Troll Yourself

Mar 10, 2023

Dear and beloved reader,

This past week has been a marathon. I was finally able to shower today. (Don’t worry, it hasn’t been a full week. Although I can’t remember how long it has been.) Have rehearsal in about an hour so I’m just gonna bang this one out. Pardon my brevity!

March 1st felt like my birthday except for I wasn’t stressing out about dinner plans. I released my first song in a minute—“Need You Like”—and an accompanying music video which Paper Mag premiered [jump straight to the video here]. What can I say, I’m proud! Nothing beats the feeling of making music, but putting out music feels pretty damn special.

✩ Spotify ✩ Apple Music ✩ Tidal ✩ Bandcamp ✩

The music video is centered around a goblin couple (more on that in a minute). My dear friend Sabina brought to my attention that she was also about to be putting out a goblin music video, and this synergy birthed the idea of a goblin screening. I remembered that Jake had also released some goblin music videos. Jake was down, and we suddenly had a full program.

The screening was held Wednesday night in the Montez radio space. There was a Hollywood-style green carpet (sort of). Hot celebrities like Greg Rutkin and Will Anderson were in attendance. Someone had accidentally left their mink stole in the space; I decided to wear it for the evening and of course, I looked very glamorous. Over 200 kamikaze Jello shots were served by two professional goblin servers. Although I suffered probably the greatest sugar crash of my adulthood, I would still call the screening a smash success.

About the video:

If you know Lena, you know that she’s hilarious. I’ve been a huge fan of her animations for a while, and have always hoped we could collaborate one day. When she told me she wanted to venture into live-action I was totally game. She called me one night with an idea involving the Irish Hunger Memorial. After we nailed down our concept she put her animating chops to work on the storyboard ~

We recruited Arjun to co-direct and co-produce. Brought in Sharleen to choreograph the Kate Bush-inspired seductive dance sequence. Spent my actual birthday learning the choreo with Owen and then straight to bed for our 4 AM call time in upper Manhattan.

Why 4 AM? It being the middle of winter meant that we’d have less hours to work with before the sun set, and Caroline [makeup] let us know that the prosthetics application would take around 4 hours. But miserable call times can be fun with the right people!

Just after 8 AM, we were ready to start shooting in the actual cave in Inwood Park that Arjun and Carmen [DP] had furnished for us with burlap, straw, and of course, trolls. Frost has never looked so horrifying to me—I don’t know why goblins don’t outfit themselves with heavier clothes. In between takes EJ and I huddled like flying squirrels under our burlap blanket to keep warm.

The second and final shoot day was filmed at the Irish Hunger Memorial, a truly bizarre (and lovely!) park in Fidi. When Lena and I had scoped out the location we’d gotten scolded by the park’s (maybe self-appointed?) protector for walking on the Irish herbage, so we knew we wouldn’t have much time to get our shot. Lucky for us, he wasn’t around when we returned with the camera, so we were able to get a handful of takes of me running down the frosty hill, collapsing, and then writhing with sexual frustration and other sorts of pain. You guys. I’m not even being a baby when I say…it was so fucking cold.

We wrapped, got some bougie lunch at the nearby Bluestone, and then EJ and I took a little lap around the Fulton mall with Lena. It was my great hope that we could find a classic mall photo studio to get a family-style photo taken, but because we were shooting just around the holidays everything was fully booked up. In the end, maybe this was okay, as our minds were starting to go a bit.

Ah, okay. Pat is waiting for me outside. I really have to go!

Tomorrow I’m heading to SXSW. Come see a show or two and tell me that you love the new song ♡