2016-2019: Pixie Period (Part 2)

Probably one of the biggest tricks I learned was how to work with the auto-chord function in FL Studio, allowing me to get as wild as i want with chord progressions, no music theory required. An expert often can tell me more about what I do with my music than I can, I've always had a very primitive, animalistic approach that still somehow works: just throw chords together and if they kiss well, keep them together. With the auto-chord function, I abused and continue to abuse that technique, now with less clustering than my previous albums up to this point in time (Mid 2017). Although  recently I've started to return to manually inputting my own chords again sometimes, mostly just to add one more note or to invert certain chords in specific ways that sound good for that song. I've also saved a preset of Steely Dan's infamous "mu major" chord for eventual use.

In addition, during this period I began amassing a serious giant collection of drum samples; my current collection probably sits somewhere in the tens of thousands at this point, or even more, I genuinely don't know because I haven't even come close to hearing all my samples yet!! But that allowed my sound design to really start branching out and becoming very varied, because I love love loooove wierd sounds to put into my music, sounds I've never heard in other songs before. That would start happening more soon also.

This also marks the beginning of the period when I stopped writing my songs on paper and began writing them on text files on my computer and my phone, a practice I continue still to this day, as my songs are well archived and have no chance of getting lost, even if I lose my phone.

With these skills and tools at my disposal, and my desire to try to be a little more freewheeling and spontaneous with my songwriting, not even a couple months passed before I began writing/composing/recording new material again while still at the transitional housing complex, this time in pursuit of a simpler, dancier. poppier direction than previously. I was initially extremely productive and by the end of April I already had 4 new songs created in full: "My New Big Crush", written about the relationships all my friends were in at the time, "Tangent", a song about my autism and the start of my childhood awareness of it, "Rules in Excorcism", adapted from a song I wrote in 2016 called "Healing From Your Sickness" and musically inspired by "Third Uncle" by Brian Eno, and "I Don't Work Quite Well Yet", a song I made start to finish in a single day. I was really proud of the quality of this new work. I could really feel myself growing as an artist.

The music for tracks "Feed The Demon Love", "Beautiful Blue Kool-Aid" and "Living Ghosts" were also finished while at transitional housing but it wouldn't be until later in the year that I would be able to add vocals for them. "Whisper My Head" marked the return of another old track, this time repurposing an old instrumental from the Kansas City 7up period, in particular the one I thought had my very best melody of all my old tracks. I simply slowed it down and added new songs and sounds over it (I never saved a proper project file for it, since this is back when I used a demo version of FL Studio). The lyrics for it were a mash up of several unfinished shorter songs lying around, which I will often do if lyrical bits which I think are strong enough on their own I am unable to further develop. This allows for songs where the subject and meaning are left vague to the extent where even I can't tell you what its about! I leave it all in the project of the listener and the journalist. It's a technique I use every now and then and I love the songs that I come up with when it happens.

In June/July 2017 I was kicked out of transitional housing after a really bad panic attack that apparently upset one of the shittier people on staff, and for about a month period I was again unstable in terms of housing. I lived for a short time between a friends house and secretly couching in someone's apartment before a house of 4 other trans women back in my old haunt of Gresham, OR took me in in late July/early August. I lived there until late January 2018 and the new songs without vocals at that point, along with the vocals to many other songs, were recorded there in a very small closet.

My seventh album, Feed The Demon Love, was released on January 1, 2018. The cover art dates from a period of time where I did sex work and posed for/acted in porn, taken from the original shoots I did. All of them were taken in a BDSM dungeon where I was tied to chains and flogged by the person shaded in red on the cover, once a very dear friend of mine who I no longer have contact with.

I recorded probably 2-3 more albums worth songs for a variety on miscellaneous projects both finished and unfinished while I lived at that house, the finished projects wouldn't see release for a long time though. In January 2018 I started staying with a person I was dating for a short time in downtown Portland, where I went to Job Readiness Training classes at my homeless support resource center and attempted to apply for work at The Roxy diner, where my partner's other partner was the head chef. They often had cartoons and britcoms playing on their computer at their apartment, and while there I watched a lot of Red Dwarf, Dave The Barbarian, Are You Being Served?, and Blackadder, with the last one being my particular favorite to watch, despite a lot of its content. It was while watching it that I first heard the slang term "whoopsie" used in reference to a gay/queer person, and it was a word that I was intensely delighted by hearing. I logged it away in my head for future use.

In November 2017 I heard the album Tin Drum(1981) by Japan for the first time and was absolutely floored by how fractured, spacious and esoteric the sound design for that album was. I immediately became inspired to create music in a similar vein and made each track in order of sequence, one after another, in very quick succession. Only "I Feel Yr Heart Down There", finally finding a home for itself on one of my albums, was the only old track.

For the lyrics, I wrote completely stream of consciousness for almost every track, not caring about direction of subject, but ultimately working under a loose theme of the world and society as it is being in an immense state of flux. "Freak Impervious" was a track originally written for a different project that I brought over to this one, and "Mx. Unstoppable", "Afterlife Journal #4"(inspired by the music of Laurie Anderson) and "About The Frustration"(inspired by the lyricism of Kurt Cobain) were either already written or separately written. I had the album finished by about the time Feed The Demon Love had just released, and I had also built up a new backlog of unreleased/finished material that spanned roughly 3-4 albums worth. 2016-2019 was an extremely prolific period for me as a composer and songwriter.

I released my eighth album, In Various States of Jenga, in July 2018, and over time it seems to have also built up a small reputation of its own. It's definitely the most different and jaded of my albums of this period, and sometimes I've even considered it my favorite, at least from then. I definitely need to return to this style and aesthetic for a future release, there's so much exploratory potential for it in my brain.

The rest of 2018 kept me very busy. In addition to moving between housing situations again frequently, I also became very involved in local activism, becoming part of the Occupy ICE movement in Portland, Oregon and spending a lot of time at actions connected to that camp and the loose organization of people that it made up. They essentially became my main community during that time, and there was a real essence of solidarity and support amongst everyone there towards the cause we were there for. I met some beautiful people there, all whom I miss.

From February to May 2018 and again from August to September 2018 I stayed at the house of guitarist Skarrlett Krow, now known as Robin Addams, who was very kind and supportive to me and my music, and I made very frequent use of the recording/computer space in the attic for my several ongoing projects, including much of the music of my next phase, which was already well into play. I finished In Various States of Jenga there and worked well into the night multiple times on material for my next four albums.

In September 2018 I went back to community college for the fourth and most recent time, attending classes until April 2019. Because I was homeless, I received enough financial aid to allow me to finally afford to get off the street and into housing that I was paying for myself. I originally stayed in a room in a really nice house in Beaverton, OR, in a neighborhood that got really dark at night and seemed very separated from much of the rest of civilization (I had a particularly dark winter there). In February 2019 I moved to a two bedroom apartment with other queers closer to my age, and it's there I would live and work on music for the next 7 months.

I desired sometime around the beginning of that point to return to the original spirit of my Dandilionheart album; to make an album that was loud and proud and unashamedly queer once more. I had, at that point, many of the songs that would make it onto that album already written, and simply needed music to match it. The earliest of that music, what would eventually become "A Kingdom Walking", dated from around the time I started work on In Various States of Jenga. The rest of it was recorded across the entirety of 2018, with the album being finished towards the end of the year in the Beaverton house.  

Roughly a quarter of the material that would end up on this album originated on a previous project that I made most of while at Skarrlett's house called You Want Better, scrapped due to its lack of focus and strong enough songs. "Aoo", "Mustard Hair", "One Silver Watch", "Walking In a Skeleton" and "Sleep on Me" came from that, and were already finished when they became added to the album. The remaining unreleased tracks from that project include tracks titled "Wine Glass", "Vortex II" and "Pixie Kid and Crazy Wolf Uncle". 

At one point during my housing instability in 2018 I was staying at my friend Veronyx's house, the place where I released Jenga from. Right around that very same time I composed and recorded "Mary O. Nett" and "We May", two songs I still feel very happy about. Veronyx also took all of the pictures that I used to create this new project's album art with.

The remaining songs were completed mostly at Skarrlett's house during the second time I stayed there, including "Only Divine The Queen", "What My Heart Looks Like", "Where The Wild Things Aren't", and "Porcelain"(a song dating from 2016). "This Is Where, Part I" I actually composed and recorded in a house I was house/petting for in a friend's stead; I made the stretch to actually transport my entire desktop computer over to it and had it set up in the physical therapy office for this express purpose.

While all this was happening, I was being courted by a bandleader/music producer who was connected to the music industry and took an interest in my work through an introduction by Skarrlett. This led to an off and on correspondence for about a year and my first ever live performance in Seattle in December 2018. I performed the unreleased "Mary O. Nett" there, as well as "I Don't Work Quite Well Yet", "I Get A Rise(The Trans Holy One)" "Rules In Excorcism", "Tell Me I'm Cute Again Cause I Forgot", "In Various States of Jenga", "Nature is Projecting" and "Feed The Demon Love" in a straight 40-minute set.

I played to an almost completely empty pit, but it was an exhilarating experience nonetheless. The producer said that I stole the show in comparison to the 3-4 acts that performed that night. I got a couple of rly excited ppl asking about my work after the show. I spent the remainder of my weekend in Seattle with my friend Irkalla Lustre and had a lovely time; Seattle, for all of its problems, is a city I just enjoy existing in whenever I'm there. It always feels interesting and I always have dreams about a fictional version of it. I don't know when I will perform live again, but if the resources were provided to me once more I'd absolutely love to. I have so many more newer songs I'd love to bring to the stage.

In any case, my ninth album, Absolute Whoopsie, was released in 2019. I remember it getting a pretty enthusiastic reception from the people that shared it on twitter; my good friend william_ called it "the first amazing gay-as-fuck album of 2019". It was probably the closest to the kind of reception to my albums that I wish I always got. It felt pretty good !

Starting in the middle of 2019, I'd finally begin to make my next stylistic transition. I was now well established as a musician with a clearly stylized sound and had more than enough albums under my belt. Now it was time to take those in new directions, particularly with my writing, which I was continuing to refine. This next period will be talked about on my next entry.....!