November 22, 2025
Sweet Wreath Newsletter No. 38
Tomorrow night!!!
Album Listening Party
for Mazerick's mythopoetic song cycle
Your Love For Humanity Will Be At Its Zenith
~ & ~
A Slideshow Tone Poem
by Vernal Scuzz
Doors 6pm ::: Listening 7pm
cake : music : fire
Like A Garden
An interview with Mazerick about music and myth
Jasper:
Well, let's see, what should we talk about musically? I guess I was curious, how long ago did you start the process of recording your album? Was there a point where you decided to start making a series of songs or was it more intuitive?
Mazerick:
Yeah, it was some combination of those things. Some of the recordings are several years old now. But the earliest full pieces were from, I want to say June and July of 2024. But there had been a performed version of Midas from a year or two before that, that then transformed for this album. So that's probably the oldest song idea.
And the process of accumulating the body was sort of organic and somewhat intentional in that I published Fondness and Midas in the summer of 2024, independently as they were finished. And then when I was making Glisten in that fall, I felt like I should wait to publish things for a little bit, and just make stuff. And that was not a super clear, like "I'm going to make an album." It was more of an intuition...because historically I'm just making songs or collecting small recordings, either vocal loops or refrains or just ideas. And sometimes those will sit in an otherwise empty project file for years, like with the introduction to Icarus. Or sometimes it actualizes in a few days from the first seed. I think by the winter, maybe around the new year, I understood that a body was forming, but I didn't know what the end was.
Jasper:
I like the recurrence of the mythological references and figures. Midas was the first track in this series...did Icarus or Narcissus come up as a way of looping back to what you were already thinking about with Midas? Were those myths and figures things you were thinking about for a long time, or did they happen during the process of making the music?
Mazerick:
I think my interest in Midas came in a lot of ways from my background in blacksmithing and metalworking and also material scarcity. My work as a blacksmith and also my experience in art school was one of trying to figure out how to monetize my creative impulses, or being in school for that, and really struggling with that way of framing that work. And also growing up with material scarcity, and really yearning for wealth and being really attracted to the beauty associated with wealth.
The story of Midas resonated in those ways. Wanting to be able to just touch things or connect with things and have them...that kind of contact result in abundance. But then also I think the tragedy in the traditional myth of Midas being granted this wish that whatever he touches turns into gold means that he can't touch the people that he loves. And so his treasured relationships become inaccessible to him, in a way. And that, I think, just highlights the ways that we are faced with the fallacies in our fantasies. And the way that our fantasies distort ideas of what is good, or what we want, and what we can and can't have.
You had asked about the other myths. I think that Icarus I had been attracted to for a long time because of the things that it brought up for me, thinking about my upbringing and the messaging that I received and feeling chronic feelings of yearning for things that I didn't feel like I could have....and how over time the template for life, I feel like, adhered to this kind of chronic yearning. And so that's the story of Icarus and the message is being focused on what he can't do instead of the messaging being teaching him how to access his agency. For a long time, I don't know that I had that kind of clarity thinking about that myth, but now I understand why I was drawn to it. And to that effect, the myth that probably should be on the album but isn't is Sisyphus, because that was another one that I thought about a lot and connected with a lot.
And that probably would have eventually turned up if I had waited. But it wasn't meant to be, and that's okay. I think that collectively those songs kind of address that turning over and over again that Sisyphus is about. And the song Icarus did not come as a fully realized piece until I understood its place in my personal processing. But the introduction of the song existed for years in a project file. Same with Narcissus.
I actually was really drawn to Narcissus, I think, in a similar way that I didn't understand for a really long time. But I loved how in movies or even hearing that story, the idea that this character just was so enraptured with his own beauty....I just was really attracted to that and I was really endeared. And I remembered experiencing that as a really young child and being really endeared by my own image as a five-year-old. I just was like, who is this hottie? (laughs)
Jasper:
Do you have a specific memory or just a feeling from that time period?
Mazerick:
I remember jumping on the bed. My family had a big mirror over this bureau that was right across from the bed. And so I would jump on the bed and I had this really long golden hair. And I would jump on the bed and I would watch my hair just like fly in the air and I would just have this like wild grin. And I just thought that that was so beautiful to watch myself jump up and down on the bed in this mirror. I would also cry in the mirror as a small child....that I think was less about thinking that my misery was beautiful. But in some ways I think I was so interested in image of intensity and great feelings. So I would watch myself sob whenever anybody hurt my feelings.
Anyway, so yeah, Narcissus...I connected to that. I thought that was sweet that he thought he was so beautiful and that activated his affection. But there was no song for that until I attended a lecture online that a friend in Birmingham had work that was being talked about in the lecture. And the professor was talking about Narcissus as a queer allegory. And they didn't go very much into detail about that, but just hearing those words really lit something up for me.
And I think at the time, I was facing my tipping point for rumination and action. Hearing the story of Narcissus framed in that way really clicked a lot of things. And thinking about how common it is for us to just turn our discomfort over and over again in this sort of perceived helplessness because acting on our desires is so frightening, or can be, even if the stakes are pretty low.
So, Narcissus the song came pretty quickly. I had the loop of the beginning part already, but I didn't know what it was for. And that was more of a kind of fun exploration. And then Narcissus ended up feeling connected to it. But it really did become about coming out in the traditional sense of coming out into the community and coming out to be in community as opposed to sharing....like coming out now is about sharing vulnerable information with strangers and coworkers. But that was not always the case before commercialization of queer culture.
And then through learning that it kind of clicked for me how so much of culture is connected to debutante culture in presentation and aesthetics and the way that we commune or like celebrate the pageantry. Like the diva worship is all connected to a kind of Hollywood femininity and you know, coming out for courtship. That's all kind of aside...but that's what Narcissus was kind of excited about.
Jasper:
Had you read about these myths in any specific way, like in school, or on your own, or just remembered them from earlier in childhood or teenage years?
Mazerick:
I think that most of my exposure to these myths was pretty atmospheric, just from them being around in our culture. I don't remember reading or watching a specific version or depiction of any of them that I feel connected to in my memory. But I know that I read myths as a kid. Fairy tales were more obviously prevalent for me in the media that I was consuming. The myths were interesting to me, but not quite as close. But, when I was just moved to Birmingham, so like 2021-2022, I was reading and learning a lot about a field of psychology from the 70s called transactional analysis and script theory by Eric Byrne and Claude Steiner. There were some other psychologists that contributed to that, but these two were kind of the bigger contributors. And they were all about freeing people from the scripts that they developed or inherited in childhood based on their circumstances and conditioning. And they used fairy tales and myths to communicate the templates that they were seeing. And because people connected with them and would often kind of build their script subconsciously from these fairy tales and myths that they were consuming as children. And Sisyphus was one I read about from them, and Icarus. And so they actually were really responsible for my understanding of how those stories easily paralleled into the lives of regular people. And how those feelings of chronic desperation or not quite ever being able to have exactly what we want, kind of look in regular people's lives. So that was really transformative literature for me.
Jasper:
I just love how those ideas translate into songs. As a medium for bringing them to life in a different way, it just makes a lot of sense to me that you're focusing on the voice. And there's a little bit of other instrumentation, but not much. So the voice is really an interior kind of voice, when there's not a lot of context around it. And the characters are so ancient...I think it's just a great channel for reimagining those figures, or embodying those figures, or having them move through time to now or to your own experience.
Mazerick:
Conceptually, everything is always connected for me, whether I'm fully aware of the how or not. And I think this project is really synthesizing so many of those things in maybe the most cohesive way yet, but in a way that I've really been, I think, yearning for....or trying to understand how the pieces fit together. That's becoming clear with this project in a way that feels really gratifying.
Jasper:
The last thing I thought might be interesting to talk about is that we're putting on a listening session for the album. You've also performed part of this music before. How did you feel about performing it and what's the idea behind listening to the album as a public event versus performing it in a more traditional way?
Mazerick:
This is going to be a rough answer, but I'm excited by the question....I have not performed regularly in many years, but did perform regularly for many years and enjoyed that. I think in a similar way that I enjoyed making my voice do things before it became what it is now, the performance that I did in May with Stump and Zoe at Dan Bailey's gallery felt like a reintroduction or like a re-initiation in some ways. It was really exciting and it was really intimate, but part of it was definitely me trying to assess if I could do that...could take up space like that and enjoy the way I was being perceived and the way I was being received. I think that I am excited by the possibility of performing again, but I am, I think, interested in the way that the listening party will facilitate a different kind of connection with the content. I think why I'm attracted to this format. Because for me, when I'm at shows or listening to music live, I really enjoy it, but what I'm enjoying is being around people and feeling the movement of the music through my body. And I'm not necessarily able to attach to meaning in the music. And this album is, you know, the movement of the music through the body is such an important part of it and I think is a really exciting potential in its performability. But I know that I will be able to receive feedback and connect with an audience in a totally different way if we are all consuming or experiencing the material from the same location. And that is really exciting to me.
Jasper:
It seems more meditative, possibly...where it's more focused on listening than looking.
Mazerick:
Yeah...I think a big part of it is that I don't want to be looked at. Or I don't want to be watched right now, for this. And that boundary feels exciting. I want to share this thing that I made that I think is beautiful and look at it together, as opposed to being the thing that is being observed. That separation feels really exciting.
Jasper:
You're sharing your work and it's about that and about the composition rather than a performance.
Mazerick:
Yes...
Jasper:
Any other thoughts?
Mazerick:
I'm really enjoying revisiting the material with you. I'm learning so much about my process and the meaning of the sonic choices through reproducing it with you and having to communicate with you about what matters to me in the quality of the sound. I wasn't expecting that, but have been really stimulated by that.
Jasper:
Yeah...and in the process of working on that with you and mixing the layers of the voices, I realized that the sound will be spatialized in the room for this listening event...that we'll be in the middle of the sound, which I think is really interesting and connects back to the idea of the voices in the music being, at least some of the time, an interior voice. And we're literally going inside of your voice, with it surrounding us. I just think it kind of puts the audience or the listener into the psyche of the song in a way where there's not just one voice but many iterations of your voice cascading around...and getting to be in the middle of that is really fun....
Mazerick:
Yeah, I had not thought of that. That is a really exciting prospect. Exciting, like physically, that will be really exciting. And so beautiful how it connects to what is happening with the content.
: : :
All images by Mazerick Betko
Your Love For Humanity Will Be At Its Zenith is out now!
Album listening party tomorrow!
