I have never established where I have lived.
I mean, I’ve had addresses—mail gets delivered, Amazon finds me, bills still show up—but where I live? That’s been harder to name. I’ve also never established where I belong. And I’ve done everyone a favor by not pretending otherwise. I belong nowhere—nowhere but here. This moment. This breath. This beat. Everything else feels like guesswork.
There are a few reviews I haven’t written lately, and not because I didn’t try. I just couldn’t fake it. The albums didn’t move me. I didn’t want to force a take, twist up some performative opinion just for the sake of a post. So I waited. Sat with the silence. And then something hit me—not an album, but a feeling. Music at its core.
I just finished watching the Sonic Highways episode about Los Angeles. I’m from the Southwest. And god, that episode hit like a goddamn desert thunderclap. It cracked something open. I wanted to fist-pump the air, shout something ugly and joyful. People talk about LA like it’s a vibe or a brand. But the desert that surrounds it? That silence? That absence? That’s the real song. If you were born here, or raised near it, you know what I mean. It’s dry and dusty and brutally honest. You don’t find melody here—you dig for it. You carve it out of the void.
The desert asks questions. It dares you to answer. It holds nothing and everything at once.
To see the beauty in the dust.
To see the fullness in the empty.
To see the life in the rust.
Those are the people I belong to. The ones who don’t need much. Who don’t thrive on glamour or noise or padded resumes. We’re the musicians and makers who crave substance. Who need life beyond the job title, beyond the algorithm, beyond the applause. You don’t choose this kind of hunger. You’re born with it—or maybe you’re shaped by it. You grow up where the sun tries to kill you and the land forgets your name, and you still write songs in the sand like someone might read them.
The desert makes you breathe harder. Makes you tougher. It leaves a silence so loud you have to fill it with meaning. Some of the strongest hearts I know were raised in this kind of emptiness. We survive where things shouldn’t. We create where nothing is handed to us. And yeah, maybe we’re pests to the cities. But to ourselves?
We’re fucking invincible.
Deeper Cuts 