Donna Come Home is an ongoing musical project that surrounds the character of an underwater girl. This project is continuously developing with my personal development in learning music.
The tracks I've worked on so far can be found on my Spotify page.
It Means Everything
It Means Everything is a transmedia project interwoven in sound, video art, creative writing, and the early Internet aesthetic. Two opposing characters, Donna and Fay, are defined in the digital world where their evolving relationships are at the forefront of themes regarding identity, mental health, and their emotionally encompassing nature: all of their complexities become convoluted, cut and rearranged in ballads of existentialist and transgressive thought to rearticulate the same message: this isn’t for you. Players are told this through the website tree, accompanied by different unique stripped-back versions of the EP’s songs for each page, and videos that blend performance, sound design, and creative editing, found exclusively through dead-end paths. In heartfelt letters, screamy synths, and pixelated webcam memoirs, I attempt to define the relationship between self-perception and the internet, how embodying, intense, and devouring the guttural act of self-discovery is through the abrasive persona: Donna Come Home. As the audience watches her dispel emotions, narratives, and overabundant articulations of disconnected scenarios, they’re left without any control over her fate, mirroring the voyeur position the internet encourages. In all her expansiveness, Donna remains a lingering reflection of consequence: a dangerous fixation, thriving in the climate.
Listen to the EP on Spotify or Soundcloud, and check out the website at it-means-everything.neocities.org
It Means Everything was showcased at NEXT's ANASTOMOSIS art exhibition in 2024.
There is Something You Did to Me
There is Something You Did to Me is a concept EP that I created for class along with visuals for each song.
Artist Statement:
The artistic project “Donna Come Home” is a seductive, monstrous amalgamation of Borderline Personality Disorder, hypersexuality, guilt, and isolation. Embedded in horror and the liminal, There is Something You Did to Me is a musical EP introduction to the loud and unrelenting thoughts and environment that Donna is inside. Beginning with Prologue, as the name suggests, the lingering nature of Donna Come Home’s nature is revealed as the upbeat production is accompanied by distressing lyrics and faint screaming in the background, all enshrouded in the apparent digital fabrication that the project expresses. Themes of loss and isolation, along with sexual desire, are faintly brought up in this song. Afterwards, YOU’VE BEEN SO COLD is a harsh frustration of dependency and the desperation to remain close to someone visibly distancing themselves. Voices echoing around the soundscape, playing with pitch and a “diva”-esque tone all become overwhelmed by the relentless guitar and screaming that occurs in the second half, only being able to repeat one line. Underground plays a short interlude into the gothic music genre, paired with distorted stuttering voices that all showcase a transition into the fog, the obscurity, and the “underground” that Donna is slowly placing herself inside. Themes of losing yourself and forgetting who and where you are all expressed further in the last track, Siren Call (cocoon) which showcases the effects of complete dependency on someone else, finding a home inside another person, yearning for that safe place, and forgetting the individual in a relationship fixated on duality. The production of this song introduces certain environments that I would like to play into further, such as the horns, rain, and harp that attempt to emulate a ship or submarine stuck in the middle of the ocean. This song is the most vulnerable of the project and equally showcases the dependence and subsequent guilt that occurs when struggling with mental health: a call for help that is considered to be a siren, sexual, tempting and dangerous when the woman herself is in pain. All of these tracks pair with their own visuals that play with digital tools, web camera horror, distinct low quality and pixels, to capture the space that I’m attempting to create with Donna Come Home: a soundscape of horror and technology, all through a tell-all exposé of a woman’s mental health. As the cover suggests, Donna’s head is completely showcased and exposed, leaving no space for the un-portrayed in her story.
Visuals I created so far.
