I guess Lychnis is my witch name. I use it to express my vast powers and explore my various dimensions of hell.

I wanted to reference some of the people that inspired me — Lady Gaga, Lana Del Rey, Lykke Li, David Lynch — so I chose the flower Lychnis. It comes from the Greek word for shining. It’s also a moth, and their larvae feed on lychnis plants. I think it’s all really pretty.

I decided in college to learn music theory and how to write songs. I was really gay and sad and on a lot of drugs, so it became a huge outlet for me. My writing was awful at first, but then it became an obsession. I can’t imagine ever stopping. 

Lykke Li was the first pop artist I fell for, before Lana or Gaga or anyone else. She taught me to harness sadness. To me, the ability to explore and analyze sadness can be a privilege. Some people get completely consumed by it. I don’t think sad is inherently bad, either. Sometimes it’s necessary. I can’t imagine not being able to feel sadness. It would be torture. 

But my songwriting really took hold when I fell in love with David Lynch. I listened to his music before watching any of his films or even Twin Peaks. His music is so effective, so simple… Then there’s Grimes, who inspired me to incorporate my love for sci-fi, and Akira Yamaoka, the composer of the Silent Hill games, who convinced me to incorporate my nightmares.

I’ve had incredibly vivid and weird-ass dreams my whole life, so after I started smoking weed a lot, I fell in love with the euphoria of it all. Lana was the first time I ever felt true chills while listening to music. I wanted to keep that feeling. So when I write, if my music can make me feel the same kind of dreamy, narcotic sensations, I’m happy with it. It needs to let me dream. 

I like to write about my dreams — seeing dead friends, being lost and gaslighted, seeing crazy-ass monsters and entities. These dreams cathartically relate back to my waking life. I’ve been to hell and back and have seen some dark and fucked up shit. Writing it all out and recording it has saved me and kept me going.

But most importantly, I’m obsessed with Luca Guadagnino’s re-imagining of Suspiria. My boyfriends and I watch it to relax. We’ve seen it a few dozen times, easily. I think we worship the three Mothers now, being three boyfriends. The film makes a point to express magic through the movement of the camera and the dancing of the actresses. Tilda Swinton’s Madame Blanc said it best: “Movement is never mute. It is a language. It’s a series of energetic shapes written in the air like words forming sentences.” Suspiria pretty much solidified the idea that my art is my witchcraft.

I realized the aspects of songwriting are like those of drawing or painting or filmmaking or spellcrafting. Thom Yorke wrote the score for Suspiria. He first had the idea that music not just casts a spell, but can be a spell, but then for some reason, he came to the conclusion that such an idea was dumb. I thought he was dumb for thinking his idea was dumb. I realized I could use music not just to express my feelings, but to make people feel things. With sounds. Invisible energy lashing out into the air. Spells with phrases and verses and vocals and lyrics.

Recently, I’m inspired to make video art to accompany my songs. I used to do a lot of acid and research chemicals, so anything psychedelic wins me over, as well as glittery, sparkling things that remind me of universes or nebulas. I was immediately taken when I discovered Marie Menken in a Women Behind the Camera course. She would “paint” on film using light, glitter, beads, reflective stuff — anything to add dreaminess to her work. Because of her, I became obsessed with sparkling things and the bending of light. I started doing the same thing she did, but with my iPhone instead of a hand-cranked Bolex, editing my videos with apps like Filmm and kirakira+.

These videos, like my music, draw inspiration from my dreams. Sometimes I go lucid and wander too far, encountering weird eldritch beings or huge, vast expanses of land and rose-colored beaches and oceans. I think astral projection is achieved through dreaming, so I’ve been using my music and videos to create these little dimensions. I wish I could record and show what I really see in my dreams, so I guess the videos act more or less like tangible daydreams. 

I really want to project my videos on huge walls and dance suggestively in front of them. But here in Austin, booking live music is hard and I don’t have much equipment. I’d say I feel both part and outside of the art landscape at large. The music industry is gross and eats people up. I definitely feel its endless rejection and sadness. I don’t expect to make a living from what I do, yet somehow I still feel hope. I want people to see my stuff and feel a connection. For now, I perform in front of my boyfriends.

We live in such sad times and we all know it. I touch upon current events sometimes in my music, but the shared anxiety we all have about the trajectory of the world grips me so tight. I’ve always wrestled with the merits and horrors of it all. It feels so sweet and nice when people from all over the world reach out on Instagram. But then I remember that Facebook owns Instagram, just like my soul, and I start to see demons again. The capitalist cesspool which is the internet/social media/music industry starves artists and underpays and fucks over poc, women, and queer people. Making a decent living when you’re underprivileged is so ridiculously hard. The green Money God demands the flesh of the poor. 

Something’s coming. I can feel the Earth telling me, “The worst isn’t over.”

Art exists in spite of it all, not because of it. Hopefully Lana finally wins a fucking grammy! Azealia Banks is gonna make a comeback. Everyone needs to make more art.

I am an amorphous, phosphorescent creature. I don’t think I’ll ever stop creating stuff. It’s in my bones. And in the four years I’ve been writing music, even the hardest and grossest times never made me want to stop completely. 

My music is about dreaming and that can happen anytime you want it to. Dreaming is for everyone. It doesn’t ever have to end unless you die — but then you can just pick whatever afterlife you wanna go to. Even then, if you manage to leave an impression on anybody, the dream will last and become The Big Dream. David Lynch said so.