"ME, EXPERIENCING MYSELF", track-by-track by kyle.
‘ME, EXPERIENCING MYSELF’
These songs are part of a project I wrote while traveling/touring the western US in a camper trailer I built with my father. Following my departure from Arizona, I spent the first few months of 2023 in Utah building out a camper trailer from scratch in my grandparents' front yard. I began the writing process here and began planning for my trip. I then ventured to Colorado for a month where I wrote many songs for the album, playing live shows and open mics as often as I could while documenting as much as I could with my little camera. I returned to Arizona for a few months to reconvene and reset before leaving for California for two months where I played shows, shot content, enjoyed the scenery, and ultimately completed the writing for my album. I returned home to AZ late 2023 to put the finishing touches on the project and begin the release process.
I wanted this album to feel like an adventure from beginning to end. After the completion of my previous album, I ventured into my dream of pursuing van life to find some inspiration for the project. The goal was to push my limits and musical boundaries and write something unlike anything I had done before. This meant I had to expand my mind and open myself up to new possibilities and ideas. My other albums always reflected my internal emotional states, but I wanted to go beyond that and write a story that was timeless, limitless, and indefinite.
BETTER OFF DEAD
This was the very first song I remember writing for this project. It started as a 16-bar loop I made and didn’t think much of at first. After a few weeks, I revisited it and decided to finish it out to see what it could become. This later became the intro track for the album...
Reality feels quite disappointing at times. I always seem to be living in this amusing transitory state between the past and the future. When I was younger, it made me overthink everything, though. I constantly planned my life with such hope that the memories may age well. That when I looked back on my life, each of these moments would be so perfectly engineered that I could experience them again as if I were rewatching my favorite TV series. I used to call it romanticism, but maybe that’s not the right word for it. Idealism, maybe. An extension of my OCD, perhaps. The consequence was that I was always microscopically crafting these moments so that in the future, I could live in them again. Never truly experiencing each moment in the moment but planning ahead; chasing the future so that the past could sit perfectly in my memories. I don’t know, it kept me going. Maybe because in my head, reality could be whatever I wanted it to be. It was limitless, timeless, infinite. I could rewind, fast forward, pause. I didn’t really see a purpose beyond that. If it couldn’t go according to plan, then effectively, life ceased to have meaning. Kind of this idea that keeping my head in the clouds was the only thing keeping me motivated to live.
WHAT’S WITH THE LONG FACE?
I wrote this song in Utah, and it was the second song to make it onto the album. I was listening to a lot of Ben Howard and Gregory Alan Isakov at the time, which heavily inspired the theme of this track. I wanted it to be its adventure the whole way through, to change, to evolve, and have a few surprises or sneak attacks in the rhythm. I think it’s one of the more genre-defying songs on the project, which I respect about it.
Mental health is a profound labyrinth, an enigma that I don’t believe could ever truly be unraveled completely. What intrigues me is how it manifests consciously, like an intricate operating system within the mind. Battling depression and anxiety, I've learned to navigate their cyclical nature, their elusive boundaries blending into one another. My strategy? Confronting the darkness with a fervent embrace of light—a battle of intensity against intensity. Fire with fire. Yet, amidst the triumph, I ponder: Have I truly conquered the sickness, or merely replaced one tyranny with another? After all, a positive dictatorship is still a dictatorship. Can this newfound resilience be praised in its execution and vanquishment my depression as a triumph over negativity, or have I simply, unwittingly empowered a subtler form of toxicity? I guess I’m unsure.
DUDE
This was one of the very first songs I completed while traveling through Colorado and marked a very significant milestone in when my music began to shift. Colorado was the first place it truly sunk in how far away I felt from home and from the person that I was when I left. It was almost like the further away I got, the harder those parts of me fought for dear life to stay connected. I started having these—not nightmares—but rather painful reenactments of some emotionally heavy events from the last few years of my life—bad times in my relationships, childhood traumas, or even memories from a time in my life where I was suicidal. I would wake up from these dreams almost in a panic like they were still happening. This experience sparked an interesting quandary in my head the next morning. I wondered why my mind was in a perpetual habit of repaying the highlight reel of all my most emotionally wounding memories while I was asleep and at my most vulnerable. I felt like my subconscious mind was out to get me—or at the very least—not being very considerate. This song reflects my thoughts about the relationship we have with ourselves and how even if you don’t always understand it, you’ll have to get used to living with it.
WHATEVER YOU SAY
Another track I wrote while in Colorado. I was listening to a very specific playlist that day, when a few songs by Mac DeMarco had come on. I always wanted my songs to have depth and layers and little hidden ear candies scattered throughout, but something about the stripped-down, raw simplicity of sounds like DeMarco, Men I Trust, Babe Rainbow, was absolutely screaming at me this day in particular... That same night, I followed the inspiration and produced the instrumental, then a few days later, completed the concept and recorded the lyrics. I think this song stands out on the album because of this, and I absolutely love that...
‘WHATEVER YOU SAY’ mirrors my contemplation on religion and the universe/astrology. I find that these belief frameworks, among others, influenced my worldview significantly during my formative years. There was a pervasive sense of being instructed on how to think and behave,
which at times felt confining. While not entirely negative, these rigid guidelines often hindered my personal growth and kept me from exploring the person I wanted to be by restricting me to the confines of the person I thought I should be. The tag in the song is a bit sarcastic, reflecting my current attitude of taking external advice with a grain of salt and ultimately trusting in my beliefs above all.
U DIDN’T RLY MEAN THAT
I actually produced this song while in Utah building out my camper trailer and I believe it was the fourth song written for the album. I wanted to make something that you could groove to in the way you might while listening to The Weeknd but still have a more serious undertone to it. I wasn’t sure what it would become, but a few months later I completed the song while in Colorado. It was a new direction for me and has a unique sound compared to the rest of the project, though I feel it’s exactly what the album needed.
This song explores the tale of how it feels to internalize betrayal in formative years and how it can affect you as it festers and grows in the background throughout your life. Love will always come at a cost; it’s only a matter of time before the bill comes due. I find it wildly unfair that you can’t really choose where you come from. We all have a past. A reason for why we are who we are. A novel of lore that explores the depths of the oceans of pain we’ve had to traverse to be able to make it as far as we have. Things that have changed us—and not always for the better. Now, I’ve been the villain in many stories, that much I can admit. I’ve also been burnt to the ends of my heart. I’ve experienced betrayal in ways I never could have imagined. A feeling not truly describable by words of this world. Regardless, it’s difficult for me to ever feel that my heart was crushed at the hands of true evil. To not believe that beyond the hurt, pain, and turmoil that caused a shift in the mind and heart of someone you once loved lies someone familiar. Someone good.
THE FACE ON THE MOON
After building my trailer and venturing through Utah and Colorado, I planned to return home to Arizona for some time before heading out to California. It was a strange time in my life to say the least. I hadn’t been back home in half a year and had an odd feeling that my life had hit the pause button. An ongoing adventure that took a detour back to square one, and I fell into a slight depression while in this sort of ‘in-between’ state. The excitement dulled out, the fire for exploration simmered down, and I felt a saddening sense of numbness for a while. I spent a lot of this time in my head; staring at the stars and trying to be patient, knowing that it would pass, and I’d find that inspiration again. I wrote this song one of those nights staring up at the moon, and it holds a special place in my heart because of that.
‘THE FACE ON THE MOON’ is a poem I wrote about discovering little bits of yourself in the universe. Amidst one of my ‘spiritual’ adventures, I remember this strange feeling like I was a part of everything and that the earth was a beating heart, living and breathing in the same way that I was. I found it daunting the way you can simultaneously feel so connected but also feel so separate at the same time. This song explores that concept and offers transparency into my theories regarding the universe and our place in it. The idea of an existence that means absolutely everything and nothing at all at the same time. It’s funny the way we’re all part of something so much larger than ourselves, but will forever lack the capacity to experience anything but ourselves. A feeling of emotional freedom that can also feel extremely lonely at times.
I AM HERE, I AM HERE
This was the last song I wrote for the album. We were packing up, planning our return trip from California in the midst of our very last few nights living in my camper, and I was overwhelmed with this sense of confusion. Due to circumstances out of our control, we had to cut the trip short, and I genuinely didn’t know what to make of it all. I had given everything I had to this dream and worked years to make it happen but was forced to close up shop anyway. I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel or what I was supposed to do. I had learned and grown, yes, but If the universe was on my side and supposed to be meeting me halfway, I felt I had done more than my share of work to deserve at least some sign that it wasn’t all for nothing. I felt invisible. Like I was so small that no scream of mine could possibly break through the atmosphere of my soul enough to be heard by anyone. I was scared that I had, yet again, failed my mission, but more than that—failed myself. 1,000 miles away from home, in shambles, with no direction or insight for what should come next. I went on a walk in the middle of the night and wrote the song the night before we left for home.
It’s not unusual to feel that even in a world surrounded by billions of people, there always seems to be this pervasive sense of loneliness following not far behind. That if we could just outrun such a sensation long enough to find solace, maybe we won’t actually have to confront it. But I don’t think that’s the worst part. The worst part is realizing that it was never the universe or the world that made you this way—it was you. That there won’t ever be an escape far enough away, a star high enough to fly to, nor a hole deep enough to burrow in that will keep you veiled from yourself. And if nothing else, when the destructive turmoil of your inner battles inevitably rise to the surface, the resolution will only shed light to one truth: The only way out is through.
SPILT MILK
Around the time I wrote this song, I had artists like The 1975, Ben Howard, Mac Miller on heavy rotation. I wanted to find a way to mix these sounds and add a personal flare to it. Big chords and groovy bass lines, but also chill guitar melodies and conversational yet melodic lyrics. It was a challenge to capture such a wide range of moods in one song, but I’m pretty sure I nailed it. Another song written in Colorado.
As a career reminiscer, I've relished in my accomplishments of creating new worlds, often visiting alternate universes through the power of higher thought and visualization. (I obsess over what could have been and struggle to grasp the concept of the present moment.) However, I find it fascinating how swiftly things can change given the right circumstances. People once loved, 'soul mates' who once inspired you being reduced to old friends in seemingly no time at all. The word 'stranger' takes on new meaning. Even in reconnection, you never truly meet the person you once knew again. The version of them you experienced becomes a memory, an idea, in a universe you no longer inhabit. The older I get, the more I realize that it’s not always a bad thing. The absence of the past makes room for the future, if you allow it. What's meant for you may find its way to you in the present. In THIS universe.
MIRROR, MIRROR
I believe it was my second week in California when I recorded the bass line for this song in my voice memos app. I always wanted to make a song that was strictly instrumental, which is what I planned for in the beginning. I think it was that same day I had also written a verse for a different song idea earlier, but didn’t know where I’d put it. I then had a stroke of pure genius when I decided to mix these two concepts and have almost a double track within the song. It starts with a mini 2-minute song in the beginning, then transitions to quite possibly my favorite 8 minutes on the album. (The longest song I’ve released–by a mile.) This song is special in that it’s not only the title track but marks a very specific landmark in the evolution of my songwriting and production and is by far my most musically advanced song to date. You can also hear a little foliage from outside my camper trailer near the end of the song, which is a small touch I absolutely adore.
I don’t know where we come from. When I was younger, I used to think that at some point, the answer was given to you, or that there was an objective truth about life that was universally understood, and it was just a matter of growing up before it was revealed to you. As I’ve grown, I think the only thing I can confidently say I know is that I don’t know anything. That everything you base your reality on, day by day, is subject to change at any moment. Though I don’t believe the mysteries of our beginnings will ever truly be unraveled, the one thing we can count on is that it all will come to an end, eventually. Death isn’t a one-way-trip destination, though. I think we experience death many times throughout our lives in subtle ways that change and shape us dramatically over time. We’re made to evolve, and a consequence of that is the ways our identities shift in moments of growth. We experience death in others when they change and no longer align with our world. We experience death in ourselves each time we choose to be better than before. Each time we choose the future and let go of the pain of the past. Each time we mourn a version of our life that no longer suits or serves us, we die. That’s an absolutely beautiful thing.
I’LL SEE YOU WHEN YOU GET HERE
Being the last track on the album, it was interestingly one of the first to be written for the project. A habit that’s been a recurring theme for the last few albums. It was never intentional, but there’s always this feeling of “This is it. This is the one.” A song that speaks for the album as a whole. Perfectly capturing the scenery I envisioned. It’s a bit fitting for it to happen in the beginning of the process, I think. It’s nice to be able to have an end point in mind or an overall direction you can shape the project to. I wanted the album to end with something strong and symbolic. To float down to a calm and peaceful ending. This song summed those feelings up perfectly.
In a moment of contemplation, I found myself reflecting on the concept of happiness. Despite a lifelong quest for this elusive emotion, I realized a profound absence in my understanding of true tranquility—of what it truly means to attain peace of mind, body, and soul. It becomes a challenging endeavor to hit the mark when the target remains undefined. As I reclined amidst nature, attuning my senses to the surrounding symphony, I had an epiphany—this, indeed, is it. The subtle tension in each breath, the gentle caress of grass blades against my skin, the fragrant whispers of the season carried by the breeze, juxtaposed against the serene melody of birdsong above. It’s the sum of these moments, these transient yet infinite fragments of time, that make life what it is—a beautiful, intricate tapestry woven from the threads of existence. The recognition of this interconnectivity, the celebration of the present, and the anticipation of the future constitute the essence of living. In this realization, I found solace—an unwavering reassurance that the journey, with all its trials and tribulations, is worthwhile. For in every shadow, there exists a glimmer of light; in every heartache, the promise of healing; and in every farewell, the hope of reunion. We aren’t alone here. We’re not some isolated fragment of energy, floating in the eternal nothingness of the vast universe, disconnected from any hope of discovering a profound meaning in it all, but a piece of the universe itself. A reflection and extension of life itself–or maybe it’s just me, experiencing myself.
Outro
This project required me to take a huge leap of faith from beginning to end. I had never written anything like this and it was a little daunting to take the first few steps in reinventing my identity as an artist. I was forced to be resourceful and adaptive to my environment and make the best out of what information I had. From building a van and leaving home to live out on the road, to playing live shows in new places, to being miles away from my zones of comfort with no clear concept of what was to come–this album took me places that I could never have imagined and I couldn’t be more grateful for all that the experience brought out in me.