An update from luke kurtis

i’ll be 44 years old this year. all the things they say about midlife crises seem to be true. it’s a thing. i haven’t been myself, creative or otherwise, for quite some time. the pandemic, middle age, and work circumstances all collided, smashed together, split apart, ripped me in two. i’m still trying to put things back together.

the way people don’t talk about the pandemic anymore often makes me feel abandoned. it’s as if there’s a collective amnesia. i guess it’s human nature to want to forget a traumatic thing. good for you if you got covid, got better, and have now moved on. i still worry about it. i haven’t been sick at all for the past few years, neither the common cold nor the flu much less covid. meanwhile, i’ve had family members die from it. how do you forget that when there are people out there immunocompromised, elderly, or otherwise at high risk? should they stay isolated forever while you go on about your life? it seems selfish. but go ahead and have your sunday brunch. after all, you deserve it.

my creative work has always been a means of survival. a coping mechanism. a way to see beyond the unavoidable stress of life through the lens of my experience, turn it into something other people can connect with.

often my work unfolds over very long periods of time. sometimes years, or even decades. so i thought it might be good to do something without overthinking it for a change.

i made this piece of music on a recent getaway to the Hudson Valley. it’s a simple improvised work. abstract. sad. mournful. unpolished. raw. but that’s how i feel these days. especially the latter.

the accompanying video art gives the work a little more form. something visual and grounding but no less evocative. it says what i want to say right now.

that’s about the extent of it. just a middle-aged composer-artist-writer person having a hard time at life, mourning things i’ve lost, wondering what comes next.

for now, this is it. play it on repeat.

thanks for listening.