40 days of art
35
How it Is
My last EP How It Is, spans pre-pandemic and pandemic times. I started working on this in 2019, but released it in 2020, so it is just this bizzaro reflection of how things were and how things are now.
The first video I shot for this EP was January 2020 with Max Skaff for my track Cactus Killer. I wrote Cactus Killer about how I kill all my plants, but I tried to make it seem gangster rap, even though I am decidedly not. Max Skaff helped me shoot this Law-and-Order-style drama where I am moving through the city to finally find the evil kingpin Cactus that I murder. It involved a giant paper mache cactus and a cactus porn magazine I made for an extra-funny detail. My pal Paperboy Prince made a cameo and I edited it myself.
The second video I made was during quarantine. We were all locked inside and all my usual tricks I had to make cheap videos were not available. I had the idea to ask people to send in videos of them dancing to my song. I came to Montreal for a vacation in February of 2020, and kind of ended up staying longer than I planned because of COVID. Immigrating during a pandemic is so stressful and isolating, so these videos people sent in were such spots of joy and connection. Thank you to everyone who participated. I also love how having the video shot by the participants remotely opened the door to more people to be in my videos who typically could not be in my videos due to geographic reasons.
