PREMIERE | ETA, "Healing to Do"
At home with ETA; photographed by Sabina Horowitz.
Art in our age of revolt, pandemic pandemonium in conjunction with civic and civil unrest has the power to heal. Art also has the power to transform us as a people, offering a chance to ask ourselves and others the difficult questions about our perception of one another as we collectively engage in meeting a universal moment of reckoning that offers a chance of growth, change (and perchance a level of transcendence like none other before). Following up our debut of PASTHYPE’s Heaven's the Ceiling EP — the audio/visual auteur ETA presents a first listen and look at the intimate and sensual "Healing to Do" visual from Sabina Horowitz alongside fellow Los Angeles artist Carduus Azure’s debut album Hemophilia. Featured off the forthcoming Sweetness & Anxiety compilation via moonroom; ETA's self-produced single blends Vietnamese instrumentation and Asian traditional styles with evocative Americana centered around personal/spiritual meditation, intimate confession and mutual moments of discoveries and breakthroughs between two kindred spirits.
In between curating the Confluence documentary, APAHM festivities, while observing API's place in the BLM movement; ETA offers a privy and deep look at how our most precious and kindred exchanges between one another impact ourselves, as much as our opposite and other halves. The expressive and creative focus hones in on the importance of these interpersonal/interspiritual dynamics that seeks a greater connective love, affinity and affection that works to assuage and extinguish the hurt caused by others and more importantly — ourselves (either intentionally or unintentionally). As ETA poetically described it to us:
Holding space…every love song is a dialogue with self as much as other….positive relationship behaviors on the micro level in a time where we see how negative behavior dynamics and compounding trauma affects society.
ETA’s “Healing to Do“ shines a light on a path toward a greater bond, a greater dynamic between hearts and souls, a greater love of another and a greater love of the self. The ancient adage about the importance of loving yourself first before you can truly love for somebody else is expressed with a timeless modern intimacy that stands at the intersection between eastern and western ideas and aesthetic choices. "Healing to Do" is presented like a Pacific Ocean baptimism in between a poetic prayer for a greater understanding and peace between two people. ETA's song of vulnerable sincereity and Sabina's visual of sublime tranquility seeks to calm the waters of distress, distrust and chaos in pursuit of a higher echelon of dialogues and a heightened state of enlightened living. The two reflect on imperfections, the humors and shortcoming of humanism while reaching outward toward that sacred of place that touches the scars and wounds that life yields with beacons of light, glitter and honey.
ETA shared with us the following reflective preface on the new single, visual, the Confluence documentary, activism and much more:
This song was made for an audience of one and only one, the same person mentioned in our Scorpio Season Heaven’s the Ceiling premiere with you last November, so it’s pure because there was never a thought for outcomes. I love this piece, it’s hopeful and uncomplicated. It’s the first piece I’ve fully self-produced and the first song as ETA since “Old Age / Perpetual Babes” with Tomemitsu (whose new EP I’ll Be Alright is out now via Friends of Friends) and ‘Dyin (Goin Thru It)’ with Eddington Again (whose new EP Damani 6 is out now via Middle Rhythm) a few years back. 2020's felt like a culmination of a painful, transformative loop in time.
ETA visual still courtesy of Sabina Horowitz.
Lately, I’ve felt conflicted, especially after finalizing contributions to various Black creatives and Black-led organizations from moonroom’s APAHM benefit screening for my doc, Confluence, about my role in the movement. I tried to stay active and informative irl and online, but got drained and felt redundant. Then, I realized; I’ve already been working for this on the daily, most my lifetime, and the most profound impact I can make is continuing to create space with my art to facilitate self-healing. To help us move past Cancel Culture, a social extension of the prison industrial complex, so we can aspire instead to contextualize and rehabilitate trauma.
Director Sabina Horowitz; courtesy of the artist.
Every love song’s not only a dialogue with the other, but with the self, so inherently, not only about the individual, but collective. I’m still learning to witness my ego. It’s like basketball when you toss the ball down the court so you can catch up with it in transition. Sometimes it’s an easy hoop. Other times, you realize you forced the issue. Sabina’s helping improve my court vision, can y’all tell I miss the NBA? It’s been confusing and challenging at times yet necessary. But, the stronger my frame, the more flourishing our collective foundation. We both got healing to do. And I’m grateful for the moments of poetry that arrive like Sabina directing me in the vid for the song meant for them.
Cover artwork by Cullen Griffin & Raymond Santos.
Continuing the motif of transcendence and meditation is a first listen to the debut album from LA’s own Carduus Azure with the blissful abundance of Hemophilia. The creative moniker of Cullen Griffin; the six song instrumental cycle percolate with electric and organic components that take the audience beyond the psychosomatic pale for an all around out of body listening experience.
Griffin begins the ambient works with the mind dazzling "Memory" that moves from the modern states of mind in motions toward the banks of nostalgia like perusing through a rogue's gallery of old framed photographs. Underwater passages abound on the aquatic adventures of "Oceans", as "Fields" offers up great green pastures for rest and relaxation while watching the cloud formations moving overhead on the sky's ceiling. Jubilant chords collect like fireflies on "Joy", leading to the uplifting and awe-inspiring sensations of "Reverie", right before the closing track "Sunyata" reveals the natural realm for what it is in all of its intuitive glory and magnificence — infinite.
Cullen Griffin, aka Carduus Azure, provided the following preface for the new album:
Hemophilia is a snapshot of a couple years back. It was originally a live, looped set for an art show and this recorded version is a slightly more synthesized iteration of that day. It’s meant to provide a sonic space for the unfolding of attention and contemplation. I hope that it can provide some comfort and respite wherever it may find you.
Proceeds for ETA’s new single “Healing to Do” will be matched and go to Look At Us zine's "15 Black Queer & Trans LA Artists" fundraiser.