We were lucky to catch up with VNIX recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, VNIX thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
At this moment, I honestly cannot remember the first time I knew I wanted to pursue music, but I recall isolated moments that felt like my soul was aligning with it’s true nature. One particular moment was sneaking into my local church. The lights were out, but one of the doors was still unlocked. I went there to find a quiet place to peacefully exist and reflect. I was having trouble at school being bullied and trouble at home, so I regularly would roam around trying to find secluded oases to escape to and be alone from human contact. What made the church moment so special was they had a piano close to the stage but off to the left side I believe. It wasn’t in the greatest condition, and some keys were slightly out of tune, but it felt like musical communication when I began to play it. Before I started singing on top of it, I would just make soundscapes to match my internal feelings and moods, but over time, words began to burst out and songs started writing themselves.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I’m an independent artist born and raised in Philadelphia now living in Texas. Since I was a child, I was deeply intuitive, creative, imaginative, sensitive, intellectual, yet also introverted, strong-willed, resilient, hyper-vigilant, and determined. I used to express my thoughts and feelings through drawing monsters, writing short horror stories, books, and scripts. At that time, I had wanted to direct horror movies and design survival horror video games. As the years went by, I was drawn more to poetry and experimenting with inventions.
Socialization was a challenging adjustment. My years in grade school were a consistent string of verbal harassment and physical assaults which continued even in high school. I remember feeling like I did not belong anywhere. Needing escape, I would roam around to discover quiet, secret, and serene environments to retreat to whenever I felt loneliness, suffering, or ostracism. In empty churches, I taught myself to play on their pianos; just sitting in the dark, hardly able to see the keys, letting the music speak through my fingers, and finding the chords that reflected the best soundscape to my emotional interior. During this time, I started performing for local musical theater which I continued into high school. As I got older, and received my very first keyboard for Christmas, my poetry turned into songwriting. I would lock myself in my room writing and singing songs. I began carrying my keyboard to open mics to test my original music on any ear that would listen.
In 2006, I received a full scholarship for acting at Point Park University. A memorable experience from that was having the theater director leave the audition room to find my parents, shake their hand, and say, “That was the best audition I’ve ever seen.” That meant so much to me to hear at the time, because I had seriously wanted to act in films and remember being encouraged by my one acting teacher to do so. In spite of these positive encouragements, my love for music was just too powerful to ignore and so I dropped out to pursue that passion. Where as acting was escaping into other people, music was escaping into myself and expressing who I am. Unearthing my authenticity was essential to my survival, my power, and my values. Shortly after, I auditioned and received scholarship to attend Berklee College of Music, but I found myself feeling withdrawn there as well. Due to massive student loan debt and financial inability, I made the choice to drop out.
When I returned back home, a loss of hope was plangent. No matter what job I worked or what field I tried to study, my spirit would begin to die without consistent artistic expression. I’m aware how dramatic that may sound, but it has truly never ceased to be the case for me since I was young. Expressing through creativity was like connecting to my soul. It felt like gifts given to me by God to help me stay in touch with my light when the avalanche of major painful experiences threatened to darken and smother it. He knew I needed this to survive that and I wanted to use these gifts for good. So, I embarked on writing music prolifically, composing hundreds of songs, most that I haven’t released or recorded. I started a “Song A Day” series, a lot of which was improvised for it. I explored how to become a self-sufficient creative force by managing VNIX entirely where I could; marketing, photography, videography, aesthetic, distribution, composition, production, costumes, stage props, website, etc. However, at different intervals, when I had the money, I also had the pleasure of collaborating with other professionals (or friends) on music videos and photography and distribution organizations like CDbaby.
In 2015, I released my first ever professionally recorded four song EP titled “500”, produced by Benny Reiner of Hamilton and mixed by Mike Roberts of Betty Who. I had the pleasure of making a music video for the single “Creep” with an incredible videographer Sebastian Nieves. In 2017, I had my entire scalp and arm tattooed with beautiful red roses by the incredible Ick Abrams and while working for the wonderful Art Machine Productions in Philadelphia, had friends Bobby Trefz, Raylo, Kevin Roy, and Ryan Szadyr (I apologize if I’m missing anyone!) tattoo a piece of their own expression of roses on my neck, arm, chest, and shoulder; a symbol of beauty blossoming from something dark and the power of the soul’s rebirth and transformation. From 2018-2022, I released 6 self-produced and recorded songs “Sexual Telepathy”, “Body of Fire”, “Bad For You”, “Take Me Back To Your Sky”, “My Heart Is Always Breaking In The End”, and “Love Through The Pain” mixed and mastered by Josh Smith (BOF, BFY, TMBTYS, MHIABITE, LTTP) and mixed by Tom Conran/mastered by Chris Gehringer (Sexual Telepathy). I also released a live studio recording of “Fear Over Love” performed acoustically at the famous Milkboy Studio in Philly. Some live accomplishments throughout my career have been concerts in Philadelphia’s Love Park to large crowds, venues like Kung Fu Necktie, World Cafe Live, NYC’s Underground Lounge, Goodbye Blue Monday, and showcases at ETC Performance Art Series. I was also selected as an emerging artist to perform at the Beta Hi-Fi Emerging Music Festival in Philadelphia, which was such an incredible night and amazing honor.
I used to believe that lack of money, resources, and networks were the true obstacles to my professional success, and in many ways they certainly were a massive hindrance, but the biggest complication was the damage done to my mind and body that I spent years unenlightened about. When I started therapy to figure out what was wrong with me, why my life wasn’t working, why I was depressed and suicidal, we began to unpack an intense amount of abuse and trauma I had been suffering with for so long, and all the ways it effected me and my development. Because personal growth is one of my biggest needs, these discoveries have recently been shifting my perspective on things and the way I want to express myself as I recover and heal.
Currently, I am working on a few projects (maybe a little too ambitious for my own good, but I need to create). I had finished producing an album called “Apotheosis”, but have recently made a switch to recording a new debut album which will be more to my ballad roots and share more personal details about my story. I am also writing a book “The Powerful YOU”, a poetry book “Ancestors of Lunacy”, and a series of paintings “Damaged Gods” that I’d love to showcase somewhere one day.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
In my current view, the creation of art is what contributes to society special things like fantasy, imagination, color, escape, intellectual thought-provoking discussion, and myriad of other benefits. Without art and the artists that create it, the world would lack that spark of hope, or energy, of vibrancy, and child-like magic.
However, being an artist in any form can require a lot of time, effort, resources, and money, which many artists lack or struggle to maintain. I believe society would benefit from introducing a program in which artists of all mediums could submit their work, even if it’s unpolished or extremely amateur (as everyone’s financial situation is different) to a database of benefactors, donators, organizations, maybe even government support, as well as, everyday people outside of these other brackets. These people and organizations would supply financial assistance to the artists they believe have potential or just want to see more from or encourage their dreams. The financial assistance would be helping them with things like monthly grocery costs and setting them up in an apartment or house so they can strictly focus on their art and building that business for themselves. The costs would also provide them with a monthly or yearly allowance for the costs of their creative expenses. There could even be housing programs specifically for artists.
The reason I propose this is because currently, artists have to work non-creative jobs to support their art on the side, which can be taxing on their energy and mental battery for that work, steal time away from them to be completing that work more thoroughly and consistently, and can deplete their spirit of creativity when doing something that does not align with the skills and gifts they were given to offer this world. There just aren’t much opportunities in our society that financially care for artists and their field of choice in a way other typical jobs do: benefits, insurance, good consistent weekly/bi-weekly pay, etc. I’m not sure how this would exactly work logistically, but the idea is there.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
For me, the act of creation is an authentic expression of the self. When I am making music, painting, writing, or whatever else I’m drawn to experimenting with, I am in full alignment with who I am and who I was meant to be and become. When I’m creating, I feel like I’m existing in the past, present, and future all at the same time, but with no headache, just balance, bliss, at peace, and feeling connected to the creator. I absolutely love deep diving into my mind to explore what my imagination can conjure; rich worlds, vibrant visions, intriguing philosophies to excogitate over, remarkable sounds for the ears to swim through… so many things that I can pluck and extract to bring into actuality. It’s a playground of limitless creativity. From the brightest to the darkest of things my mind can originate, I feel balanced welcoming them all, safe in the wholeness of the full picture of things. So all in all, the expression of my true soul and the contribution of that work to society is what feels rewarding about being an artist.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.vnixmusic.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vnixmusic/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vnixmusic
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/musicofvnix
- Other: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/vnix/1465395301 https://open.spotify.com/artist/5ZK2UOvo9dAitp0Wnp6Qzy https://www.instagram.com/vnixart https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/musicofvnix https://vnixmusic.bandcamp.com/ https://soundcloud.com/vnixmusic
Image Credits
Photos by: VNIX