Issue #33
Performance
Songs and buildings aren’t actually fully formed until they are witnessed. Buildings without users are empty shells and songs without ears are private poetry. Budding songwriters and architects often forget to include this important step in their process. Emerging architects might forget to include entourage or scale figures in their renderings. A scale figure can add context, intended use, and most importantly scale to a design drawing. Without entourage, drawings center the building instead of its users, and we wouldn’t have new architecture without people. It is a classic rookie mistake.
Similarly, unshared songs lack the essential vulnerability and connection that comes from performance. You can work on a song for years without sharing it with others. When you share a song, the ownership shifts from mine to ours. This shift is significant and impossibly scary, but a song isn’t complete until it happens. Before releasing my debut record Hex Sign, I held on to those songs for upwards of five years. In sharing them, I had to come to terms with losing control of my songs, their meaning and their reception.
Last week I debuted my newest music project, Terrazzo, in our first full-band live performance in Brooklyn, NY. It was significant as this is a band I formed on my own terms, after years of working solo, after a terribly exploitative recording contract I signed over eleven years ago. That contract still haunts me to this day and stains everything I do creatively. So this performance was personally significant, terrifying, and exhilarating. After writing dozens of new songs, rehearsing together for one year, and inviting everyone I knew, all that was left to do was rip that band-aid off. And that’s just what we did.
It was amazing to see a room full of friends show up and witness some songs after years of writing alone in the dark. There’s nothing else quite like that feeling. I forgot how much I missed performing! Here are a few of my favorite moments from the show.
Terrazzo debut at Rubulad 11/4/2025
We shared laughs, prize ribbons, cookies, new music, and the stage with the incredible @blanketteband @goodcryband_bk and @parttimetrauma. What a lovely night! Thanks @rub_ulad and all the friends that came out 🩵
See you soon??