notes on camp & realising things
A prevailing feeling I’ve had over my entire life is the feeling of fighting against something. Like trying to wade through a thick grass field. Directionless but just trying to move forward. This blind ambition has led me to some pretty unbelievable places. I started recording and releasing music when I was 12. I moved to LA when I was 19. I never gave a second thought to school or a more realistic life, I just kept moving.
It hasn’t been an endless well of forward momentum. Almost as regularly as I’ve found myself in these incredible situations, I’ve also found myself at the bottom of the cliff. Last year when Life On The Edge Of You came out I had a small breakdown of sorts. It was a confusing time. I was and still am really proud of the music but it felt like I was hitting a dead end. Like I’d reached a clearing in the grass and found nothing.
The small shows at Rough Trade in New York and London were revelatory and validating, though. It had been so long since I’d played my songs to people that far away from home. When I started making music there was no promise that anyone outside of my friends would hear it, or that I could ever turn it into a career. I wrote songs because I felt I had to, and recorded them just because I could. Meeting some of you at these shows reconnected me with a feeling I’d forgotten.
I think I’d lost a sense of community with the music I’d been working on the last few years. I’d isolated myself - not really playing shows, rarely working with others. I was releasing music in a way that was rarely satisfying for me, and often discouraging me from making it in the first place.
Last weekend I was at Camp A Low Hum. It’s a festival in Wellington that I would attend (and usually perform at) every year as a teenager, but had finished in 2014. This year was the first time back since then. I’ve been having a difficult time trying to explain how much being back there meant to me. I tried my best to say it onstage but couldn’t get the words out without crying.
Those few years I got to attend Camp - I was a gay, music-obsessed teenager who didn’t really feel like he fit in anywhere. The festival had given me a place where I felt like I belonged. Every year I could rely on that weekend and the endless list of bands I’d never heard of. It was something to look forward to, a place where I could see people just like myself and feel like everything was going to be just fine.
I don’t think I’d grasped just how much that had changed the course of my life until I was back there.
I was surrounded by just about everyone I had looked up to, and everyone who had been so generous with their friendship and time, letting me into their lives. Ian Jorgensen, who runs the festival, had booked me for my first shows and listened to my music before anyone paid any mind. He had taken me seriously and pushed me to do more.
When my friend Jon asked me how I’d been these last 10 years, I told him that I felt I was finally making music for the love of it, not just to fulfil my own potential. I hadn’t said that out loud before. I’ve been making music for the feeling it gives me in the moment and the clarity I feel the day after. For the emotional release of putting it out into the world, and the joy of playing it in front of people. What a beautiful thing!
New song this week btw…
Here are some songs from my favourite bands I saw over the weekend:
Keeskea - Red Shirt, Green Socks
Model Home - New York is Thataway, Man
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