilege – the ability to ignore the immense amount of injustice outside your peripherals – and it is exactly what so much of this year’s battles have been about. It’s privilege that lets us pretend it’s okay to throw frat parties in the middle of a pandemic, to destroy our earth in search of comfort and corporate earnings, to wish those “rioters” in the streets would just behave better.
I’ve used my privilege to, among other things, escape my country, chase love and happiness, spend my days reading and contemplating the universe while my home literally and figuratively lights itself on fire. But if all that reading and contemplating isn’t just meant to wax my precious sense of enlightened self, at some point something has to be done with it.
I call myself an artist, so I have to believe that my words and my music are, at least in part, what I have to give. Even, or, perhaps, especially, if my privilege makes me uncomfortable with what I haven’t suffered.
You see, a musician who hasn’t been playing music or talking about it on the internet in an age where anyone with internet access can call themselves a music maker – and no one can actually go out and play it – is what, exactly, if he’s not posting five times a week?
Because here’s the thing: I fucking can’t. I just can’t.
It makes my stomach turn thinking about it: over-posed photos with only a line and a half of time to catch your attention, nothing of value except a chance to say, “Hey look at me!” And even when we have something worthwhile, we get lost in the scroll anyway, only acknowledged by a double-tap that takes two seconds to scroll past.
There were a few precious weeks where me and my fellow white friends stopped talking about ourselves, stopped announcing an announcement of a new something that would be coming in a week or two because we all realized that whatever games we’ve been forced into playing for attention and a sense of purpose were simply meaningless in the face of much larger conversations.
But, of course, the internet has returned to form, and we’ve all gone back to playing the cards we’ve been dealt. Especially for us artists – but also for everyone – it’s the only thing we know and the only thing we can cling to: sharing.
So, I don’t begrudge the internet or social media or Mark Zuckerberg all that much. Because choosing only to see the bad that’s come out of these new ways of connecting is just another way of hiding behind what keeps us from moving forward.
Social media may have ruined the world as we knew it – but it’s also given us hope, and strength, and knowledge, and awareness, and a call to arms in a way that simply wasn’t possible twenty, let alone sixty years ago. And, let’s be honest, did we really like the world as we knew it all that much anyway?
So, me, how I’m re-learning to use these brand new tools – tools that we’re all still adjusting to – how I’m re-learning to use my words without abusing my privilege, is by refusing to use them to beg for attention. I will only share what I think is worth sharing because as much as I believe in my music and words, I have to trust that those of you who find it important will find what I’m doing and share it yourselves.
Because at the end of the day, that’s what I believe in. People. And sharing. And in an age where we literally cannot physically touch one another, thank god for Internet! Because in these past six months, I’ve made friends from all over the world, beamed into the living rooms of folks as far and wide as Chile, Brazil, Germany, and Missouri. You’ve shared with me how my songs have helped, and we’ve shared in the common craziness of this crazy ass year. And, as someone who simply wrote all this stuff alone in his bedroom, it’s absolutely fucking mind-blowing and only possible thanks to the same social media we all want to blame for all the ills of the world. They’re just tools. I’m going to try to use them for good.
So, I have a new single coming out. The song is called “Somewhere Else,” and it’s out everywhere on October 16th. It’s the title track to my album, and I wrote it right before I left home a few years ago without knowing where it was I was going, just that it was time to leave. That was back in 2016. Funny how we always seem to repeat ourselves.
What I learned that first time is that the somewhere else I was looking for was simply a place among people who saw and understood me. And as I sit here on my Lost & Found Terrace looking back on another somewhere else, another one-way ticket that landed me exactly where I never thought I was totally supposed to be, I think what I’ll do is keep writing and sharing as best as I can, and trusting that my words will be heard and understood by whoever needs them.
To those who keep reading, I send my deepest thanks. Because as I re-learn to open my phone without wanting to throw it out the window, I see your messages, and I see you, and I’m inspired to keep going.