APOLOGIST – Everything Feels Brighter CD-R

i have recently talked myself into believing in heaven- or at least- believing that the last time i saw the dead isn’t the last time i’ll see them- or at least- imagining myself on a subway platform watching the doors close on the first half of my adult life and believing that it’s hurtling forward to somewhere else, and not to nowhere.

this year, i celebrated 10 years off of heroin. this week, i will get married. this year i lost 3 people, each critical facets of my life- divided from me now by the line i am creating in my life and the line between this world and the next.

i wanted to write an album about what it felt like to be in my mid thirties, what i felt i lost and what i felt i gained. then, these people died and i realized i was really writing an album about them, saying goodbye to them.

when i was living amongst my dead, i could never have imagined myself surviving so many years beyond my addiction. yet now i find myself afloat, if sometimes unsteadily- staring down a future that looks potentially bright and beautiful and maybe even long.

recorded over the last year using tape, synthesizer, computer, field recordings, samples of long passed baseball games, nuclear tests, septa rides.

“everything feels brighter” is me waving sadly at a passing ship, it is me poking at the membrane between my present and my past, it is me staring clear eyed and hopeful at the biggest moon i’ve ever seen hanging over the gentlest ocean, it is the fondest farewell to my old and departed friends, it is my promise to live and keep living. a promise that i will one day see them all again, on the other side.

-r.a.e., may 2023

edition of 100