5x5.
Lately, people keep asking me if I have vices. There’s this genuine disbelief when they find out I can take or leave drinking, rarely smoke weed, or do anything that makes you feel like you’re in a long-term relationship with your existential crisis. It’s like they’re looking at me like, “Wait, you don’t have a vice? How are you even functioning?”
The truth is, I do have a vice. In a world where everyone’s got their poison, mine is work. I don’t do it just because being a musician means I’m broke (though that definitely could be a reason in it of itself), and I’m not doing it to impress anyone. I do it because, like some toxic ex, work is the only thing that makes me feel 5x5—whole and centered like I’m not about to collapse in on myself. My old therapist once said I have “productive defense mechanisms.” Basically, I’m running away from my feelings one practice session at a time.
When I was younger, I had all kinds of other vices—just like everyone else. The adolescent experimentations were as mandatory as bad self-cut bangs and skinny jeans. Back then, all South Florida kids treated our bodies like testing grounds for things that would make our parents file insurance claims. I spent many of my days in a haze of flesh and medicine cabinet chemicals like an alchemist trying to turn self-destruction into something profound. But when everything around you is a strip mall or a strip club, you end up looking for meaning in dark places.
And if I’m being honest, my drug of choice was always sex. It started as something forced upon me, then morphed into something I used to please others, until eventually, it became something that felt like control. And damn, I drank deep from that cup. For a while, it tasted like power, like I could manipulate the world one body at a time. Power feels pretty damn good until you realize it’s really just a bandaid on a wound that never fully healed.
I have had a hard time confronting this. I don’t often speak of my childhood with friends, particularly new ones. I didn’t even talk about it with my family until I was an adult. I couldn’t stand the thought of pitying eyes or someone feeling the urge to wrap me in a metaphorical blanket. As my mother always says “Even as a child you never needed me” whatever that means. Morality, self-worth, healing, and guilt all wrestle in my head like some late-night talk show panel. I don’t have answers. I just know that sometimes it’s hard to tell whether I’m moving forward or just running in circles, hoping the next thing I do will finally make me feel something other than tired.
I recently was asked to write about my trauma by Darius. His latest record “Legend of e'Boi (The Hypervigilant Eye)” contains a booklet of collected accounts of Black artists and their way of talking about their trauma (it also includes really wonderful resources for those in need). When I was asked, I was both honored and terrified. As someone who has experienced abuse in several forms as a child, I didn’t know how to form words, so like everything else, I made it music. My poem “I spent time, listening, and opening. Keeping myself open. When the fear came up, I would listen some more, and let it pass. It felt like tightness in my throat; like fog in my lungs. It felt like tears. It turned into gratitude and this:”. is an allegorical, rhythmic account of how I feel in my body today—this constant tension between wanting to feel everything and nothing. The hunger for flesh, for connection, is always there, lurking just beneath the surface. But I keep it distracted, telling myself I’m "bettering myself" while I'm often just running away from it all.
[I won’t post the poem, here. It’s locked away behind the purchase of Darius’ record, and honestly, I think you should hear the work before you read it. Though, dear reader, if you truly want to read it, you know how to reach me.]
So, here I am—constantly caught between trying to outrun my past and pretending I’m in control of my future. I keep chasing that next high, that next project, the next "better version" of myself, hoping that somewhere in all the distractions, I’ll find a sliver of peace. But the truth is, I’m not sure peace is something you can find—maybe it’s just something you learn to live with, like an old scar that you can’t remember how you got but has never really faded. The more I push through, the more I realize I’m not escaping anything. I’m just surviving. Maybe that's the best I can hope for. And maybe the answer is somewhere in the music. But for now, I’ll keep making it, keep working, keep running, and keep wondering if the next thing I do will finally make me feel less tired—less of everything else, and just more me.
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