Origami in a Burning House

Making and sharing, in a world on fire

A few days ago I shared an essay about why my band is called Little Big. It was something I’d spent real time on—carefully put together, full of feeling and inquiry.

I liked it. I still do.

But posting it felt… weird.

Not because it wasn’t true or worth sharing. But because the world around it was in such sharp contrast to what I was writing about. The news was unbearable, again. Continued genocide, starvation, and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. A farcical public spat between two dangerously powerful billionaire clowns. The steady erosion of the facade of democracy in the country I grew up in, like it wasn’t even pretending anymore. The stakes everywhere screaming for attention—and here I was, talking about subtle improvisation and enchanted structures.

An hour or so after hitting “publish” I felt a hollow clunk. Not just from the low reach (thanks, algorithm), but from a deeper question that landed somewhere in my chest:

What am I even doing this for?

This feeling isn’t new. The uneasy relationship between making things and the world has been there all along. But more and more, I can’t keep from hearing the friction. I used to be able to post a tour flyer, or a new piece of music, or anything, without immediately wondering whether it felt tone-deaf. Without second-guessing whether the thing I’d made was in right relation to the moment.

But now? The backdrop is a constant horror show. No matter how nuanced or sincere a piece of music or writing might be, it often feels like I’m presenting a piece of origami in a house that’s on fire, hoping someone sees it before it turns to ash. Or like I’m humming a tune to myself in the middle of a hurricane. Forgive the metaphors—that’s just how my brain works.

It’s not that I think beauty doesn’t matter. I do. I believe in it deeply. But beauty doesn’t exist in a vacuum—it always exists in relation to the world. And that’s the tension I keep running into.

What keeps me making music like this—music that doesn’t announce its relevance to the moment—in a time when everything feels so urgent, so fractured, so loud? Why am I spending time exploring its inner principles, then writing publicly about that exploration?

Some days, I’m not sure. Maybe I’m just indulging myself. Maybe it’s just aesthetic self-soothing while the world burns. A kind of escapism. I wonder whether the kind of care and attention I want to offer is a luxury the moment no longer affords.

I keep thinking of these words from the Palestinian poet Marwan Makhoul:

In order for me to write poetry that isn’t political
I must listen to the birds
and in order to hear the birds
the warplanes must be silent.

I return to that often—the impossibility, for so many people, of attending to beauty when the sky is full of violence. The permission to make, to feel, to listen, is not equally granted.

I know I’m in an incredibly privileged position to even care about these questions. To have time and space for structure, for music, for small moments of noticing. And I’m aware that writing this, trying to work out my own perplexity in public, might just be another kind of self-indulgence.

But I still want to follow the thread. Coming back to the metaphor from earlier: I have a clear sense of why I’m humming in the storm. It doesn’t pull me out of the world—it roots me in it. It’s how I metabolize sorrow, absurdity, and wonder. It reminds me what it means to notice, to stay with something: the shape of a phrase, the feel of a voicing under my hands. A reorientation toward pattern, toward presence. Not because that changes the world, but because it helps me stay inside it with some clarity.

Meanwhile the fire has a mesmerizing pull of its own

I do wonder, though, why I insist on sharing these things with others. The music itself, sure, I get it. It’s what I’m known for, and what I do for a living. But sometimes it feels like all it’s offering is a temporary reprieve. And the writing can at times feel like I’m just turning my own uncertainties into something shapely, hoping that makes them useful. I don’t know if the presence I find in music, or the kind I try to cultivate in words, has any way of translating beyond me.

But I’m reminded, from time to time, that others are also wrestling with the same questions. This weekend in London, I taught a group class that, like many of my classes, wasn’t just about passing along musical information or techniques. It was also a space to talk about process—the circuitous path of learning, the ways ego can creep in, the habits I’ve only been able to unlearn by persisting in the wrong direction long enough. And how I sometimes don’t remember what really matters to me until I hear myself say it to someone else.

The very first question in that class came from someone asking about meaning in music. He said he’d been composing pieces lately, but sometimes found himself wondering if the music alone was enough. I’d already been circling these themes while starting to write this essay, and the timing of his question kind of bowled me over. I told him the truth: I don’t know.

Sometimes it feels like trying to pin meaning onto music misses the point—like if it could be said in words, maybe you wouldn’t need the music. Other times, I feel this intense pressure for music to be directly engaged, to reckon with what’s happening, to take a stance. I also believe there’s value in using music to imagine otherwise—to open a doorway into a different world. And sometimes the music just wants to exist for its own reasons, and doesn’t need justification at all beyond that. I didn’t offer him any conclusions, just my real-time wrestling with the paradox.

Afterward, another student came up and said something that stuck with me. He told me he appreciated the attention I brought—not to any one thing in particular, but simply the act of being attentive. “Attentiveness is contagious,” he said. It made me think. He seemed to be suggesting that by naming not just what I notice, but also what I don’t know—about music, the world, myself—I might be giving others permission to do the same.

I don’t know if that’s true beyond him. But I’d like to believe so. And it encourages me to keep going in that direction, just in case.

It’s a strange thing, making or sharing anything “nonessential” during what feels like the slow-motion ending of a certain chapter of life on Earth. It’s an apocalyptic time, in the original sense of the word: a revelation of systems for what they are, a peeling away of the veneer. So many live wires exposed, fraying and flailing, shooting sparks into the air. Everything feels lit up and dangerous, like the wrong touch could set it all off. And so many voices calling for urgency—calls I often don’t know how to answer.

I’ve noticed a kind of inner censor within me that creeps in during times of crisis—a pressure to speak only in urgent, analytic, activist terms. But it also seems to me that part of empire’s logic is to strip our capacity to feel, to flatten us into outrage or numbness. I don’t want to become captive to that narrowness. I’d like to feel free to share my little origami creations without guilt.

And yet, maybe we’re at a moment in history where the only truly ethical act is to yell at the top of our lungs: stop this. Maybe anything else is a kind of complicity.

I don’t know.

I worry sometimes that I’m just chewing the same thought over and over. Turning inner rumination into something lyrical so it feels less like paralysis.

There’s an obvious irony to writing publicly about whether it makes sense to be writing publicly. And there’s something rather lopsided about sharing these personal reflections against such enormous backdrops. The news keeps rushing forward—escalating immigration crackdowns, militarized responses to protest, and so much else that demands our attention. I’m not sure why I feel compelled to speak like this, even now, but I do.

I’m not going to try to wrap this up in a tidy way. I just want to stay in relation to the pressure, even if I don’t resolve it. I’ll still be sharing these essays, voice memos, fragments, thoughts about the musical process—things that feel real and alive, even in small ways. But I also want to name the unsettledness. Not to perform vulnerability, but to acknowledge the strange weight of making and sharing in a world like this.