david

tumble reading series @metrorock_bushwick poems from the crag, scribbles from the gym love letters, rants whatever tumbles from your pen gathering writers to share their work at the gym, open to all who interested for inspiration, consider: falling, flailing, fawning email [email protected] to sign-up may 18 7-9pm

over a year ago, i wrote a strange poem about the greyhound bus, lost souls, depression, and racial capitalism. it asks the question, how do we become entangled in the waiting and wandering of others? i’m very happy to share it has been published in the journal anthropology and humanism (link in bio). for those who feel stuck, lost, or envious of speed, give it a read while we wait for the same bus.

next monday, 8/19, hosting purity control @purityctrl at the living gallery. noise, experimental electronic, and dance featuring @b.benjaminkendall @jeweldj4u @i.n.b.i.o i will be doing an improv set with @_._kwami_._ to open then night doors 8; music 8:30

i will be performing @worlds.museum release show this saturday. come support local experimental music 💫 this is the only show i have on the books. always open to play : ) part of that comes from a recalibration of my relationship to music. i think of music less as a social and more as a personal activity. i go dancing and dwell in my own body; i play piano alone; i listen to music when i feel like it, not to keep up with the trends. it’s a more solitary approach, but not necessarily a lonely one. i find myself writing more, composing less, but music becomes an inspiration for my essays and poetry; a part of the flow of creative life as opposed to a product to produce and consume. i just cancelled my distrokid membership (a company suppressing their workers right to unionize) and have begun removing my music from streaming. it’ll be on bandcamp, nina, and soundcloud. but i don’t want it to be entangled with the war profiteers at spotify and apple. i often reflect on the difference between a creative life and creative community. the former involves building sustainable practices to cultivate an artistic soul; the latter grasps at ephemeral relationships to nourish togetherness and exploration. i’ve always wanted the latter, but found community to be a nebulous concept, something closer to faith than facility—the wafer only becomes the body through faith; people only become a community through belief. as an atheist who believes in the soul, a buddhist skeptical of the buddha, i’ve turned more inward than outward. time unfolds along the journey of the soul, not within the ecstasy of the ephemeral. after my landlady chopped down the tree in my backyard, i wrote a poem from the perspective of the tree: I am the tightest circle in my trunk and the weakest digit in my outstretched palm. I am comfort and charity, endurance and envy, absolute and absent as i slouch toward your rotting concrete, the same that I happily cracked with my thundering feet. I heard them say they’d cut me down on a thursday, but i only thought, which one? They extend across the horizon, unbroken and complete. But you live without time and i pity the day of the weak.

trash bridge: requiem may 31st featuring STELLA (canada) alcove DOGHATESNOISE Mercury Symbol misty xelibri certain lives 8pm suggested 10 donation notaflof at the world famous trash bridge

it is house show season, my roommate @t.j.borden has invited some folks to share some sounds in our apartment. come see all the garfields i have put up in the orange and black bathroom. noise, experimental electronic, fun stuff. march 22nd, dm for the address. i’m either going to do a fun ambient techno hardware set or a “fun” performance art techno piece ✨

“a prayer said in disbelief” release show 6/6/24 with performances by @ann1h1l @qualiatik whait (@more_eaze + @wendyeyes ) and me from 8-9, there will be an open improv drip where anyone can interact with my sound sculptures through adding water and wet fabric. we’ll create a chorus of drips. any other instrumentation or dripping welcome 06/06/24 at the living gallery @the_living_gallery

my album “a prayer said in disbelief” is out now “a prayer said in disbelief” is about the promise and pain of revolution. After having been kettled and beaten in Mott Haven at a racial justice protest in June 2020 and arrested and charged with multiple misdemeanors following a protest in July 2022, I began to reflect on how much of myself I could give away to live my values. Physical therapy and lingering damage to my hand from the Mott Haven kettle, court dates out of state, endless worrying, and an absent feeling of solidarity left me scared. When I looked around at the anarchist music scenes I frequent in NYC, I felt alienated from the punks and ravers who cried out for revolution. Cans of spray paint and beer, noise and nose drugs, community building and partying–pleasure as resistance felt hollow when surveying the trash after the show. But I still kept going, hoping in the haze of the rave or mosh pit I might find faith. This album is “new age rave,” a mixture of ambient, jungle, digital hardcore, field recordings of insects and streams, and poetry. The songs live in a forest threatened by developers, the state, and the police, enlivened by ravers and revolutionaries, and haunted by witches. Dance beats give way to political manifestos, all swimming in the water sounds nourishing nature. I wanted to make an album that’s both about the sincere belief in revolution in rave and punk, and the difficulty of realizing those dreams within scenes overrun with drug abuse, mental health struggles, and betrayals of intimacy. Our musical worlds let us get close enough to love and to hurt each other. “New age rave” is about the sacred element within art and politics. It reflects on self-destruction as personal transcendence, the moment in dance and collective struggle where we pass limits to become ourselves. To utter “a prayer said in disbelief” is to hold onto faith in a better world despite the pain the struggle for that world causes. Each time I touch a friend or lover with my left hand, I feel the ache of the Mott Haven kettle, but I also feel the sting of revolution. - Mastering by @the_land_ethic.wav Album art by @37h0rses 📷 by @areonmo

sharing my last blog on ISSUE Project Room. This piece details the third evil dentist program, how I imagine art as a form of political critique, reflections on trying to pressure ISSUE into supporting boycotting Israeli cultural institutions (they refused), and questions about how to organize artists to oppose institutions refusing to condemn the ongoing genocide in gaza. link in the bio

gunshot fireflies pricking my restful eyes will you let me fall asleep to reservoir lullabies did you hear what they said in my strobe light bed after the rave gave way to a concrete embrace peace costs too much i ran out of luck police budgets left me with a broken hand pending charges no guarantee of false security for the life i built selling gentrified lies as community love and drugs baggie solidarity where straw men slide between plastic freckled tides on a carbon caked beach i’m asleep atop your moss-covered feet unity little more than a prayer said in disbelief dirty finger nails tongue words follow trails to bulldozers barbed wire and trees swallowing bugs at the party you said to me respect is breath exhaled into the sea don’t give yourself away or the ocean will take everything you’ve even seen don’t give yourself away or the ocean will take everything you’ve even seen you don’t have to give yourself away they said to me a grassy embrace we fell to our knees gunshots and hymnals echoing from trees bury my breath in an exhaled sea stains on my clothes from tumbling weeds swallowing bugs that you fed me we ran down the hill to find a party tucked past bulldozers, barbed wire, and trees dirty finger nails, tonguing words along trails my moss-covered feet dancing a prayer said in disbelief you don’t have to give yourself away they said to me a grassy embrace, we fell to our knees bury my breath in an exhaled sea i want a quiet place to fall asleep in a stream —— “a prayer said in disbelief” out may 23rd

“gunshot fireflies” the first song and music video off of my album “a prayer said in disbelief” is now streaming, album out may 23rd when i listen closely to field recordings ive made of forests and streams, i hear voices. if you get lost in the woods looking for a rave, the beating of your heart becomes the kick drum. i meditated on the nature of sacrifice and found myself lost in cicadas. “We must escape our heads like the prisoners their prison. If you sever yourself from the world of politics, aim precisely at the neck. Abandon the world of the civilized and its light. It’s too late to be reasonable and learned. The world of secular modernity remains hopelessly enslaved to the head, forcing us to a life void of ecstasy, a life not worth living. Below the neck lies an awakened world, beckoning us to carry out the greatest of jailbreaks.”

years ago, i wandered into the forest, searching for a rave happening along the river bank. as i found others stumbling through the darkness, they whispered about a witch who lives in the woods. i couldn’t tell whether it was the ecstasy or a spirit moving through their bodies. they kept saying the witch promised to burn it all down. confused, i asked, “what do you mean, ‘burn it all down’” they just couldn’t stop talking about a fire growing larger and larger, swallowing the rave, the forest, the city, the country, then the world. rain drops had started falling around us, but the ravers were undeterred. they moved through the darkness; their feet following the bass as it rumbled the dirt. drips became puddles became small streams, all rushing towards the river. finally, we found it. i could hear the music downstream. it folded in on itself, creating this energetic pull luring the ravers toward it. before they left, they turned and said, “the witch is the other way.” so, i went upstream.