I am a GenX musician and ex-corporate designer from Northern Vermont living in a state of spiritual re-awakening after being subsumed by a mental illness for nearly 30 years. I live with my partner, Danielle, who — performing as Sun Trine Lilith — is a singer, composer, producer and artist. She is my rescuer as well as the survivor of a cage that I built with my mental illness around her and our children.
Because of the fallout from an acute mental breakdown related to the above, I have been out of work for 13 months and two weeks as of today. If you’d like, you can help me out by listening to my music, following me on Spotify or Apple Music, sharing what you enjoy, or by dropping by my social media places to say hi. Buying a t-shirt or donating to the cause would also be amazing. Donations go to support Midheaven, the spiritual healing and music center founded by Danielle and myself at our home in Vermont. You can also buy our music outright through our BandCamp site.
My music tries to communicate the experience of awakening in an abyss of my own creation with the resulting realizations while surrounded by the detritus of my decisions and my shocked loved-ones wounded by my skewed mental health. There’s a long story related to most of these songs, but for now, what is revealed through music will have to suffice.
Songs on Spotify
My music is also available on Apple Music, Amazon, Tidal, Pandora, and most other streaming platforms.
The “Emerson” Sessions: 1992 – 1994
It was 1991 when I found and repaired my mother’s 1964 Sears folk guitar and taught myself to play. Between 1992 and 1994, I recorded original songs in my bedroom using an Emerson dual-deck boom box. As I was encouraged away from music as a serious pursuit, and as I got lost in a deep mental illness, I completely forgot about these sessions. It was a surprise to find this tape because I didn’t remember it existed and then –poof– there it was in the loft where I was cleaning.
I don’t know how to describe the vagaries of fear and confusion that come with the process of losing your mind and recovering it again three decades later, but that’s what it’s been like as Danielle has helped me back to a state of stable sanity and my memory of music. We had hit an impasse, but rediscovering my teenage self through the finding of this cassette tape has been hugely impactful on my road to recovery.
I share it as a time capsule and one of the talismans that has helped me return to everything I had inadvertently abandoned and injured.