2024 was a year where i spent a lot of time in my head. there seemed to be a consistent pressure between my temples as i wondered where the relationship i was in was heading or tried to predict career moves that were safest for my immigration status, all the while grappling with the choice of living in a country enabling mass atrocities. musically i was deep in a corner of a jam scene, and improvisation had become a consistent practice. the vulnerability of the jam had me oscillating between feeling affirmed and insecure. i was going beyond my comfort zone vocally and growing in ways that i didn't expect to, while feeling like there are things my voice "should" be able to do and ways i "should" be performing. at that point, i had still never sought out to make music, until carlos and i met through a smaller jam session (during which ‘of the rain’ was incepted) and he graciously offered to produce any songs i might have. i emailed carlos a scrappy phone demo of a song i wrote in austin with a ton of caveats (because it's not embarrassing if someone doesn't like your work if you can give them reasons to not like it, right?). but he liked it enough to work on it and it set off some determination to write a few more songs to round out some narrative. the narrative ended up being a self indulgent attempt to construct how i wanted to be seen. i think that's fine. i think it's a human thing to want to be seen, to have your desires and fears validated and to want to control how people engage with you. the question then becomes -- who is this music for? i think this first ep was just for myself - to get my first project out, to start learning/growing in music making and to feel like i could tell people who i was.