Over the years I have found myself fixated on numerous instances of the untold, unsaid, unsung - both in real life and in fiction. My last experimental EP, objets feroces, used this concept in the interest of bringing attention to talented women in the male-dominated and often chillingly misogynist (though undeniably innovative and, to me, inspiring) surrealist movement. With this EP I attempt to voice women who, though they may have been (or have since become) famous in their own right, nevertheless were not centered in the well-trodden narratives people are mostly likely to know. So, for the most part, the inquiring spectator can only guess at their perspectives. Most of the tracks are based on actual events, while a handful are based on works of fiction.

Doing this sort of thing always feels ethically iffy for me when real people are involved, so I am aiming to keep things fairly vague and to grant proper complexity to the speakers, avoiding tropes that would either idealize OR demonize them. I am, however, asking myself that classic question: what’s their motivation? This is especially interesting to me in the cases that involve behavior many would find degrading, because the psychology behind different sorts of self-selected degradation has always fascinated me. This may have something to do with my own middle school experience, but, I digress!

Those who like a puzzle might enjoy trying to figure out who inspired each track, but I am declining to include an answer key, as what I’m really hoping is that these stories transcend specifics to become universal fables of sorts, and allow me to filter some of my own experiences through novel lenses.

The title is me addressing with ironic fondness the scourge that is ragweed, which is in the genus Ambrosia and which causes me a creeping, sinister kind of low-grade inflammation if I sleep on it and don’t preemptively medicate when the last quarter of the year arrives. The cover clearly depicts nothing Ambrosia-related but rather amaryllis, and therefore makes little sense other than being a particularly imaginative photograph by my partner and looking fierce in a way that I think captures accurately the tone of this whole operation.

“Reading is always an act of empathy. It is always an imagining of what it’s like to be someone else.” - John Green