Quiet Luke (Dec. 2019)
The first time we met, Quiet Luke and I were standing in a laundromat doing a load of laundry together. A few hours later, we’d eventually be sitting for an in-depth conversation on the oddities in his life and of his new album that was soon to come. But at that moment, folding some pants, he was already talking of all the hopes and fears he felt towards the project that’d taken him nearly five years to finish. Though it was our first meeting, he was fully vulnerable and unflinchingly honest.
Months later, after much anticipation and meticulous planning, Quiet Luke’s debut album, ‘21st Century Blue’, became available to the world.
The project, aptly titled, is a reflection of current societal confusions seen through the eyes of a man on a search for self-discovery. Having spent the bulk of his teenage and early-adult years on the album, Quiet Luke grew alongside it. He became the hero of his own story and created the perfect synecdoche for all the unsure souls caught in our era’s contemporary limbo.
Putting his entire life thus far into the album, a life that has taken him from Florida to New York to Berlin and back, Quiet Luke has given a piece of his being to the world. No part of his journey is hidden behind a veil; no mistake was ignored and every epiphany felt was given light through legitimacy. There was no personifying someone else, that wasn't an option with something this directly authentic.
It’s pretty obvious this moment in human history is a landmark, it’s the sort of thing grandkids will ask about. Some moments seem to be slipping towards apocalypse and others seem to be leading towards utopia. We’re disconnected, lost, hopeless, confused, broken and scared but still clinging on to our gut-feeling that we’ll be alright in the end. We all feel it and Quiet Luke does too. He grasps, in ways few can, the anxieties that have sprouted due to our scattered way of life and light-speed levels of change. At times it is so overwhelming we are left mute, but in those moments, he comes and speaks and feels for us what we cannot articulate.
Maybe that’s what was so moving about that moment at the laundromat. It wasn’t just meeting and talking with Quiet Luke, it was him allowing another soul into his own, knowing that by teaching of his journey, he may give others the hope they need to embark on their own. In a postmodern world, one filled with postmodern irony, he took a break from the rat-race to better connect us all with our inner-self. As we find ourselves drowning, he came to lift us above the surface for our first fresh breath in a long time. The deep blue of the water may be all that we see currently, endless as it goes to a distant horizon; yet, we continue to swim along with the hope he instills, looking to find land and to leave behind the colour that so heavily overwhelmed.
Our first question as always, how’s your day going and how have you been?
It’s been a great day.
How would you say, beyond today, you’ve been feeling with everything that you’ve had going on?
I’ve been feeling a lot of things. A lot of seeds I’d been planting have started blossoming lately. I’ve been working on this project for a long time now and feel the excitement as if I’m about to go on a ride, like a rollercoaster or something. Butterflies and nervousness. On the day-to-day, it’s still the same, normal ups and downs.
If you could use one word, or one emotion, to describe yourself currently, what would you say is the overarching feeling?
I guess I’d just say ‘open’.
Yeah, like vulnerability has been present?
Yeah, but also in the sense of not expecting or not having expectations. Being open to plans changing...
Being free form with things?
Yes.
In terms of this project, did you feel the same way? In a sense, you were open to changing things and being very free-flowing with what you’d been experiencing?
No, not really. The way I made this album was very much so having this goal in mind. I was throwing darts at a bullseye and throwing as many as I could to get to that point. But now I’m kinda just growing out of that phase. That was all very rigid with a specific goal. But when you get there and you achieve it, you then have to do all these things to show it to the world—the PR and marketing part if you will—that’s where I’ve been finding new things in it, even though many people think of that part as ‘dirty’ or separate. I found it even more beautiful at this stage because I’m understanding new things about what I was trying to do when I set out to make this thing. I’m forgetting what the original question was...
It’s ok.
This openness is new and I found that I was a bit closed off for a while leading up to this.
You’ve talked to me about how this album has been a 5 year process and how, in that time, you don’t come out of it the same. What are the larger moments and events that defined the last years for you?
Not continuously, but yes. There have been many personal ones and many societal ones. The time I spent in Berlin was a huge turning point. Just being engrossed in this different culture so parallel to our own. It was this ecosystem that has its own shape and form and is subtly different in a way that’s surreal and dreamlike.
Did you feel in Berlin you got a different input from the world in terms of how you see art due to the shift in culture?
Totally. I think the perspective it gave changed me. I was definitely making things from the perspective of being an American; being an American kid and growing up suburban. It was interesting to see Berlin and Berliners dealing with this whole different history. America has traumas and underlying tensions that drive society and Berlin has its own as well. It was cool to see how those things were shaping everything from architecture to social interactions and club culture.
If you were writing as an American kid before, what would you say you're writing as now after Berlin? More so, who wrote this album?
It’s funny, a bunch of the songs were written before I went to Berlin, but Berlin gave me this understanding of why they were important. I guess I just realized how specific my experience was. It wasn’t just Berlin though. It was also being 21 and having this freedom, the freedom of complete obscurity, being incognito and naive. I was able to slip through the veil of being a part of society and could instead just observe. Maybe being a student added to this feeling that I was there to learn. When I came back to New York I realized one could feel that anywhere, especially in New York. Here you can be no one or nothing quite easily. To get back to the question, I guess I had just grown up a bit from being in a foreign country with my own agency. It felt like the last hurrah of childhood in a way. I don’t take for granted that I got to experience it. It was a privilege. It felt right to document the first stage of my life off the back of those memories.
Is it important to you when people listen to this project for them to get the emotion you put out or just anything that they can find within it?
I thought about this a long time ago. I used to listen to my music and felt so strongly about all the things I could feel in it and wondered if people would feel the way I intended. More and more I learn that while no one will ever feel the way I feel about it, the intended feeling will still be there.
The fact it's even out in the first place at all!
Yeah, like it'll mean something completely different but there’ll be this understanding. If there was a venn-diagram of my experience and theirs, there’s this space in the middle of understanding. That’s actually what I feel being at a good show is like. The performer can come to this space where there’s understanding and energy tossed back and forth. The larger you can make that middle section the better.
Now though, you’re going through your mid-twenties, which is just as confusing a time. Even as this album is coming out and everything is going down the path you intended, what do you still need answered within yourself? What interpersonal questions still exist?
It’s a lot of the same ones. I find that each year I know myself a little better, and each year I learn something new about the world as well. One step forward and one step outward. I’m always trying to figure out things about myself and things around me. As I get older there’s a feeling of ‘I’m sure that this is me and what I want to say is what I want to say.’ So I guess it’s not about the questions being fewer, but me being more assured in asking them.
Like you’re confident in your confusion? You’re allowing yourself to be confused and for those questions to exist because you’re saying, ‘I don’t need to be 18 and confused about where the answer is’ and just need to experience it within yourself?
Totally. I think there's also just real life hitting you. Being in your late teens and early-twenties is this surfacing and coming up for air. You live your whole life with the frustrations of others projected onto you telling you what to do, what to think. Even if you do have your own agency or responsibilities as a child, you kind of exist in this mold for society that you have no part in shaping. You don’t get a chance to break it until you leave home unless you grew up somewhere like New York City. That surfacing, I feel it’s never-ending. I feel as I come up for air I understand more. I was talking to a friend about this, he was saying he’s been exercising a bunch and eating well and doesn’t feel depressed. He just graduated from school but is working a job that isn’t in line with his passions or talent. He feels he should be more depressed about everything but he’s at this point where, right now, he’s healthy and feels good. At a certain point feelings aren’t completely new anymore. There’s a knowing of where something is coming from, knowing when anxiety and depression come on and being aware of where that comes from and knowing it’ll be ok.
You mentioned that feeling starts when you move out and get that taste of freedom, but in your case, what did life look like before that?
Looking back on it now, I don’t know if my mom wanted me to be a professional artist, but she was very much priming me to be a creative person. I was in piano lessons, playing dress-up and singing choir. But then there were also sports, she even entertained a stint where I wanted to be a magician. I think she just wanted me to be happy. I have one sister and she’s 8 years younger than me. Being an only child until that age and then having a sibling who’s so young win all the attention... it amplified that angsty pre-teen phase where you first realize it’s not all about you. Someone once mentioned artists are people on the fringes of society, which I don't necessarily agree with anymore, I think that’s changing and more an image of an artist from the 20th century. But, I think part of wanting to escape was feeling like an outcast where I was.
And that was Florida, right?
South Florida, yeah. Not knowing many people who were multi-racial and not having a role model family as corny as it sounds. I feel there are all these shows now that try but…
There’s just representation now, back then there wasn’t a place you could look up to a model Filipino-Ethiopian. You didn’t get that happy classic family reflected with your own family on screen.
Right. I ended up defining myself through fantasy and through these other cultures. I actually thought of this recently, but I think I connected to hip-hop culture and Japanese culture, by way of video games and cartoons, knowing I was half-African and half-Asian. Those were ways I could feel like I found representation as there was none specific to me. It’s all less important to me now because I’m grown, but I could grasp on and say, “this is almost what I am.”
Even that wasn’t you in a specific way.
But as I grew older I realized, as cliche as it is, everyone's the same.
So did that mix of your parents pushing you creatively and you accepting it as a vessel allow you to create a space of comfort in a place unaccepting?
It was natural. It just happened.
When you compare your early influences to those you have now, how have they shifted and what has changed in your mindset?
It’s funny, I think a lot are the same. Stevie Wonder, Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles and James Brown are some early musical entities that were shown to me that I thought of as simply existing, like gravity. Obviously a patriarchal set, but that’s where we were. I think a lot of what happened on the album was me making sense of my early influences. A lot of the art that I’ve liked, I can see where they’re coming from with their influences, which some people might see as a problem, the syncretic part of creating I mean. I don’t always know why I’m drawn to certain things as of late, which is awesome. Everyone says you develop your tastes up to a certain age and then you’re done, but I'm finding that I’m very open to a lot of new things right now.
On top of this album and the videos coming out, is it important to explore other aspects of music to express yourself differently?
I’m not one of those musicians who can just make 100 songs and pick 10. I’ll be making songs and a few will catch and stick to me and, at least for this album, I had this arc I wanted to make and kept to that. What do we love about albums? It's an experience where you go from here to there...
It’s a movie, really.
Yeah and that’s what I love about making it with that in mind. I had songs that would fit the mood of the album but I might need to take them out to better fit the narrative. I’m finding that I’m not a fan of music that’s about music. Music for music’s sake. Ever listen to music and get the feeling that someone sat down and tried to make music? I've always been a fan of people who create worlds. Someone like Bowie had visuals and music and a persona. I always enjoyed that. Music that’s really visual in itself, like Kanye and Radiohead. Music that makes me feel like I'm in a space or in a world. That's the kind of music I want to make. I find it fulfilling to see this stuff come to life as it’s so close to what I had imagined for everything, or as close as I could muster. There’s this back and forth with music and visuals where once I have the music and know how I want it to be presented, making visuals for it inspires me to make more music and in turn, have something new to visualize.
And did film as a medium have a big influence on this project and was it something you were pulling from a lot when working on it?
Film had a big influence on me. It was always this place where things were exciting, even the mundane moments. Life isn’t like that. Stuff can be slow a lot of the time. London O'Connor is a mentor to me and they’re a big proponent of seeing yourself as a protagonist in your life. So it isn't so much certain films per se having influence, but seeing my life through the lens of cinema and finding cinematic moments. For example, the album is going to come out at the end of the year, and as I told my friend that they sent me this thing that said ‘Los Angeles, November 2019.’ I then found out it was the opening credits from Blade Runner. It’s funny to me, knowing my album comes out when Blade Runner took place. Maybe my life is just a postmodern dromedy. For anyone who can appreciate it being called 21st Century Blue, I talked to London a lot about this, but the album is as much about things ending as it is about them beginning. I feel like someone can look at that and see it’s meaning as “Future Blue,” but we are 1/5th through the century and we’re still recontextualizing a lot that was already established in the 20th century. We were talking about the 2000s culture coming back. We’ll probably look back on this period one day in the same way too. It’s funny, the book I’m reading, called ‘Post History’, deals with how since the 70s and 80s and tech boom, things have gotten smaller compared to the collasalism of decades before that, the rise of cities, and having the biggest this and that and whatnot. But now our value systems are shifting. It’s valuable being able to have all the data in the world in one device, but at the same time everything loses its value because it takes up no physical space.
It’s really just the information age. Do you feel like the connectivity of social media and texting takes away from what matters?
I don’t know if it takes away from it but it changes the whole fabric of humanity. I think even our brains are wired a lot differently than they used to be 10 years ago and I don’t know if that takes away. Not to put her on the spot, but my sister once told me that she hasn’t read that many books or that she’s read less than 50 in her life, but she’s super smart. I feel like kids born in this late 90s-early 2000s are just wired differently and the idea of being well-read or a scholar, that’s no longer the mark of someone who really understands things. It's kind of this fractured and spread out way of being now, it looks more like our desktops.
What was your mantra through this album process?
I don't know if I had one.
Was there almost a constant message that you knew you had to have come through by the end though?
Yeah, there was. I know the essence of it at least. I think I was just trying to capture how sublime life is. How I knew everyone else was feeling similar feelings around me. It was my blue period and I feel the world collectively from the years 2015 to now has been feeling blue.
It seemed hard societally for everyone.
For sure and we talked about which albums are going to be looked back at, and in thinking that I wanted it to be a document. I want the album to document my life at that point. It's more than a document though, it’s almost crystalizing it. I was bursting with all this emotion and letting it crystalize.
I asked it in a different conversation but it’s a good quote to bring up and hear your response to nevertheless. When the Smashing Pumpkins were making songs like ‘1979’ Billy Corgan said it was, “wrapping his childhood with a bow and putting it under his bed.” In a sense being able to put youth into a time capsule and bury it in the backyard instead of leaving it on the shelf.
This album was wrangling a lot of the demons of my youth. Things that I was only able to make peace with through this work. That's part of what the album is about, just allowing myself to move on from it. You said earlier today that you have your whole life to make your first album and thinking of that, this is my whole life up until this point.
Does the possibility of the next album worry you at all and the shorter timeline you might have to draw from?
It doesn't worry me, I just don't have the tingling feeling of what it'll be yet, but I know it'll come.
Are you someone who always tries to look into the future or are you more in the mindset of saying, ‘whatever comes does and the horizon will just have to be met when we get there?’
I used to be a big ‘look into the horizon’ person. My friend actually just reminded me that around 2016 I made some jokes to him that my album will be coming in 2019, just knowing that’s how long it would take. He just laughed it off saying it’s three years from now, but here we are. He was one of the people in the Interference music video, his name is Francis Brady and he’s been a great friend and a great influence on me. I used to be a big planner, which is funny because my life isn’t how I would have imagined, but the thing I wanted to make is coming out when I hoped it would, sorta. I think just from being alive and trying to do things for a couple decades now, nothing goes according to plan. This doesn't mean you shouldn't plan, but I've learned to have more of a compass and know what direction to go.
As you said, you're open to change.
Very open to change. I'm also open to things outside of me deciding. That's why I’m into the idea of doing singles now. I think as an artist doing an album is very much ‘this is what I'm giving you.' Whereas singles you can experiment and see what others like. There’s more of an openness in it. Giving people this first body of work is a statement, which is still closed off in ways. As you said, it’s tied up with a bow, it is what it is. But I think I’m open to the second album happening after a little bit more life and a few good conversations with close collaborators. Collaboration is also something I really love and would enjoy being able to explore in the coming years.
Do you think, even though you love collaboration now, that it was something that previously worried you?
It’s still something I'm working on. A lot of it had to do with ego, that's something I had to overcome. But there was also an aspect of wanting to discover what I could do on my own first. That just comes from the only child mentality I was talking about. I didn’t grow up playing music with people, I’d go to a place and have a lesson and then learn guitar tabs alone in my room. It was a solitary experience and I think my first album is an homage to that. All those times staying up late playing music and watching movies super late, waking up deliriously to see if I’d verged upon genius in last nights’ dream. That's where the cinema aspect is. That's something we've all experienced, dreaming in our bedroom of what your future could be like. That is a lot of what this album’s sentiment is. Dreaming.
Are you someone who daydreams quite a bit? Was that part of your childhood?
I was a really big insomniac. I got in trouble a lot for being late to school because sometimes I just wouldn’t sleep. My mind was always racing. I don’t know what it is. As I said, I'm becoming more open now, but I’m still holding onto things from growing up. Me not wanting to sleep is a microcosm of me always wanting to hold onto the magic of that day.
When I was a kid I had this thing where I hated sleeping before midnight because I hated knowing I missed a second of that day. Do you think as you’ve gotten older you’ve allowed your brain to take more rests?
Definitely, especially just finishing the album was a big exhale, even if it was on a private level. Knowing I did something I set out to do for so long, even if it took a long time. There was a phase where people were asking what was going on with my music and why it wasn’t out. I wasn’t sure if it was the right career for me at times. Dark times. But finishing the album allowed me to take the time to better care for myself. I probably would have finished the album in half the time if I had been doing that before. I talked about the beginning of angst as a teenager, I don't think that ended for me until a couple of years ago. They say your brain doesn't develop until your mid-twenties, and I don't know if I'm there yet, but I feel I’m getting there. I have a clearer, more level headed way of thinking and, while there are questions I want to ask, I'm assured in those questions.
You mentioned before that in creating the music venn-diagram that the live space is the middle overlap. How do you feel you can take this album to a live setting and what are the most important aspects of this project that need to come through when performed?
I think the audience has to be into it. If not it's just going to sound like a guy singing ballads on stage to zombies. I've been to that show before, it’s not fun. I've also played that show before. Also, it’s important to have great musicians who can help me bring it to life. I'm a simple guy when it comes to that, I don't think that lights and backdrops make a great show. I think I can play a room with no decorations, as long as the audience gets it and the musicians are killer. As things scale I’d like to bring an element of magic and theater to it. It’s a total waste to try and do that on a budget though. I’m a simple guy when it comes to indulgence as well.
What's the best show you've ever been to and felt the venn-diagram?
There are a few times I can think of. I saw James Blake early in my time in New York, around the ‘Overgrown’ era. I was still very much in that headspace and I really connected with it. It was at Terminal 5, which looks like an airplane hanger, and it just became this endless space. The first time I saw Kid Cudi. He was just singing over tracks but it was the first show I’d been to where just knowing they existed in real life was half the experience. You just wanted them to come out more than anything. And then I'll say the Yeezus tour was the craziest show I’ve ever been to on a level of scale and spectacle. There was no venn-diagram, it was a complete “fuck you, take it or leave it.” He performed on a mountain with a mask and while you might not “get it,” it's still compelling. That's not the type of show I want to put on right now though. I'd rather do something more community orientated and something grass roots. I’m into the concept of folk and folklore as we define live experiences for a new generation.
And I guess to bring it all back home, what is the most important thing in life for you right now? Is it happiness? Or maybe just endless creating? Finding yourself?
My friend Josh Irwin-Salinas, a great writer, said to me, “a lot of my unhappiness stems from the thought that I should be happy.” And in that way, happiness isn't that important to me. You can strive for happiness, but I think I’m more just looking for joy, which I think is fundamentally different. It doesn't have to be constant, but it has to be real moments. Happiness I feel comes and goes. I find these days I have a wide range of emotions: I’ll feel down but then I’ll be happy then back down in the evening, it varies. But there are those moments where you find joy; those moments are when I create, when I get to see my work come into fruition or just spending time with people I love. Even just doing this interview and getting to speak my mind. Those are moments of joy to me. Then again, joy only lasts for so long. There’s nothing more important than just existing, as cliche as it sounds. I just love to exist in this really specific time we’re in. I'm just happy to be here. Being here just brings me joy.
Do you have any final thoughts or any thank you’s you want to put out into the world?
The people I’ve mentioned so far are all big influences. London and I were working on albums concurrently and we had a really real talk about how they don’t believe in separation anymore. They actually use ‘we’ pronouns and refer to themselves as ‘we.’ That’s been a big shift for them. There have been moments of contention and competitiveness between us where we were both trying to do what we perceived as “the same thing,” but we had to have another talk about how it’s so beautiful we’re able to exist at the same time and have these two records connected. We learned a lot together, so always a thank you to London. There are so many people I'm going to miss. All my friends. My friends kept me alive through this and every collaborator on the album is a friend. I put “Thank you’s” on the Bandcamp link for the album. London said something to me recently, they said, “you’re in our body.” When you’re with someone in the thick of it and having these experiences, they really become a part of your physical body through your memory. Sounds deep, I know. It is.
The five people you hang out with most average to make your character.
These people know who they are. They are all a part of this album and this period in my life of becoming an adult. Just coming up for air. I wouldn't have been able to do it without my family. My friend Josh for that quote on happiness. I feel he’s going to be a modern-day Hemingway. He just writes really honest prose. Santangelo. My friend Zuri. A lot of me finding myself as an artist has also come from me understanding New York and the downtown lineage, Zuri was a teacher to me coming to New York as a boy who knew nothing. She’s a downtown scholar. When I came to New York I didn’t understand Andy Warhol and The Velvet Underground or their world at all but she showed that. I didn’t grow up with the punk-art culture that developed from New York, I only really knew about what London did with it, so her putting me onto that set me onto this path of self-discovery. The album in a way does feel like a thesis or an epic poem. I went to school, and while I wouldn’t consider myself an intellectual, I went to school, we can leave it at that... and sometimes the way I understand the world is through academia and studying history. The fusion of that historical lineage with my lineage. It all feels like a culmination. I don’t know what I would do or how long it’ll take to make the next record. Maybe there won’t be one...
Would you say you’re proud of yourself after all of this?
Oh yeah, definitely. Super proud.
Photos by Drake Li