AMOR FATI PART 2 | ARTISTIC FATALISM | 28 SEPTEMBER 2025 | HYDRA, GREECE
“You’re an artist.” The same phrase, spoken at 1 a.m. in an Hydra Island bar, has echoed across dinner tables, London parks, Paris subways, and intercontinental FaceTime calls these past months. A message I hear from friends and strangers frequently these days. It was my goal, but maybe I’ve sealed my own fate. Maybe there’s no other ‘way’ for me. Nothing rooted in practicality, even less in three-dimensional reality.
I suspect it was always in my field of existential potential. To be clear, this isn’t self-congratulatory - it’s an acceptance of a potentially cruel fate, simultaneously pregnant with the potential for equal or greater beauty. What is one meant to do when all attempts at traditional or pragmatic life feel blocked or impossible, but the serendipitous artist’s path unfolds without effort, asking only for perceptiveness and engagement, almost with a sense it’s encouraging me to walk alongside it? Amid my rejection of my own artistic identity, it seems to unfold, like a universe opening in the ether - a hallucinogenic trip with no walls, only infinite doors behind doors within doors.
This has been my experience since I began a beautiful acquiescence to my art three-years ago. Even after exhaustion and recent resolutions to live more practically, it returns, stronger than ever, vivid enough to almost feel personified. And it’s no longer tied exclusively to music, but seems attached to me like a spirit walking me through this plane of existence. To trust, listen, experience - despite all practical fears - and channel what asks to be channelled.
Image: Hydra Port, Greece
SIRENS | 17 September 2025 | London, United Kingdom
This coming October I’ll be performing at the phenomenal ArtCinema Hydra - a three day curation of international cinema, art, dance, music, fashion, literature and photography, on this storied Greek Island in the Aegean.
Hydra was where I began recording the album. Living in the attic of OCF Studio, at the time still under renovation, owned and run by the legendary Stephan Colloredo-Mansfeld, and sat high on ‘the rock’ overlooking the port below. Hydra is one of those geographical centers where there is undeniably something energetic in the Earth creating a viscerally heightened experience of life, creativity, sexuality, and contemplation. It was here that the relationship with my muse ended, tragically, heartbreakingly, while she was in India and I was in these waters and on these rocks, walking barefoot through the quiet alleys, drunk at 4am being shown into the house of the late Leonard Cohen, I too became intoxicated by the island; the energy, the vortex, the sirens.
A siren I’ve since learned doesn’t have to be a woman. Maybe I’d have known this if I had the patience at the time to make it through Homer’s ‘Odyssey’. But vices, distractions, psychological schisms that cause disruption and fragmentation of one’s path. I fell victim to these, time and time again through the three year journey of the creation of these works. Until I too covered my ears and tied myself to the mast of my own ship.
I’m not sure what the current day equivalent of this is, but it’s working. A focussed path led to the completion of the album, and exploration into my next creative and professional routes. It feels profound to return to the island amongst such a stellar lineup of phenomenal international artists, as a slightly improved version of myself, with a more developed and clarified path, and resolve to not be shipwrecked.
Image: The Siren - John William Waterhouse
THE VITAL NECESSITY OF A MUSE | 11 SEPTEMBER 2025 | LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
I spoke to her today. The woman who set the chain in motion. Unlocked the inner universe that lay unexplored for a decade, creative concepts and artistic impulses long-forgotten, yet still attached to my soul, my purpose, my dharma.
It was a cosmic collision of elemental forces as I entered 2022. Creative and geographic constriction during the Covid years had antagonized my larger-than-average need for freedom and autonomy, and I began meeting people who would synchronize with me on re-expanding that world. Enter, my muse. Impossible to describe, and terrifying to know her effect will never be replicated, she upended my practical, emotional, and mental worlds, as love - especially passionate, infatuated, uncontrollable love - does.
To think back to the creation of the music about to be released (Like The Night Itself), and the gravity it took to create it, is both astounding and exhausting. Yes I can create without such forces, but at what level do I want to be an artist? One who creates what he can create, or one who dives fully, deeply, terrifyingly into the most intense experiences of life, where true beauty inspires, and gut-wrenching moments leave universal voids for melody to flow in, all to be alchemized into an expressive form sharable on this plane. To create something that’s truly worth making from an existential standpoint - something that has undeniable heart, soul, experience, love, pain, beauty, sacrifice, adoration, loss, and all things human in it. That is what deserves to exist, and that is what I believe I made.
On the other side of this three-year arc, with the album coming up to release, I’m exhausted. I couldn’t do the same thing to myself again. I currently have no music in me, and a spirit in need of peace and a more calm beauty. But while I revel in this current quiet chapter, I do often think to myself; to express oneself fully, whether it be a great love or another form I’ve not found yet, a true muse may, in fact, be a vital necessity.
Image: The Nine Muses of Greek mythology
LIFE AS ART - WHY BEAUTY MATTERS | 9 SEPTEMBER 2025 | London, United Kingdom
I was 18-years-old, living in Boston, MA attending Berklee College of Music, paying more attention to the decor of my apartment, pressing of my clothes, fragrance on my girlfriend’s skin, the mysterious curation of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and the fascinating humans who seemed to magnetize my way. It may have been in me all along, but I began to develop a sense that all of life could be lived beautifully, or artfully at least. Ones speech, style, and the way an individual could flow with the universe, interacting with the arc of the sun and murmuration of society on any given day, could all fall into an aesthetically pleasing flow. Was this just aesthetics though, or something that touched upon a law more fundamentally human, even spiritual?
Later I would come across the documentary ‘Why Beauty Matters’, by the English philosopher Roger Scruton. While the delivery was painfully dry, it did validate and clearly articulate what I intuitively sensed back in Boston; that care in the design and refinement of all things in our physical world has a more profound effect than perhaps we collectively believe today. He implored that beauty addresses a universal human need, offering “consolation in sorrow and affirmation in joy”, and plays a vital role in making life feel worthwhile. He laments in his conviction that modern society has abandoned beauty (I only agree in part), and has too often chosen utility over emotion or harmony (mostly agree), and that these increasingly-rare elements and aesthetic experiences lift us into "an illuminated sphere of contemplation.”
And so a lifetime later, having just completed the 3-year arc of an album made with such pure dedication to the artistry of a thing, I look for other ways to approach life in this artful manner. It’s something I seek to play with, interact with, test, push, and converse about, all in an attempt to create a life of richer substance; experientially, artistically, socially, and spiritually. To create a life that is a worthy masterpiece of quality and refinement in every layer, and every stroke. As imperfect a man as I am, I believe it’s a worthy North Star, curiously present since those formative contemplations in Boston.
Image: The Birth of Venus - Sandro Botticelli - Uffizi Galleries, Firenze, Italy
INTRODUCTION TO ESSAYS | 4 SEPTEMBER 2025 | PARIS, FRANCE
My grandfather a boat builder, mother a graphic designer, the legendary Dame Nelly Melba somewhere back in my bloodline, and all my early perspectives on the world presented through the lens of parallels; design to emotion, colour to sound, craftsmanship to soul.
The past three years have been focused on creating the most authentic human expression I’m capable of, with my most natural mediums, the guitar and sound design. But as the chapter of ‘Like The Night Itself’ concludes, and the album is released, I find myself enquiring again about the other 20% of my identity, curious of what else it needs to create. Almost like it’s an entity unto itself that needs to exhaust its creative capacity while alive on this earth.
Enter ‘Essays’, my gateway drug to these pursuits. Here I’ll discuss the concepts I speak with my friends about on a daily basis. The austere and overly puritanical views I have on beauty, aesthetic, and genuine artistry. You’ll see my fight myself on concepts, the way I bulletproof ideas, and be overly opinionated but still with room to be told I’m wrong.
Welcome to my inner monologue that never ceases. Subscribe on email if you’d like updates, or receive sporadic reposts on social media. I’m excited to see what it leads to, both in terms of creativity, connection, and collaboration … with gratitude to the wonderful Sara Mahouachi for the photos to signify this launch.
AUTHENTICITY & CLUB CLASSICS | 3 SEPTEMBER 2025 | PARIS, FRANCE
“Bad tattoos on leather-tanned skin, Jesus Christ on a plastic sign, winding roads doing manual drive, early nights in white sheets with lace curtains, Capri in the distance”. You may know the song, the album, or at the least 2024’s ubiquitous lime-green hue that represented Charli XCX’s Brat project, infiltrating music, fashion, and culture for the past year, down to the ‘Charli clones’ still spilling out at 4am in New York and Paris. But how did she have this impact? The writing is crude, as is the production. The mix is aggressive and the album art is horrific. Yet it moved culture, and for the record, I’m a fan too.
One evening, coincidentally driving a lime green Vespa along the Amalfi Coast’s winding roads (presumably those referred to in the above lyrics), I realized the answer lay in something fundamentally and powerfully human; authenticity. While I may only be at the beginnings of understanding the true explanation as to why such states are powerful (ref. Joe Dispenza), I have at least had enough life experience to recognize the undeniable power of this state. Things can be crude, broken, low quality even, but there is an undeniability and emotion that comes through any medium when it’s delivered from this deeply human place.
So as I contemplate future projects, with my proactive mind reaching into calculations on commercial viability of certain pursuits, I hope I hold onto this knowledge and work with it. Writing from the heart, playing from the heart, and communicating in all aspects of life with transparency, genuineness, and truth - authentically.
THE DEATH OF MONOCULTURE | HOW WE CONNECT | 31 AUGUST 2025 | PARIS, FRANCE
I’m a big believer in the value of beauty. How our surroundings instill in us the desire to coexist harmoniously. But beautifully or not, the connection in the first place is a fundamental necessity, and I fear that it’s being eroded at an astounding pace.
It’s making me concerned for the collective ‘us’. Less attendance of social & cultural events in general, in addition to the deluge of consumable art at a violent pace, entertainment and content, continuously more algorithmically targeted to the individual, separating us onto our own islands, with gradually less to connect over. Once upon a time we’d unite over monumental events; album releases, concert tours, universally impactful films, binding us together as a society through both serious, and trivial pieces alike. But with so much to choose from, tailored to our individual digital identities without our knowledge, are we all drifting apart? And what is the consequence of this drift?
In two weeks I’ll see Fred Again perform in Rome, Italy. One of the artists I can distinctly point to who is creating something that feels culturally inclusive and warm, inviting us into his global living room and reminding his audience of our humanity and connection. Those signature intimate voice-notes, presented with the grandeur they deserve as moments where the human heart shows, are almost a conceptually parallel to the placement of spiritual motifs in the context of a renaissance church. Honoring what deserves to be honored via context. And as for my own work, while I may not have a voice big enough to participate in any moment of monoculture, I can still reevaluate why I create anything at all; and choose to share an authentic human experience, hopefully igniting something beautiful in another human being.
CHANCE DOESN’T EXIST | 29 AUGUST 2025 | PARIS, FRANCE
An unscripted dialogue with Sidonie Bey (@pamlapam) & Seul Ciel Sait, added as the first visual addition to my new series of essays on art, life, and philosophy, featuring an excerpt of 'Pensieri' from my forthcoming album 'Like The Night Itself':
AMOR FATI | 27 AUGUST 2025 | PARIS, FRANCE
“It sounds like you - that’s something you can never escape”. Words spoken to me by my mentor, Mr. Tommy Emmanuel after I performed a new composition for him backstage in Northern Italy last August. Poignant, considering this man seems to have known my destiny well before me. These days I have the Latin phrase ‘Amor Fati’ tattooed on my left thumb in the handwriting of my Napoli poet friend Gianni Menichetti. I put these words on me with only 50% faith in them, but with an intuition they would make sense over time.
Expanding chaos, knowing the threads are there between all the elements, links of gravity that will eventually catch and recompress the worlds of this universe back to a singular understanding. What is this integrated entity? What is the final form of all this? Is it the aforementioned fate - one’s final artistic, creative, or human output, even legacy? And does it truly exist before we are even present to interact with it, channel it, bring it into the physical world?
The best I can do is stay peaceful, meditative, curious, responsive to the split-second inflection points life offers to choose an elevated path. Or is it all already designed?
ART VS COMMERCE VS DHARMA | 20 AUGUST 2025 | LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
Or is it Art and Commerce? I tend to lean towards the former. The more contentious, violent, austere one. Sitting atop the roof of Shoreditch House, London, making yet another attempt at answering the question of who I am and what do I do. The past 3 years have been a time of crystallization of my identity I believe, and some unexpected truths about the way I’m meant to exist and interact with the world have been uncovered. One such truth is based in the Sanskrit term, Dharma, present in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. It points to an ‘order’ in the universe where each soul finds and inhabits their divine station in life, and by doing so the universe is in harmony. To find this for yourself, a somewhat meditative state seems to be necessary, to then find one’s intuition, accurately perceive the signs/omens, then have the courage to act in accordance with those discoveries.
This is what I did when I came back to my craft of instrumental music 3-years ago. Tentatively at first, but then with more commitment as I saw dozens, and now hundreds of instances of divine serendipity, of life supporting me in ways beyond what I could manufacture on my own, all with the message of “yes, this is your path, you’re supported, and this is what you’re meant to do”.
I say all of this in a moment of discouragement actually. It seems, even in this flow, or perhaps just because I’m still in the early stages of this enlightened state, there are still worldly challenges. Perhaps there need to be, to keep us human. My faith is continually tested, and the struggles of being an artist in a world that is increasingly hostile to choosing that career path, are very real, eliciting frequent existential reanalysis. But I sat here in London this morning, in a hub of wealth and opulence, one step closer to knowing a truth that I’ve never seen taught in the West: there are practical, three dimensional reality paths to success, but the only one that seems to actually work for me, and also has what seems to be infinitely more abundance and beauty (beyond what I could ever manufacture on my own), is this path of Dharma. I think it’s time I double down and find the next iteration of how to interact with it, and in the interim, I like that I have continued proof of its existence as an effective alternate way to exist as a human, as an artist, as a soul who wants the most fulfilling life possible.
ARTISTIC CONCEPTION - HOW THE SEED OF A CREATION WILL ALWAYS REMAIN ITS ESSENCE | 14 AUGUST 2025 | PARIS, FRANCE
After spending my 20s as a producer/songwriter/side-man for other artists, I recently wrapped production on my first solo album. Granted, all prior musical pursuits had given me some foundational perspective on these topics, but really this was the first time I as a mature adult was in a position to invest the entirety of a somewhat well-rounded individual into a piece of art - and to do so with as much authenticity as I could carry.
For the purposes of this essay, I want to focus on the moment I first listened through all final productions at Belairstudio, Rome, Italy, in January of this year. The album was divided 70/30 for me. Of the 10 songs on the album, I could immediately feel the 7 songs which came from undeniably real, passionate, heartbroken, inspired moments. Similarly, I felt the contrast to the 3 songs that objectively had nothing wrong with them, but where the seed came from something slightly closer to perspiration rather than a melody whispered across from a parallel world [please see legends from Tom Waits to Dylan, Cohen, Cave all refer to the same experience].
I think it’s a concept that can be expanded to life. Whether true or not, I’ve begun to hold the belief that almost anything in life; friendships, relationships, any decision made from where to live to what job to take, carries with it the energy that exists in its conception, that is either pure/aligned/inspired, or less so, and can never be separated from the end manifestation.
To hear the 3 songs that weren’t as aligned was not a problem per se; I still love them and am proud of them, contributing to a well rounded body of work and artistic statement. But the observation that day, that was less cerebral as opposed to physical in the pit of my stomach / root chakra, was one that instilled a resolve to pay even more attention to these moments of ‘timeline conception’. To have the right intention in the beginnings of things - to not rush life - to be patient enough to let life talk to you, give you the song when you’re meant to receive the song, the friend when you need that particular friend, the right love when it’s aligned, and all other things of worldly and spiritual sustenance, in time, unforced, and with the right seed.