my journey (so far)
My life as a professional artist began in 2009, at age 16, when I started working as a freelance guitarist, playing classical guitar for wineries, weddings, restaurants, etc, in northern California. At 18, I also started working as a pit musician for musicals in the bay area.
In 2017, I began writing poetry in earnest. The inspiration became overwhelming by summer of 2018 when I started taking my Grandfather’s typewriter I had inherited to the streets to write “free poetry” for the people of San Francisco. Kids, parents, artists, the houseless, & drug addicts would all stop by and get a poem. I got heat from family members for doing this, which all eventually led to a mental break down and a manic bi-polar diagnosis.
Forced against my will to take medication for a diagnosis I did not agree with, I instead began meditating 2 hours a day. After a few months, I felt confident to forgo the medication. Ever since then, I have been practicing meditation for an one hour (just about) every day.
The collection, the electric wasteland, features the major poems from this period of my life.
Towards the end of the following year, 2019, I moved to Nashville, TN to pursue songwriting. I settled into an apartment 3 months before the pandemic shut everything down. This began an intense period of transformation in which I wrote isolation androgynous. I was also developing severe psoriatic arthritis in my fingers and could no longer play guitar as I used to, though this didn’t stop me from songwriting.
In the fall of 2020 I moved to San Diego, CA. Here, I changed my diet and began training more seriously in yoga (also teaching yoga a bit). The arthritis came & went, but I was overall feeling better. I moved into an art community in 2022 where I began to produce my own music. I would also write poems at the Ocean Beach boardwalk on Wednesdays. This is where I first began using the “pick a color, get a poem” sign.
In the winter of 2022 my arthritis got so bad I could no longer walk. I got on medication, which helped me enough though did not to cure my condition.
Luckily, in 2023, I was asked to type poems at the new interactive art museum, WNDR, opening in downtown SD. I jumped on it and began writing hundreds of poems for guests every weekend. I worked there from March until August. Unfortunately they would not pay me what they said they would, so I quit & blasted them on social media, which got them to pay up pretty quick but also ended our relationship just as quick.
After that, I began making my own books. I took my favorite poems from my time at WNDR and created “Love is Infinite”. This book sold so much I was able to set myself up to also make books for other artists. Thus began my career (low-key) as a publisher.
In 2025 I moved to Santa Fe, NM, where I now live. Here, I enjoy a more sustainable life-style filled with meditation, biking, gardening, music production & book making.
Arthritis is still a struggle but with careful dieting, exercise, & meditation, I have been able to get off that medication as well and live comfortably.
Thank you to everyone who has been supportive of my journey so far. There’s so much more to come!