I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the places we go when we don’t want to be where we are.
Not necessarily physical places. Sometimes it’s a memory, a dream, a piece of art, a long walk where you stop paying attention to where you’re going, or even a late night spent staring at the ceiling. Those strange moments when the world around you becomes distant and your attention drifts somewhere else entirely.
There’s something comforting about disappearing for a little while.
We spend so much of our lives moving through the same routines. We wake up, go to work, answer messages, make plans, practice, perform, cook dinner, scroll through our phones, go to sleep, and do it all again.
Most of the time, we’re surrounded by things we recognize.
Our homes, streets, friends, responsibilities, and own reflection.
But every once in a while, something shifts, and the familiar starts to feel strange.
A room you’ve been in hundreds of times suddenly feels completely different at night. A memory returns with a vividness that makes it feel more real than the present moment. You hear a piece of music and for a few minutes you’re somewhere else entirely.
Time becomes difficult to locate.
You’re not quite dreaming, but you’re not completely awake either.
That feeling was the starting point for Phosphorescence, the second single from my upcoming album Dreamscapes & Our Modern Contradictions.
The word phosphorescence refers to a kind of light that continues to glow after the original source of energy has disappeared. I’ve always been fascinated by that idea: something lingering after the moment that created it has already passed.
A memory can work that way.
So can grief, love, and fear.
An experience happens, and then it’s over. But somehow, some trace of it remains. It continues to exist inside us, sometimes changing shape as we move through our lives.
I wanted Phosphorescence to exist in that space between what is real and what is remembered.
Rather than writing a piece that followed a clear narrative, I wanted to create an environment. A place that feels familiar enough to enter, but strange enough that you’re never quite sure where you are.
The piece is built entirely around 8-string electric guitar and electronics. I became interested in pushing the guitar beyond its usual role as an instrument and treating it more like something that could be stretched, layered, distorted, looped, and transformed until it became difficult to tell where the instrument ended and the electronic world began.
There’s something surreal about hearing an instrument you recognize behave in a way that you don’t quite expect. And it’s that tension between the familiar and the unfamiliar that is at the heart of the piece.
I think that’s also why I’ve always been drawn to things like surrealism.
There’s a particular kind of freedom in taking something ordinary and placing it somewhere it doesn’t belong. Surrealism reminds us that reality is not always as stable as we think it is, and maybe our inner worlds aren’t either.
We all have these private places that exist somewhere beneath everyday life. Memories, fantasies, fears, dreams, fragments of conversations, images we don’t know why we remember. They can disappear for years and then suddenly return without warning.
Sometimes those inner worlds can feel more vivid than the world immediately in front of us.
I think we often treat escape as something negative. We’re told to stay grounded, live in the present, and confront our problems rather than avoid them.
And while there’s truth in that, I also wonder if escaping can sometimes be necessary.
Maybe we need places where we can temporarily step outside ourselves. Maybe we need to disappear in order to understand what we’re actually feeling. Sometimes it’s how we process enough of it to eventually return.
That became the emotional arc of Phosphorescence for me.
The piece begins in an unfamiliar world, somewhere outside ordinary time. It moves through this heightened, almost dreamlike state before eventually finding its way back toward something more grounded. Because while the world around us may stay the same, we’re constantly growing and changing.
I think music can create this kind of temporary reality in a way that very few other things can. You put on headphones and suddenly you’re transported somewhere else.
For a few minutes, the outside world becomes quieter, your surroundings lose some of their importance, and your attention narrows. You enter a world that didn’t exist until the music began. But then the piece ends and the room is still there, the problems are still there, and your life is still waiting for you.
But maybe you’ve changed in some small way. Maybe you processed something you couldn’t put into words.
I think that’s what I wanted Phosphorescence to be.
Phosphorescence is out now.
Listen:
It’s the second single from my upcoming album, Dreamscapes & Our Modern Contradictions, out September 18, 2026 with Watch That Ends the Night Records.
The album is an exploration of memory, identity, contradiction, inner worlds, and the strange spaces between reality and imagination. It brings together classical guitar, electric guitar, electronics, ambient textures, rock, metal, post-rock, and experimental music.
Pre-order the album on Bandcamp: