a theory of loss

a quick reminder to pre-save my upcoming EP—Just Around the Bend drops on March 27, a week from friday.

featuring three lead singles from my second album, the EP explores the growth from possibility into experience. sometimes painful, sometimes ecstatic, but always honest.

I’ll be celebrating its release alongside some great friends with a show in Red Hook the night prior, thursday 3/26.

finally, mark your calendars for May 8—I’m holding a release party in downtown Manhattan for the full album. lots of fun to come!

growth from possibility into experience.

theory provides a framework for understanding loss.

it’s a roadmap to metabolizing wisdom—the lived experience of those who have walked our paths before us.

possibility lives in a conceptual world. it doesn’t ask you to close any doors; it poses the question of what happens when a door opens.

but experience is a matter of closing doors. to define is to remove opportunity. and with time as the ultimate constraint, removing opportunity eventually becomes a practical matter—not an emotional one.

a core principle of entrepreneurship is opportunity cost: rather than thinking in terms of possibility, it involves ranking negative outcomes against one another and choosing the least painful.

it’s a brutal process to continually ask what you’re most willing to lose. with practice, it becomes freeing.

modern life involves the steady accumulation of “stuff”—emotions, possessions, out-of-date business systems—but very little guidance on how to remove what no longer serves its purpose.

do you really have the energy to carry around all this stuff that isn’t doing you any more good?

musicians are often told: don’t let theory bog you down—just get started playing, and let that carry you. especially in a quantity-driven environment like the music industry, shortcuts become a competitive advantage.

and yet people burn out. the technical ability of younger generations, not just in music but across almost every discipline, is drastically outpacing that of those who came before them. the internet is an unparalleled learning resource, and these kids have been plugged in since day one.

at my local 4-a-side soccer pitch, I was talking with a dad whose two boys had developed exceptional skills at a rate that astounded him.

and yet his fear was not that his kids weren’t talented enough—it was whether they had the composure to manage adversity.

what happens when faced with loss? how does someone learn to live with unfulfilled possibility for the first time?

the internet promises opportunity; LLMs, dating apps, social media networks, job boards, all with more possibilities than any one person can handle—

and all extinguishing themselves at a faster rate than an individual can process.

but I’m unique! nobody has walked this path before! the world is ending and I’m the only one who understands!

I agree with you! it’s a wonderful thing to be alive. nobody has ever seen the things you’ve seen, felt the things you felt.

and yet imagine they had. wouldn’t you be curious? what would you ask someone who’d felt the exact same thing you’re feeling right now?

we all experience loss firsthand—it’s a function of being human.

fortunately, many others have left a record of their losses in the hope that we might carry humanity one step further than they could.

in theory, for them.

in experience, for us.

“there is one rule in the garden; you must give more than you take.” –Alan Chadwick