OBSCURITY WITH INTEGRITY | 21 MARCH 2026 | LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, gurus selling courses, everyone telling everyone else how everything is done, unsolicited, aggressively marketing in our faces at a disorienting rate - I can’t do it anymore, and I know a lot of us can’t.
I spent 4-years on the album I’m currently releasing. I went through the heartbreak, I stood on top of the cliffs, I travelled with the guitar, I sat isolated in rooms refining compositions for weeks on end, I put every last cent into its recording and the commitment to make something beautiful that deserved to last just as much as the great works I’ve always looked up to. But yesterday I found myself cutting my songs up, to distribute them on TikTok in 15-20 second digestible form because streaming numbers are low and we all need visibility to build the business model.
It’s Saturday morning in London, the beginning of Spring, and I’ve just decided that I’m not going to fucking do it. Actually it’s deeper than that - I can’t do it. The same artistic soul (yes I’m going to be that grandiose) that enables me to make music that makes people cry is the same artistic soul that is going to say fuck you to the framework I’m ‘supposed’ to fit into. I’d rather die with integrity in obscurity than participate in this shit that fries everyone’s nervous systems and competes for attention. Whatever happened to beauty as a standard to live by? Things that were sacredly created, cared for, and whispered around because we knew the delicacy of real human things.
This scene (pictured below) from the 2008 film Vicky Cristina Barcelona resonates with my soul on a yearly basis since I first saw it. And while I don’t believe in the ‘punishment’ aspect of it, the disregard for public attention is something I can. This isn’t a tantrum, but an inability to abandon my values - I know I’ve made something beautiful - and if the world ever wants to hear it, they can, but I’m not going to take on the position of fighting in a crowded room. The right souls will find it if they're meant to. And in the meantime, I'll keep making things worth finding.
Film: Vicky Cristina Barcelona, 2008
