The Measure of Dedication, the Magnitude of Affection
We spent most of the week preparing to send out the first shipment of my project “Kimiyo” to the world. It was moving to see tables getting filled one after the other with all sorts of colors and witness them being covered with a multitude of elements we crafted ourselves, as we gave every single one of those a profound sense of intimacy. There was also a sensation of utmost collective pride before the momentousness of our cooperative accomplishment. It always brings me back to our humble beginnings, when we were so financially struggling that we had to use each other’s t-shirts to avoid being dressed the same over and over in every picture and interview, or when I had to ask my parents for the money to cover the duplication of 500 CDs for our 1st EP “And If I Was to Die In the Morning…”, made of a few songs we hardly managed to record in a very tiny room of our apartment. It’s an EP that Miss Isabel, Jeff, and I would pack ourselves before going to our local post office to ship internationally, thanks to the era of MySpace, peer-to-peer connections, and online stores’ first steps.
Everything went so fast from that point on… I repaid my father almost immediately and asked him to loan me close to 10 times that initial amount of money when our 500 copies became 1,000, then 5,000, 10,000, and then several tens of thousands. This wonderful yet improbable situation soon prompted Jeff and I to create our record label and invite a whole lot of our friends to join that incredible frenzy we figured would be temporary, but that became our new permanent adventure. This all began in 2007… Today, more than 15 years later, we are singularly proud and thankful, blessed to keep on shaping our own journey based on our community values with some of the same friends who turned that cool summer job into a stunning permanent gig, doing it ourselves, doing it all our way, fiercely pressing on, regardless of the lows. And there were plenty of those; from friendships that ended along the way (which are still painful to carry), to the bad decisions we made and the very bad ones that followed… There was always something; fights, doubts, wrong bets, half-good ideas, amazing missed opportunities, and on, and on, and on. They were our hopeful tragedies, as our record label’s name so beautifully encapsulates, as none of those painful situations had the ability to deprive us of our personal and collective joys, our creative audacity, our evolving reinventions, and most of all, of the growing love we had – and still have – for each other… That’s our greatest accomplishment.
That’s why there’s quite a fulfilling degree of gratefulness involved with taking a moment to contemplate every step of the voyage we are even more passionately involved in today. I used to overlook the seasons of power struggles and collective disruptions we had to face over the years, until I made peace with it all, understanding that without any of them, we would have probably become old before our time, easily content and satisfied… We would have sold the whole thing like we sell something that doesn’t have any particular emotional value or to which we have no personal attachment, while the actual state of our hearts and minds is the absolute opposite. The more we fervently assume who we are, the more dedicated we are affectively involved, which reminds us that each one of those momentary tragedies was a benediction in disguise, an opportunity to renew our vows towards each other, to reaffirm our disposition towards our ever-transforming vision and to reassess our willingness to incarnate our dreams a little more each day rather than waste our lives into another daydreaming pretension.
And here we are now, in 2024, immensely febrile at the sole idea of you all receiving your packages so you can finally dwell on the “Kimiyo” project. That’s why Jeff and I are so enthusiastic to fly to Frankfurt for a few days to ship your packages. It may seem far remote from our daily walk to the local post office with our bags filled with envelopes, but it isn’t. We may now have our own studio, merch company, and vinyl pressing plant, our shipping bags might be exponentially bigger, just as the DHL head office is compared to that first post office counter, it may be a flight over a walk, but one thing remains; the ever-increasing measure of our dedication reflects the endless magnitude of our affection towards you, and that’s the driving force that has always been at the very heart of our blooming endeavors… relationships!!!
I can’t wait for you to open your packages!!!
PS: If you haven’t ordered yet, no worries. There’s always another moment, another opportunity, another way to commune with each other. That’s what matters the most!
That’s why there’s quite a fulfilling degree of gratefulness involved with taking a moment to contemplate every step of the voyage we are even more passionately involved in today. I used to overlook the seasons of power struggles and collective disruptions we had to face over the years, until I made peace with it all, understanding that without any of them, we would have probably become old before our time, easily content and satisfied… We would have sold the whole thing like we sell something that doesn’t have any particular emotional value or to which we have no personal attachment, while the actual state of our hearts and minds is the absolute opposite. The more we fervently assume who we are, the more dedicated we are affectively involved, which reminds us that each one of those momentary tragedies was a benediction in disguise, an opportunity to renew our vows towards each other, to reaffirm our disposition towards our ever-transforming vision and to reassess our willingness to incarnate our dreams a little more each day rather than waste our lives into another daydreaming pretension.
And here we are now, in 2024, immensely febrile at the sole idea of you all receiving your packages so you can finally dwell on the “Kimiyo” project. That’s why Jeff and I are so enthusiastic to fly to Frankfurt for a few days to ship your packages. It may seem far remote from our daily walk to the local post office with our bags filled with envelopes, but it isn’t. We may now have our own studio, merch company, and vinyl pressing plant, our shipping bags might be exponentially bigger, just as the DHL head office is compared to that first post office counter, it may be a flight over a walk, but one thing remains; the ever-increasing measure of our dedication reflects the endless magnitude of our affection towards you, and that’s the driving force that has always been at the very heart of our blooming endeavors… relationships!!!
I can’t wait for you to open your packages!!!
PS: If you haven’t ordered yet, no worries. There’s always another moment, another opportunity, another way to commune with each other. That’s what matters the most!
