squalloscope

[squalloscope]

i love love and i love the idea of letting go of a hierarchy of care in which monogamous romantic love is put above everything else. living in systems which so aggressively want to make us believe that individualism and exclusivity stand above community makes us so vulnerable and prone to shame and loneliness, and so much less likely to stand up against oppression, violence, and a system that wants to bleed us dry from our first to last breath. my neurodivergent brain has never made it easy for me to navigate friend groups, social events, or to build any kind of sustainable community. it is no coincidence that the people in my paintings exist mostly in a state of disconnect, often barely tethered to the earth. but once in a while i am among friends, deep in conversation, in tears over the state of the world, with an arm around a shoulder in a moment of crisis, or belly laughing into the air between us, and i take a breather to think: to share space and time with people who care so deeply for each other and me, and i for them, and to acknowledge how special and deeply good and deeply neccessary and human this is, always, and especially now, makes me feel stunned how anybody could think this is worth less than what we branded as "romance". there are very good people out there. some i see almost every day, some i see every other week, some i see every four months, some i don't see in person for years. some i meet in forests, some in cafés, some in their houses, some i send postcards to, some i talk to on the phone. they all have a profound impact on who i am, how i move through this world, and how my work impacts others. occasionally, i cannot bear the thought that they will not live forever. within this thought, i know we all live forever through each other. i love them all very much.

slide number one is from my series "Passing (for) Human". slide number two is a quote by the brilliant ALOK , speaking right into my utopian heart.

[squalloscope]

i love love and i love the idea of letting go of a hierarchy of care in which monogamous romantic love is put above everything else. living in systems which so aggressively want to make us believe that individualism and exclusivity stand above community makes us so vulnerable and prone to shame and loneliness, and so much less likely to stand up against oppression, violence, and a system that wants to bleed us dry from our first to last breath. my neurodivergent brain has never made it easy for me to navigate friend groups, social events, or to build any kind of sustainable community. it is no coincidence that the people in my paintings exist mostly in a state of disconnect, often barely tethered to the earth. but once in a while i am among friends, deep in conversation, in tears over the state of the world, with an arm around a shoulder in a moment of crisis, or belly laughing into the air between us, and i take a breather to think: to share space and time with people who care so deeply for each other and me, and i for them, and to acknowledge how special and deeply good and deeply neccessary and human this is, always, and especially now, makes me feel stunned how anybody could think this is worth less than what we branded as "romance". there are very good people out there. some i see almost every day, some i see every other week, some i see every four months, some i don't see in person for years. some i meet in forests, some in cafés, some in their houses, some i send postcards to, some i talk to on the phone. they all have a profound impact on who i am, how i move through this world, and how my work impacts others. occasionally, i cannot bear the thought that they will not live forever. within this thought, i know we all live forever through each other. i love them all very much.

slide number one is from my series "Passing (for) Human". slide number two is a quote by the brilliant ALOK , speaking right into my utopian heart.

[squalloscope]

I just sent out the second letter for my paying substack subscribers, a long-form read that is also a studio visit in video form. Thoughts about map-making, working both with and around instability and lack of space, and reading poetry in times of losing one's mind, to witness and archive what is being erased.

Thank you so much to those who support my work.

[squalloscope]

I just sent out the second letter for my paying substack subscribers, a long-form read that is also a studio visit in video form. Thoughts about map-making, working both with and around instability and lack of space, and reading poetry in times of losing one's mind, to witness and archive what is being erased.

Thank you so much to those who support my work.

[squalloscope]

Are you ever planning on putting exoskeletons for children on amazon music? love ur music by the way :)

not sure if i missed this or if i already answered it. "Exoskeletons for Children" was released by the record labels Seayou Records in Europe and Fake Four Inc. in the United States. I have no influence on which digital platforms they distribute it to. I do not know why it's not on Amazon, but Amazon is an evil evil hellhole of a business anyway.

[squalloscope]

Hey, I don't know if this has been asked before, bit what does the name "squalloscope" mean? Why did you choose it for your music?

that's a secret / make up your own meaning / it's just two random words made into one / it's a device for bad weather / it's a mysterious machine / it's a poem / it came to me in a dream / it just looks good in writing / etcetera.

[squalloscope]

itinerary (january '24)

i make a list, i check it over and over, i will check it again. arrival times, addresses, reservation numbers, check-in times, phone plan. i check the status of the visa thing (still valid), i have nightmares, i check if my cousin still works from home on fridays, if it was more convenient if i came thursday evening, take the train up, meet her at the office, ride home with her on the highway, the roads, until everything becomes smaller and narrower and more lined with trees, until we are home. i check if i can think of anybody else who lives within a reasonable radius of my destinations, I never know what’s reasonable. i think of bisan for the fifth time today. i tell people i know one way or another who might be on tour this spring where i’ll be and when, just in case they come through. I have nightmares about the babies in the rubble, they are still breathing. i make the list of things to pack longer and shorter and longer again. i think about what to take with me for three months in three different climates, winter to spring. which shirts pack the smallest and rarely need to be washed. i have nightmares about bodies, they cannot be alive, but in my dreams they are breathing. we had family visiting recently, their first trip together to this part of europe, they had a fifteen page itinerary and so many places to go, my list is long but nothing like that. i’ll figure it out as i go. I have nightmares, the bodies, breathing. i go alone, as usual, i forget that other people don’t travel alone, never travel alone, have to be mindful of each other’s everythings all the time, i just want to float, sleep, sit, look, stand, observe, get up early, walk, stay up late and talk, sit in hotel rooms and paint, sit in temporary studios and write, sit on a train for forty-seven hours and sketch, be confident within my anxieties that yes, all this can and will happen, not because my list is thorough, or despite of my list being thorough, (the bodies of the people, they are in my dreams, rightfully so) but simply because more often than not, things happen, even in this world, even in this time. I have nightmares, rightfully so.

[squalloscope]

May I open with Weightbearer belongs in the MOMA? As a neurodivergent queer surrealist poet, painter, and aspiring novelist I wanted to tell you finding Squalloscope was lifechanging. I inhale as much music as I do dust, but hadn't found an audio artist that saw the world as I did until I found you. I threw a party when I found Twin Tooth, laid for hours savoring each new river and ocean to dive into the universe about. Thank you for giving voice to our collective insides - we have needed you.

so much love for this message. thank you. to knowing that there are networks in the shape of dense and sometimes almost invisible spiderwebs of neurodivergent poetry and surrealism out there. sometimes we get caught in one while out for a stroll and first go "what's this?" and then "oh, this seems both new and familiar, both a mirror and a window".

[squalloscope]

May something carry you over the threshold between the years gently, with firm care, connected.

[squalloscope]

Just sent out the latest Substack newsletter, to ring in...something. (The latest New Year's Creature is now available as a fine art print, in case you are interested)

[squalloscope]

Just sent out the latest Substack newsletter, to ring in...something. (The latest New Year's Creature is now available as a fine art print, in case you are interested)

[squalloscope]

May something carry you over the threshold between the years gently, with firm care, connected.

[squalloscope]

My new single "Fever" is out today!

"Fever" was written and recorded in 2013 during my time at RBMA in New York City, and this release is a 2023 rework of the track, accompanied by a video that is also a ten-years-later rework of the original. Ten years in between. Ten lives.

The 2013 version originally came out on now defunct label Full of Nothing, but had not been available since the closing of the label a few years later. RBMA shut its doors as well a couple years back. What remains is this song, a snapshot of a warm day in mid May in Manhattan, sung while looking out the window down 7th Avenue, One World Trade Center in the distance, almost finished but not open yet.

A small ode to a loosely defined sense of longing, clawings its nails into both past, present, and future. PS: It is bandcamp friday, a good day to be a good person in a streaming-focused environment that exploits and bleeds dry artists like me. I don't pay fees on this day and all proceeds go directly to me. Head over to squalloscope.bandcamp.com and support my work, health, and life.

[squalloscope]

I was silly this year, thought the personal cures could be anywhere but in the making, so I stopped the output for a while to see what a prolonged phase of input would do, but along with other people's art and music and writing, a gentle avalanche of abundant amazement, snuck in other people's hurt and heavy heavies and had started to overwrite my own faster than I could say "autistic empathic attunement" while I was still learning about the existence of such a thing. Most times I wasn't helpful in my murkiness, couldn't be, I lose my outlines faster than I had always assumed I would, stop monitoring the contrast levels, let the blur get out of hand as I get washed away and out in a movement towards becoming one with everything, to belong so fully I can barely tell where I stop and the world begins. The past few years had ground me down to powder form, offering only brief moments of grounding, a loss of gravity, and what feels more like panic than floating away into all directions, I ask you. I don't ask, no question mark in my question, questions without question marks are deliberate pseudo connections, and what is more tiring than connecting but not connecting, I ask you. Anyhow, listen, I started recording music a few weeks ago, picked up loose compositional threads I had started weaving four years ago, adding a hymn to the hum, an anthem longing to attune to a coastline, a tune about tuning the strings running through a brain, an ode to the spot where clowns and nuns and witchery overlap, assembling a group of songs that, for now, just are. There is no good home for music anymore, not really, but if I finish these creatures before I leave for a few months early next year, I'll send these poems out with little backpacks and you'll be free to stop them in their tracks, unzip their front pockets, and stuff your own heavy heavies into them. That's the thing with the music. Nothing connects me to the earth like it does, and once I disconnect the songs from my home, they grow an endless supply of moorings, and you can tie your own rickety boat to them for a while, float for a bit, move the way it moves, moves me, moves you, maybe, maybe.

[squalloscope]

I was silly this year, thought the personal cures could be anywhere but in the making, so I stopped the output for a while to see what a prolonged phase of input would do, but along with other people's art and music and writing, a gentle avalanche of abundant amazement, snuck in other people's hurt and heavy heavies and had started to overwrite my own faster than I could say "autistic empathic attunement" while I was still learning about the existence of such a thing. Most times I wasn't helpful in my murkiness, couldn't be, I lose my outlines faster than I had always assumed I would, stop monitoring the contrast levels, let the blur get out of hand as I get washed away and out in a movement towards becoming one with everything, to belong so fully I can barely tell where I stop and the world begins. The past few years had ground me down to powder form, offering only brief moments of grounding, a loss of gravity, and what feels more like panic than floating away into all directions, I ask you. I don't ask, no question mark in my question, questions without question marks are deliberate pseudo connections, and what is more tiring than connecting but not connecting, I ask you. Anyhow, listen, I started recording music a few weeks ago, picked up loose compositional threads I had started weaving four years ago, adding a hymn to the hum, an anthem longing to attune to a coastline, a tune about tuning the strings running through a brain, an ode to the spot where clowns and nuns and witchery overlap, assembling a group of songs that, for now, just are. There is no good home for music anymore, not really, but if I finish these creatures before I leave for a few months early next year, I'll send these poems out with little backpacks and you'll be free to stop them in their tracks, unzip their front pockets, and stuff your own heavy heavies into them. That's the thing with the music. Nothing connects me to the earth like it does, and once I disconnect the songs from my home, they grow an endless supply of moorings, and you can tie your own rickety boat to them for a while, float for a bit, move the way it moves, moves me, moves you, maybe, maybe.

[squalloscope]

wow thank you etcetera, AND:

this is hundreds of hours of unpaid work that billionaire CEO daniel ek is asking me to give away for free, while i am being told that it has immesurable emotional value to my listeners' lives, and that i do not have enough value as a person and an artist to be compensated for it in any way but through a few cents a year, a colorful picture with numbers on it, and lists of the cities where most of my listeners live - cities i cannot afford to travel to to play music for those listeners.

i am releasing a new song on friday, and if you want to be a good egg in this horrifying system, you can always head over to bandcamp as long as it still exists to get my music to keep forever, and help me eat and live and go to the doctor when i am hurt and get help when i am depressed. you don't even have to download the files if that's not how you consume music anymore. but you can throw a few euros my way for the songs and literally, directly, help me stay alive and make what might become a really important, supporting, challenging album to you in the future.

there's a reason this used to be the norm. we're people. music is a time consuming, all-encompassing, incredibly intense thing to work on. you don't want us to do it half-heartedly, as much as you don't want to live a half-hearted life accompanied by a half-hearted soundtrack. you deserve to feel big things. we deserve to neither starve nor freeze to death in the process. a bold claim, i know. still putting it out there. annakohlweis.com squalloscope.bandcamp.com

[squalloscope]

My new single "Fever" is out today!

"Fever" was written and recorded in 2013 during my time at RBMA in New York City, and this release is a 2023 rework of the track, accompanied by a video that is also a ten-years-later rework of the original. Ten years in between. Ten lives.

The 2013 version originally came out on now defunct label Full of Nothing, but had not been available since the closing of the label a few years later. RBMA shut its doors as well a couple years back. What remains is this song, a snapshot of a warm day in mid May in Manhattan, sung while looking out the window down 7th Avenue, One World Trade Center in the distance, almost finished but not open yet.

A small ode to a loosely defined sense of longing, clawings its nails into both past, present, and future. PS: It is bandcamp friday, a good day to be a good person in a streaming-focused environment that exploits and bleeds dry artists like me. I don't pay fees on this day and all proceeds go directly to me. Head over to squalloscope.bandcamp.com and support my work, health, and life.

#newmusic #bandcamp friday #support artists #Youtube