New Video, Quick Essay

Good afternoon, and a happy Mondaze to you and yours.

First, some business. I just dropped a new video- the first in a series documenting the preparation for my first show as Buying Fireworks in Indiana.

WATCH: https://youtu.be/P-E_cimKBXQ

Full transparency- by clicking this link and watching the video start to finish, you're helping me enormously in terms of the Youtube algorithm and making sure this video gets in front of more people who might dig it. Smash that like button and leave a comment is a real thing, and in these last few weeks I've seen the benefit, not only through new subscribers, but also by way of the most thoughtful, engaged, and enthusiastic comments I've ever received on social media. In short, Youtube is where the early adopter music nerds are congregating, and I say that with the utmost affection, as I count myself amongst their ranks.

I'm still working out the kinks, but I feel like I've broken through a wall with my "BUYFI live" setup, and all these knobs and buttons are starting to feel more intuitive. I think it translates in this live remix, and honestly, I think you'll find yourself vibing, grooving, and, dare I say, opening up the mosh pit? I hope you dig, I think you might, and I'm genuinely grateful for every click. Thank you.

CHICAGO: don't miss the gig- January 18th, 2025 at Epiphany Center For The Arts with White Lucy and Clip Art.

ESSAY:

An invisible triangle, and how a Youtube video has helped me understand what people mean when they say "God."

There’s a moment in MARO’s “LIFELINE (trio version)” that hits me very, very hard. The trio drifts out of time with each other, just a hair. A microscopic wobble in the pocket, a product of three skilled players playing with feel instead of playing perfectly in time. And then you see it: the click. A triangle hovers above and between them, an invisible bit of ethereal geometry that has ever so slightly lost it's shape, jolts back into alignment. Each time this happens, at least two of them smile. It feels like watching physics collapse into joy.

When I'm lucky enough to observe moments like this, the feeling I feel is describable only in terms that are essentially religious, and that usually makes me uncomfortable. Here, not so. Here, I see the triangle, so maybe I see "God?"

I’ve watched this video more times than I can count. Not simply because of the music, though the music is perfect. There’s the composition of the shot, the geometry of their bodies, the architecture behind them drawing these clean verticals and diagonals that your eye can follow straight into the sound. You can actually see the rhythm. You can see their connection pulse and tighten and drift and return. Even without the slightest bit of musical intuition or inclination, you can see the triangle.

To me, this feels divine, and not metaphorically. Practically.

This didn’t hit me the first time I watched it. My first collision with MARO, Darío Barroso, and Pau Figueres happened in a hotel room in San Pedro Sula (you can read about it here). This video hit differently. I didn’t just watch it. I returned to it again and again, like checking the same window at different hours of the day to see the changing light. And then, all at once, somewhere around my fifteenth rewatch, I realized that this is the only higher power I’ve ever believed in.

I’m sober, but not in-program, and so, the concept of a higher power has always felt illusive. I’m not necessarily hostile to the idea, I just don’t have the circuitry for belief in something anthropomorphic and untethered to the principles of science I hold dear. My brain won’t let me pretend I feel something I don’t feel.

But, I feel the triangle.

Not because it’s mystical, but because it’s real. It's feel but it's also physics. You can track it in the lines of the room. You can watch it physiologically unfold on their faces, in the return to a shared groove that is both otherworldly and completely natural. Birds do a version of this, so do whales. We’re not inventing the phenomenon, we’re participating in it.

This, for me, is what people mean when they say “God.” And, if this is as close as I ever get, I'm perfectly fine with that.

I’ve been lucky enough to feel it myself. The most visceral instance I can recall was in 2022, at Songbyrd in DC. Caracara had been touring with fill-in members, and that night was the first time in weeks that George, Sean, Carlos, and I were on stage together, 20 shows deep. We hit something that didn’t feel human, not in the sense of skill (our fill-ins Andrew and Chris are brilliant, and gigging with them is just a different version of the dream), but in the sense of clicking into a current that was already hovering above us. That night, we touched the triangle (in our case I suppose it's more of an oblong rhombus). Delta Sleep had watched us play twenty nights in a row, and even they pulled us aside just to say: “Yo, that… that was different.”

But I’ll say this much: without that night, I’m not sure the band would still exist. And without sobriety, I’m not sure I’d still be in the band, or any band for that matter.

The triangle I see in the MARO video- that alignment, that drift-and-return, that smile you earn through nothing but being awake and present. It reminds me of what is worth preserving in myself.

More than anything, it radicalized me. I don’t want a career in music because I’m chasing money or status or recognition. I want a life in music because of this alignment. It's the only thing I’ve found that feels worthy of total devotion. I want to be monastic about it. I want to evangelize. I want to write about music, recommend music, make my own, film my own, film other people’s. I carry the message the way someone else might carry scripture.

I don’t need a higher power that knows me. I don’t need one that explains what happens when I die. I just need the reminder that something vast, beautiful, and real exists, and it continues to exist whether or not we perceive it. Through some combination of physics, emotion, craft, community, sobriety, and luck, I get to witness it.

This triangle, the one you can literally see thanks to my highly scientific diagram at the top of this post, is enough for me. It’s the power that keeps me moving toward the next song, the next idea, the next piece of work.

And I’m grateful for it. That’s all.

Before you go, I'll evangelize one last time:

Thanks for being here.

Say hello.

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✉️ email Buying Fireworks in Indiana | will@buyingfire.work