Interview: Jade Decker - Mount Eerie
Surprise! It’s an article that’s not a roundup! As some of you may know, this month we launched Outside the Lines: A Line Rider Podcast (available wherever you get your podcasts). It’s an interview series where Ava Hofmann interviews her fellow Line Rider creators about their creations, and our debut episode was with Jade Decker, AKA Branches, on her incredible April 2022 release Mount Eerie, which you may recall from that month’s roundup.
It’s a really amazing conversation, so I’ve decided it would be great to also publish it in article format, for people who would rather read an article than listen to a podcast. So, what follows is a transcript of the interview, conducted on April 24, 2022, edited for clarity and concision. Additionally, the audio is also now fully subtitled on the Line Rider Review YouTube channel with an unabridged transcript, and you can also see some paper sketches Jade made while working on the project in the slideshow of the video. However you choose to take in this interview, I hope you enjoy it!
AVA: Hello everyone, I’m Ava Hofmann, and this is Outside the Lines: A Line Rider Podcast, where I interview Line Rider creators and talk to them about the artistry behind their tracks.
Jade, who is known as Branches, has been creating and releasing Line Rider tracks onto her YouTube channel since 2018. In that time, she has developed a sensitive and personal approach to track making, that places the artistic and emotional aspects of Line Rider to the forefront of her work. Her unique voice, influenced by her experiences in the chain reaction, Geometry Dash, and music making communities, continues to be a breath of fresh air, and an urgent perspective on what it means to make music-synchronized art.
Today I am very lucky to interview Jade about her most recent Line Rider project, Mount Eerie. At a whopping 48 minutes of intricate full-color track making, Jade’s track pushes Line Rider to some of its most fully-realized heights of visual storytelling. It’s really just an incredible track and an incredible work of art. If you haven’t watched it already, I highly encourage you to go watch the freaking video - it’s really great.
AVA: Hi Jade!
JADE: Hi! Thank you! So kind!
AVA: So, in your own words, describe Mount Eerie. Talk a little bit about what you find special or interesting about it.
JADE: Okay, so, “What is Mount Eerie?” [laughter]
AVA: Yeah, what is it?
JADE: It’s a big question, because... For people who don’t know, we are a plural system of two - maybe three now - people, but during the process of making the track we knew we were at least two people sharing a headspace - plural: multiple people sharing a body and mind - and that means that because we’re different people, we have different connections to the track, and different interpretations of what it is.
To us, it boils down to three layers - it’s kind of like an iceberg meme. [laughter] So, at the top layer of the iceberg, Mount Eerie is a musical visualization of the Microphones’ album Mount Eerie in a similar way to our other tracks, in that it’s capturing our experience of listening to music, and how we visualize it - the colors of it and the geometry of it. We experience music in a very geometric way, it’s like, “Oh, this beat is really squarey!” or, “there’s a lot of triangles here!” [laughter] Our track Ribs is very musical visualizey, but doesn’t get into too much of a deeper story, but Mount Eerie is also capturing the listening experience of the album.
On the second layer - at the beginning there is a land acknowledgement, which we might get into later, I hope so - but basically, this middle layer is an exploration into our connection to nature, and giving nature a voice, and recognizing that the world is living - even though nature is a very static thing. Mammals are so motion-pilled. [laughter] We have to move around in order to be like, “Yeah, we’re living,” but the trees, the rocks, the earth, the grass - everything around us - bugs and shit, birds, bacteria… [laughter] They’re all alive, and they all have a voice, we just don’t hear it most of the time because it’s kind of quiet. This is kind of a tangent. [laughter]
AVA: No, no, it’s great!
JADE: But that’s something about Line Rider specifically that’s always caught my eye - we have Bosh in the middle, who’s doing all this movement, but everything around her is so static. But it can also be so alive, and blooming - that’s why we always draw so many plants and stuff - because it captures life from a nature perspective, really giving nature a voice. That’s also connected to Phil’s music of course. Phil Elverum, when making this album, went by the name “The Microphones”, but after making it realized that he wanted to change his name, actually to “Mount Eerie”, because he felt that the name “Mount Eerie” was a good name for his entire music project. He actually lives next to a mountain called Mount Erie - spelled E-R-I-E, not the word “eerie” - but he feels that the name is very reflective of the land that he lives on, and I relate to this a lot because Phil lives in Anacortes, Washington, which is maybe two and a half hours away from me. I live in so-called Vancouver, in the Pacific Northwest on unceded Coast Salish land, and our experience with thinking about nature and experiencing nature is really similar. I relate a lot to capturing landscapes in music, and the idea that the landscapes around us have emotional qualities, which is a really big part of this project. It’s a huge fascination of his, and also a huge fascination of ours - the idea that the land is breathing, and alive - but also captures emotions that we relate to.
There’s a part in Phil’s most recent album, Microphones in 2020, where he’s reflecting on his voice as an artist, and thinking about his past, his childhood, and the way that he was raised in a forest without very much money. There’s a line that’s like, “Was this why I found it natural to speak with the voice of weather?”
AVA: That’s a line.
JADE: In our project, Mount Eerie, in Line Rider, there’s kind of two halves to it. In the first half, there’s a character, and that character is the sun. There’s Bosh in the middle, who is representing Phil, and what Phil’s going through, and she’s obviously an important character, but the two other really important characters to the piece are the sun, and the big black cloud in the second half. These characters are, once again, alive. They’re very important, and they have emotions, and intents, and ways that they react, ultimately kind of violently [laughter] - in the wildfire part for the sun, and the off-sled Bells-inspired outburst at the peak of the mountain. So, at its second layer Mount Eerie is an exploration of giving nature an emotional voice.
And I don’t know if it’s really my place to do that? Like, I think I can kind of do that, but not completely - like, I’m a human, I come from human experiences, but who knows what nature is really feeling. But if we as people start connecting more to the land that we are on - because we’re disconnected from nature, more than we have ever been - and if we can rekindle that relationship, then maybe we’ll, like, figure it out, and get closer to understanding that nature needs something from us, and needs something from us to be reverted.
AVA: What’s on that third layer?
JADE: The third layer! [laughter] The third layer is the Cabby layer. [laughter] On the deepest level, Mount Eerie is a queer self-discovery story - specifically a transgender… figuring out. It’s kind of buried in the process of how Mount Eerie was made. We were figuring out that we were trans while making this, and at the beginning of the project we were like, “Okay, we’re gonna start using this new name, Jade”, and then at the end of the project, as we were releasing it, we were telling people in the world, “Hey we’re Jade now.” [laughter] And the first place that I started using the name Jade was the Line Rider Artists Collective server, so it’s very much a safe space for expression, both artistically and in terms of identity. Maybe we’ll get into it later, but like, if you’re trans, you might… get it. [laughter]
AVA: You might relate.
JADE: Like, Mount Eerie is also an album about the universe, and discovering how being in touch with - not just nature, but your size, and how insignificant, but also significant, you are in the universe, and I’ve kind of twisted that to mean, not just, “Oh, we’re in a universe of stars and galaxies,” but also, like, within every person there’s an entire universe, and by being queer, and embracing that, and figuring out who you really are - it doesn’t necessarily have to be queerness, but for us it is - that you really do open up this entire new universe, and that’s how the ending comes to be.
But that’s my answer to what Mount Eerie is - first, it’s a musical visualization, second, it’s an exploration of our connection to nature, and the third and deepest layer is a trans coming-of-age story that’s very abstract. [laughter]
AVA: What a first answer!
JADE: That was so long! [laughter]
AVA: No, that was amazing! So, now that we have a sense of the things that you’ve been thinking about with this track, and the artistic journey of Mount Eerie, I’m interested in hearing about how you started making this track. What were the circumstances that led you to start working on Mount Eerie, and what were you thinking about when you started it? Because, obviously, you’re at the end of this journey of creating this… monster track, right?
JADE: Yeah. [laughter]
AVA: But where were you at the start?
JADE: So I have to go back and try and remember this... It was in December - December 22nd was when the track was started. Before that, the first conception of figuring out this project was listening to the album. The first few listens of it were like, “Wow this is really weird, what is this? I like it - I like the texture, I love the way it sounds - but what’s the story here?” It usually takes a few listens to figure that out in music for us. We were pretty familiar with other Phil Elverum albums, like The Glow Pt. 2, and A Crow Looked at Me - which have a lot of acclaim, like, “Wow they’re so emotional,” and like, human experiences - but this was something different. It was much more than just the human, it was deeper than that! [laughter]
AVA: Yeah.
JADE: So we had been like, “Okay, this album’s interesting. It’s definitely something. I like the second song, it’s very cute,” and then that was it. And then we had this one time that we listened to it, that was very visceral. It was probably a few months before we started the Line Rider track. We’re listening to this album, and we’re really focusing in on these drum. It feels claustrophobic, like, “Oh, we’re like, rushing through these corridors, and we’re really not sure what’s happening,” and we’re in, like, a dark space, listening to this, and then after, like, 10 and a half minutes, it stops, and the vocals start coming in, and it’s like—
AVA: Yeah, those first 10 minutes and then the cut to those vocals, right? Oof.
JADE: Yeah. Whoa. [laughter] Listening to that - and then opening your eyes, and then suddenly you’re on the shores of this really weird environment - it’s, like, post-death? Like you have died, but you’re not, like, finished dying yet? And you’re like, “Maybe I can escape this? If I climb this weird mountain that’s in front of me? This is really menacing!” And then you look behind you, and you’re like, “There’s like, ships and shit, coming in from all directions! And there’s all this smoke everywhere!” and you’re like, “Oh this is bad. This is really bad. I gotta get up to this mountain, because that’s the only place to run to from all these ships closing in.” It’s very menacing and, gray, and dark. [laughter]
So we’re listening to this album, and this is what’s going through our mind, and we’re like, “I might be injured... a few broken bones… I gotta get up this mountain.” And then when the ships come onto the shore, we’re hiding in this bush, like, “Uhh, it’s happening,” and then the fire starts, at the shore, and it’s starting to burn this island down. Like, this island’s already pretty dead, but there’s life - there’s trees and shit - but this fire is starting, and the pirates are like, “Yes, we have this place surrounded. It’s gonna all go down,” and this fire is surrounding us, so we’re like, “We gotta get up,” and then the fire gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, until we’re, like, halfway up the mountain? We’re not really sure - maybe the mountain hasn’t even started yet, but we’re just getting more inland, away from the shore - away from the more vulnerable spots to, like, flooding and shit. [laughter]
AVA: And you’re imagining all this, as you’re listening to the album.
JADE: Yeah, but it’s like a dream, almost - where you are experiencing it through Phil’s eyes - it’s not like you’re an observer, like in Mount Eerie - you’re actually Bosh, POV - it’s all very real-world. It’s not 2D, it’s like, “Oh, I turn my head from side to side, and there’s this whole world.”
And then the second song - you’re, like, trying to catch your breath as you’re running away from this, and you’re closing your eyes, and you’re remembering something - something that happened before you supposedly died, I guess. [laughter] It might just be a random-ass memory - in the case of Phil, he chooses to remember a soccer player - a really pretty soccer player in Norway or something, juggling soccer balls. But I guess there’s two pieces that I’m thinking of. There’s this short story that I read in writing class, called Bullet in the Brain. It’s like, someone gets shot, and they die, but in the process of dying they suddenly remember this random memory of this kid with a funny accent - it’s kind of dumb. [laughter] But the other art piece that comes to mind, with this last memory of coherency before death, is Everywhere at the End of Time - the final minutes of it - it's a representation of dementia the whole way through, but at the very end there’s this moment of coherency, that’s like, “Oh, I remember something,” but then it ends. And that’s kind of what the second song felt like. And this is still all conceptualization - this is not even starting the track.
AVA: You’re just listening to it, hearing what Phil is singing, and thinking about all this.
JADE: Yeah, and from there it kind of fades back into reality, and we’re back on this mountain, and we can see the top - it’s pretty close - and the smoke has become all-encompassing, sort of a dome over this whole island. The entire base of this island has been burned, but there’s still this peak to climb, and we don’t know why we need to climb up, but there’s something compelling there - maybe someone told us to climb up the mountain, maybe we can escape death if we climb the mountain, or something. We go up there, and we’re at the top - or, we almost get there - and at the start of the fourth song you’re on a boulder - “Over alpine tops peeking” - and then this final climb is this moment of reaching up and seeing some kind of light, and hoping that it’s gonna take you into the right place, and you're not sure about it.
In my mind it’s similar to this one incredible episode of a podcast called Welcome to Night Vale. It’s this ghostly radio podcast where they’re broadcasting stories about this town in a desert, where it’s kind of normal, but there’s just so much happening - it’s actually not normal. I’m not sure how I can describe it, but there’s this one episode called A Story About You - it’s just one story, written in second person, and it’s like, “You are now doing this,” - like, you’re doing everything in real time as the radio is broadcasting it. In this episode, you’ve kind of run away from your old life to go to Night Vale, this desolate weird town, and you’re haunted by how easy it was to escape your life, how easy it was to disappear - and you’ve been like, “What the fuck? Like, I had a fiancee, back in wherever, and then I just drove away,” and it’s the most terrifying thing. But in this town you’re just working, you’re moving crates, but then at some point you choose to do something out of the ordinary - you steal a crate, which you’re not supposed to do! And eventually you get caught - you start driving out of town, and it’s really intense - but at the very end of the episode, these two guys come out of a car with your fiance—
AVA: Oh my god.
JADE: …and your fiance is just like, “Why? Why? Why?" over and over again—
AVA: Holy shit!
JADE: …and the radio host is like, "You can never think of a time you have ever been happier, because, you’re finally being punished for everything you’ve done wrong!”
AVA: Oh my god! [laughter]
JADE: …and the two guys come up to you, and press a knife against your throat, and that’s how the episode ends!
AVA: Holy shit.
JADE: But throughout this episode, there’s this recurring motif and imagery of this planet of awesome size - with jagged mountain peaks, and rich forests, and deep turbulent oceans - this terrifying, monstrous planet in the distance. At the beginning of the episode, it's so far away - it’s intangible - but in the middle of the episode, it’s like, “Oh, it’s not that far away now,” like, you look up, and you’re like, "Oh shit! It got closer!” and then at the end of the episode, right as the knife is being pressed against your throat, you look up, and it’s there, and the final line of the episode is like, "If you reached up hard enough, you could almost touch it!" and you reach up… and then it cuts.
AVA: Oh my god.
JADE: So that’s what the, “Big black cloud will come / Get higher on your hill / When your fingers all go numb / And you’re finally standing still" part feels like. It’s like reaching up to this really strange thing, in your final moments of being on this island - of being alive - and then you just get fucking… sucked into…. something! [laughter]
And the rest of the album is a blur. [laughter] I’m not sure what happened after that! But that was that very visceral listening experience, and we were like, "This would be dope to make in Line Rider! Except… I don’t have the tools to do this.” [laughter]
AVA: And when would this have been?
JADE: This would have been a few months before we started it, so maybe September of 2021.
AVA: Wow, you’d already had, like, a vision of it!
JADE: Yeah! [laughter] So that was the conceptualization, and it always stuck with us - like, we would never forget this listening experience, and we were like, “I want to express this in some way, and the best way would probably be through Line Rider, if we were to do this whole album, but it’s so dependent on color, and we only have black and white to work with, and we don’t even have camera controls or anything like that - like, we would need to make backgrounds of, like, just a bunch of gray to make it work, and we can’t do that! The only way we’ve done that is by copy-pasting lines over and over again until it’s a full black thing!” And then one night we were on a call together—
AVA: Yeah, Jade and I—
JADE: Yes, and I was like,”Hey, I want to learn how to do this!” Actually, the reason we weren’t able to do it before was because our old computer, that we made Line Rider tracks on - the track pad actually broke, which makes it impossible to make tracks! [laughter] It broke after making Hold Yourself Tight. That computer was so shitty that it actually couldn’t get the mods or anything like that - we had tried to, but it just didn’t work. And then we were using a different computer - borrowing one from our parent - and we were like, “Hey, maybe it would work on here!” and it did! And we started making Mount Eerie that night! [laughter] We made the first six minutes.
We started by making a weird orange and blue track, just testing out camera movements, camera pans, zoom-outs, color layers, and even multiple riders switching perspective. But then we were like, “Okay, that’s cool and all - all these bright colors - but what if... it’s all gray?” [laughter] like, “This is what we use the color layers for.” And that’s how it began. The beginning of the album is so stark - it really starts from nothing, and then grows really gradually into something of… life being formed, and we just started going with it, not even really sure what it would be, but like, “Oh, this feels important to make in some kind of way.” We definitely didn’t know that it would end up being about transitioning, and about nature, but we knew that making that first rock section would give us the the space to start thinking about the album, and we were like, “This album is so interesting, and I just wanna learn more about it, and this is the best way to do that.” So, that’s how it began! [laughter]
AVA: Yeah, this way of making the track as a way to understand the album is so cool! The way art can help us understand things in our life, and why we feel the way we do. And this is maybe a good lead-in to this question, because one of the initially striking things about this track is its use of color - these shades of gray that are sometimes almost indistinguishable, these thematic gray or monochrome environments, and then this contrast of these colors that are not monochrome, right? If you really look at what colors they are, they’re kind of muted, but in comparison to the gray they’re, like, vibrant, right?
JADE: For sure, yeah.
AVA: How were you thinking about your use of color in Mount Eerie aesthetically and narratively? Because—
JADE: It’s a big part of the piece!
AVA: Yeah, it’s huge!
JADE: It definitely wasn’t a thing I knew from the start - that it was gonna get really bright later. When making the start, we were just focused on the start, but as we were making the start and calling in the Line Rider Artists Collective Discord... There’s one system of people who we credit at the end of the track - Chicken - and we say that they inspired most of the narrative choices related to color, because they really inspired us to restrain ourselves with color in the first moments, and then really let it all out in certain moments that felt really key. There was this story Chicken told us - I don’t remember all the details exactly, but the gist of it is that they were in this cave for a really long time, exploring, and not really sure of a way out, I think? I could be remembering this totally wrong.
AVA: I was there for that story - I think it was a tunnel that they were going through?
JADE: Ohh, okay. And it was super dark, and they couldn’t really see much, and your eyes - after being in the dark for so long - start making out the shapes of what is there - even if, as you are just entering, it seems indistinguishable, your eyes will start to make it out, and tell these slightly different shades of grey apart, in the case of Mount Eerie. But when they finally emerge out of the tunnel, they look up and the universe is there. Like, the sky is absolutely covered in stars - naturally, because there’s no light pollution from the city in this place - and it’s just the most beautiful thing that they have ever seen - not just the place, but because their eyes hadn’t seen light for so long, it was so gratifying when it finally happened. And as we were hearing this story, we were like, “This is what’s gonna guide the color usage.”
It’s very held back at the beginning, and then the first traces of color come in in the river section, nine minutes in, which is this blue, and it kind of catches you off guard -not too much, it’s not jarring - but it’s like, “Ooh, there’s this blue layer,” and then the next color that gets introduced is the yellow sun, and the fire, and then that builds and builds until there’s more and more of that on screen, until at the 17-minute mark there’s static all over the screen, and it’s like the whole island has burned down. But the second song - the memory - is a moment of all these soft colors coming into play. And while we were making the first part, with all the gray, we were like, “Ehh, okay, we should probably make one really colorful track,” so we made Don’t Worry in a night, [laughter] which is our first released colored track.
AVA: You were working on Mount Eerie before Don’t Worry, right?
JADE: Yeah we started it before that. Don’t Worry was made on New Year’s Eve - that’s how I spent my New Year’s! [laughter]
AVA: Great use of time!
JADE: Yeah, it was! [laughter] Wholeheartedly! But yeah, that inspired the color sections in the Solar System part. But then, the off-sled part is very distinct, because it’s this incredibly blinding moment - especially if you've turned your brightness on your screen all the way up - and it's like, “Oh, I actually died, because my eyes just died!” [laughter] And that's like, “Oh that's great!” [laughter] I think pocke would say that a lot, like, “I’ve been murdered by this track,” and I’m like, “Good, that’s exactly how you should feel!” [laughter] But yeah - you’re looking at gray and almost-black backgrounds for most of the track, and then suddenly you’re thrust into an environment that’s just black and white. And the thing about this part is that, in terms of color, it’s what 99 percent of Line Rider tracks look like! But with all this grayness, you’re like, “Oh, this is normal now,” and what used to be normal now looks incredibly surreal and wrong! And it’s great! [laughter] It’s very raw, and fun.
And then after that there’s this yellow background - and I wasn’t sure about this part - when we are on the other side of the mountain, and we’re coming down, like an almost-dead body being streamed down the side of the mountain with no will. The yellow, kind of pale, tan color was a really interesting choice that came a lot later than other things. We thought it would be more gray at the beginning, but it felt right to make it almost like the sun has come out, like the sun has risen again and it’s like, “Hooray we’re dead!” I don't know if it’s triumphant, [laughter] but maybe a little bit. I don’t know how to describe it yet.
But there’s one more thing to mention, and it’s the use of the color black specifically, because the first instant of black in the whole track is the big black clouds on the mountain, and that feels really good every time I watch it, because we’re exploring almost-black territory, but then this is completely black, and you’re like, “Oh, that’s menacing.” Actually, that’s not the first instance of black - the first instance of black is actually in the Solar System section, in a very tiny drawing of Mount Eerie, but that’s a very subtle foreshadowing thing—
AVA: Wow, foreshadowing!
JADE: Yeah, lore! But then also, of course, in the final song, it just cuts to a completely black screen, and that’s a really significant moment - especially in the lyrics as well. The lines are, “Now that I have disappeared, I have my sight / Beautiful black, you are unveiled.” And then we have pure white stars on black background, and... I don’t know what would’ve happened if Chicken had never shared that story. Maybe we would have come to the same conclusion - that we needed to really hold back, and then throw our punches at these specific moments to make them really work - but that story was so crucial to how the track played out. It made me really glad that I made this track, not, like, in secret, [laughter] because there were a lot of really good contributions by people, just, giving feedback - or not giving feedback, but just giving their response and thinking about it in voice call, and giving me something to work off of. Like, Gavin making A Rush of Blood to the Head completely in secret was unhinged - I mean, it worked for him! It’s great! [laughter] And he needs that space, but art is very social for us! [laughter]
AVA: Yeah, totally. I feel like there was at least one moment that would not have existed without that story from from Chicken - the long tail grind, looking up at the stars - I feel like that moment would not have happened without that story.
JADE: Yeah, absolutely.
AVA: Great tactic to be like, “My goal is to blind my audience.” [laughter] No joke - great tactic for the emotional effect. [laughter]
JADE: I mean, I come from the Geometry Dash community. [laughter]
AVA: Right! They’re, like, firing photosensitivity warnings at you all the time. [laughter]
JADE: And then I’m like, “I’ll just throw one, at this really big moment - that’ll show ’em!” [laughter]
AVA: Yeah! [laughter] You’ve been talking a lot about nature - things like the land acknowledgement, and that text at the start, and it's, like, dedicated to nature, and you use the she/her pronouns for nature, which is—
JADE: Well, it’s just “Mother Nature” - I’ve always learned that! [laughter]
AVA: I think it also ties into some other things, with the “bottom layer,” with gender, right?
JADE: Yeah, yeah.
AVA: And it opens with this quote from Phil Elverum, “It doesn’t necessarily feel like nature wants us in it.” Nature is such an important theme in the track, and elsewhere in your work - there’s nature all the time in your tracks, right?
JADE: Yeah.
AVA: So, what is your own relationship to nature, and how does that relationship appear in your tracks? How is that relation with nature functioning in this track?
JADE: Well, I mentioned before that the piece, and Phil’s music, is very reflective of the land we live on - specifically Pacific Northwest Coast Salish land. This track would be completely different if it weren’t for the fact that I wake up every morning and I fuckin’ see mountains! [laughter] The city I live in, Vancouver, is pretty urbanized, but there’s traces of nature everywhere. Something that’s really important about the land acknowledgment - a big reason why we do it - is, Mount Eerie is so dictated by where I’m from, and it would not be the same if the people who lived here for thousands of years - before the land was colonized and abused - if they didn’t take proper care of it. Indigenous culture is like a blueprint for how we should live with the land, because they have thousands of years of being here without fucking it up and exploiting everything - just, being communal, and also being like, “Two-spirited people? This is an important part of society. A third or fourth gender is very important.”
But with my personal relationship to nature, our channel name is Branches. That’s that for a reason - one of us is named Twig, and the name Twig actually comes from this one outdoor school trip, a camping trip in grade 7, where no one used their real names, with the counselors or with each other - they used nature names. So my friend was Pebbles, and this other person—
AVA: [laughter]
JADE: Okay Pebbles is a horrible first example, but—
AVA: No, no, it’s a great first example!
JADE: Okay, it’s great, you’re right. [laughter] But other people were, like, Hemlock, or Cypress - which are names of trees - and one of the counselors was named Alpen Glow, which is fuckin’ based, [laughter] but our name was Twig. And I guess everyone else kind of threw out their names, but—
AVA: You held on to it.
JADE: Yeah, [laughter] that one stayed. We kind of think of ourselves as this tree that is continuing to grow, and our whole system is kind of like branches of a tree - Twig is like the sticks, Cabby is like the flowers, and this other person who’s being discovered is kind of the leaves. [laughter] To sum it up in a really simple way, nature is not something we live beside, or live with - we are actively a part of nature. Like, we are nature, and a lot of humans are like, “No... we can’t recognize this,” but we gotta.
AVA: Yeah.
JADE: Like, land is not something we live on, it’s something we live with, and we are part of the land ourselves - part of the ecosystem, and the habitats and the biomes and shit. [laughter] We’ve distanced ourselves a lot, and it’s sad!
AVA: That identification with nature - it seems that is really informing a lot about Mount Eerie. And this talk about identity might be a good way to lead into that third layer you were talking about - things like gender, queerness, and identity. A friend of ours described Mount Eerie as a creation myth that’s also a coming-of-age story - which is an incredible description, and it’s specifically a queer coming-of-age story, and a trans coming-of-age story. It runs through the track in sometimes subtle ways, but really important ones. You’ve mentioned it in this interview, you’ve mentioned it in the description of Mount Eerie - how is this track relating to your own self-discovery, self-expression, and coming-of-age?
JADE: It’s tricky to get into but we will try our best.
AVA: Understandable!
JADE: I mentioned how Mount Eerie’s split into two halves, where the sun is the center of the first half, and then the second half is the clouds. The first half of the track is kind of a realization inside yourself that, “Oh, I am queer, I am trans,” and then the second half is what happens when you tell people, [laughter] and process of embracing this and having this knowledge now. In Mount Eerie, we interpret the sun as this really influential person - so influential that, like, you orbit around them, and a bunch of things orbit around them, and they’re beautiful and massive and writhing. In the first moment of the sun being revealed, where you look up and the sun is right there - like the planet of awesome size from the Night Vale episode - it’s like being faced with this incredibly beautiful and important and central person. We all have someone who is like the sun to us - like, we wouldn’t really live without them. The sun is what makes life possible on Earth - the photosynthesis shit [laughter] - you know, scientific stuff - I’m not good at science. [laughter] But that’s how life began, and how it continues, and how it evolves, but it also has the power to destroy! It’s much more powerful than anyone on Earth - we’re kind of powerless. Even the most powerful people, who are like, “Hmm, yes, I have power,” like, no - the sun, she’s fuckin’ writhing! [laughter] Like, she will kill you! [laughter] So that’s how that feels. The sun character could be a friend, a family member who’s really important, or a mentor who’s really inspiring and pushes you forward - just someone who’s important to you, and it feels like a lot revolves around them. In the case of Phil, he is consistently using the sun as someone he's in a relationship with. The track that we made in 2020, You Are the Sunset, is about personifying the sun - this person is so important that they are the sun, but also the sunset, because it’s temporary. But also it’s so beautiful.
It’s very interesting listening to Mount Eerie, made in 2003, and then listening to A Crow Looked at Me in 2017 - 14 years apart. The quote at the beginning of Mount Eerie - that nature doesn’t necessarily want us here - that’s from an interview he did about the making of Mount Eerie, kind of similar to what we’re doing now. [laughter] He’s talking about driving in Florida, and nature feels incredibly menacing. Like, it’s hot, and humid, and the air is thick, and it’s right after 9/11 so there’s all these little flags everywhere, and everything around you just feels hostile, and like nature doesn’t want you there, necessarily - it doesn’t want humans to do whatever they’re doing - it’s gonna react - she’s gonna burn everything up, like, “No! Get out of here humans! You’re killing me!” [laughter] And I think he also mentions in that interview that, in that instance, the prospect of upcoming death becomes not an abstract thing anymore. In The Glow Pt. 2, and in his older work, it’s like, “Yeah, death - it’s this fuckin’ thing, I guess! It’s abstract, and kind of spiritual?” but then as he progresses in his career, mortality becomes more real, and that gets to A Crow Looked at Me, where his wife withers away in front of his eyes - goes from alive to dead - and that’s... yeah. I can’t really describe that. His music can’t describe it either, it’s just so...
AVA: Yeah.
JADE: What was I talking about?
AVA: You were talking about the sun, and the immensity of death stopped us in our tracks a little bit. [laughter]
JADE: Ah, how typical of death to do that!
AVA: The sun is representing a person.
JADE: Yes, because in Mount Eerie the album, he’s saying things like, “See me look from side to side / See me struggle and crawl,” but then it’s like, “Ugh, I’m done with this, I’m so dead,” but then it’s like, “But I feel you / On my neck / You are a ball of fire!” [laughter] And then that’s this huge moment of like, “Oh my god, the sun is there,” and Bosh is really staring right at the sun at that part. In that instance of driving in Florida, he had just parted ways with someone that he was, “very intertwined with,” in his own words, and it was like, in the sun, you can feel that person there, and that’s Phil’s meaning of the sun in his work.
For us it’s similar, but it’s also - I’m going to use Ethan Li’s words in their My Boy review - “a budding queer crush.” [laughter] Obviously I’m a 17-year-old, I’m not dying, but I am filled with queer emotions in our queer discovery. It’s always certain people that cause you to question yourself, like, “Oh my god, this person’s hot... in the sense that the sun is hot!” Okay, that’s a really funny interpretation. [laughter]
AVA: No, it’s incredible! [laughter]
JADE: This got very serious to very silly very quickly, but hey - death is a silly thing sometimes. [laughter] And yeah - the Solar System part is, like, the sun is causing all these plants to grow, and all this lush nature to become possible, and it’s like “Whoa, what’s happening to me? I’m gay?” [laughter] It’s very funny how I’ve like taken this pretty straight album and turned it into something so homoerotic, but that’s just naturally a result of making an album that is so connected to nature, because environmentalism and queerness are interlocked, and I can’t really describe why, but I know they are. [laughter]
AVA: No, true - there’s a lot of thinking on this. It’s a very good intuition.
JADE: There’s so many queer people in the climate movement here in Vancouver, so it’s like, “Huh I wonder why,” and it definitely has to do with being marginalized in some ways. I can’t really put words to it, but it’s there - that connection. Nature’s just gay, basically. [laughter]
AVA: True though! And trans!
JADE: Yeah, and trans, of course - blooming and beautiful! [laughter] So the first half is like, the knowledge of, “Oh, I am trans - or, I’m something! I’m definitely not straight!” [laughter] And then the second half is like, “Okay, I’m unveiled now” - “I look unveiled, as I walk out of the canyon” - and now I have to climb this mountain, and the mountain is like the journey of self-acceptance and telling others, and seeing what happens, because that can open up a lot of cans of worms! [laughter]
AVA: Absolutely, yeah.
JADE: So climbing up this mountain is like the courage to come out - to become in touch with who you really are - and you know that it is worth it, and you have to do it, you have to climb this mountain, there’s just no other way, otherwise you’ll just die on this burning island. But then you climb up, and at the top of the mountain there’s the big black cloud off-sled maniacal unhinged scribbling. [laughter] You could read it as a cute celebration, and also as life-destroying traumatic outcomes. You don’t really know what people are going to be like, and how people are going to respond. Like, are they going to accept you for who you are? Who do you keep in your life after this? So you go off-sled, and there are lyrics like, “I’ll strike you down and then / I’ll strike you down again,” and it’s very violent, and also fun. Being out is like - suddenly you’re exposed in this really weird way, that’s kind of wonderful, and also horrible, but also wonderful. [laughter] It’s a very upbeat part of the track, it’s very exciting - and I mentioned in the description how life-threatening this moment is, and how real it is - your whole world changes at that time. Also, the clouds in this part have cute faces, and they’re also very evil faces. [laughter] A lot of people compared it to We Don’t Wanna Die by DeafTab, which is an interesting comparison that I didn’t originally intend, but it’s definitely there - dealing with death in like a really silly way, like, “Yeah, we can do this!”
The ending of this cloud sequence is really significant, because the clouds break down, themselves - after this fit of anger, as this part of the song is dying out, they are dwindling and—
AVA: Crying!
JADE: Yeah, they’re crying! And it could be people realizing, “Oh, I’ve hurt someone really badly with this,” and it could also be like, “I understand you.” That part just captures a lot for me.
AVA: And then after this moment of death the track keeps going, into really interesting spaces with this narrative.
JADE: Mhm - so at the part where we’re falling down the mountain, and we’re eaten by vultures - which, by the way, is very gay! [laughter]
AVA: True, true!
JADE: It’s very gay for your corpse to be eaten by birds. [laughter] I’m not sure how this relates to queerness, but it’s a really significant moment to me personally - the rain at the bottom of the mountain, when the static comes back in the music. It’s something about the way that these clouds have been villainized throughout this track. Like, as their first instance they’re appearing as smoke from the pirate ship, they have these fiery eyes inside them, and they’re really violent in the off-sled section, but what does it actually lead up to? What were the clouds gonna do the whole time? They were just gonna rain! And like, “What was so scary about that?” Its this interesting anti-climax moment - the clouds letting loose there, when they start crying, that’s just rain forming - and that’s also so important for life to continue - not just the sun, but the water. “Water is life,” right?
AVA: Yeah.
JADE: I guess that’s more nature-related but maybe it’s also connected to queerness in a way that I haven’t really figured out. [laughter]
AVA: There’s a way coming out is this weird anti-climax as well, right?
JADE: Yeah! [laughter]
AVA: Especially if everyone just was like, “Yeah! Cool!” right? It’s like, “What the fuck?!” Because you’re expecting, like, everyone to hate you or something, right? You’re preparing for the worst, mentally, and then, unless you’re very unlucky, it’s never the worst.
JADE: Yeah, it’s like, “Oh! Cool! Okay, I’ll start using your pronouns!” and you’re like, “But you’re a boomer?! This is so confusing!” [laughter] And then you’re just, like, a dead body - or like, not a dead body, but you’re just lying down in this rainstorm.
But we’ve not mentioned the ending, and how that is probably the most up-front queer part of the track. Because after you’ve disappeared, you have your sight, you can see clearly, you’ve gotten rid of this old self, because being trans is - I mean, I don’t want to say it’s like killing yourself, but it’s like killing a past self.
AVA: There’s a reason why it’s called a “deadname.”
JADE: You’re right! [laughter] But, in this moment, the stars that were in the the long-ass tail grind section, that match the colors of Bosh - they make return in full form, and start covering the screen in red, green, and blue, like Bosh is becoming part of the universe in this gradual formation of stars, until the stars arrange themselves directly into Bosh’s scarf, and Bosh sees her face in the night sky, and in the universe. That is a really important part. I don’t know if I can explain it well, but in the review that you’re writing about the track, you mentioned that this part is like seeing your face - really recognizing yourself in the mirror - and being like, “This is me - I’m actually here,” and how that’s something so special. You specifically mentioned, “after years of HRT,” finally being in touch with yourself, and at that moment, after we see ourselves for who we really are, an entirely new universe opens up - it has things from what we’ve previously known, but it’s also this incredible blooming of so many new possibilities, and just, the vastness of what can really happen, now that you’ve—
AVA: It’s just zooming out, and out, and out - it’s just so much. It’s immense!
JADE: I feel like it’s important to note that this part is very inspired by Freaks by vsbl - the stuff in this part is really just us doodling! [laughter] It feels almost pretentious - an entire universe of just doodles - but it’s kind of true, because within ourselves, and within everyone - within you, listening to this right now [laughter] - there’s so much within you that is possible already, but you can open up all these possibilities. And I haven’t figured it all out myself, of course - we spend our entire lives trying to figure this out, this eternal question of, “Who the fuck are we?” [laughter] but it’s something we’re progressing on. Even if it’s kind of infinite, it’s countably infinite - we can keep counting up, and keep seeing more of the infinity, instead of just a little recluse, like, “Oh I have to be-” like, “a straight and narrow path,” right?
AVA: Ahh…
JADE: Like, straight! [laughter] But being gay is like, “Oh my gosh! There’s so much all around me!” and it really is like opening up a personal new universe - birthing a supernova of transness! [laughter] So yeah, that’s why Mount Eerie is gay! [laughter]
AVA: This is a good lead-in to a slightly more technical question. Scale is such a huge element of Mount Eerie - the immense, inhuman size of reality is a theme, all the time. There’s all these zoom-outs - the sun is immense, this text, “WHAT DO YOU WANT?” is massive, and then that ending, right? It’s zooming out, out, and out, and it keeps zooming out, past the point that you think, “Okay, it can’t keep zooming out,” it keeps going, until the whole universe, like, disappears. How did you think about space and scale while you were making this? Because it’s so different from what we see in so many other Line Rider tracks.
JADE: It’s, again, very rooted in Phil’s music, where Phil is thinking about his size in the universe, trying to figure that out, and also the recurring point in Phil’s music about there not being ends, or boundaries, or any borders between things. It’s all just imagined in our minds - just a bunch of atoms existing, and we’re like, “Oh yeah, this is a chair. This is a flower.” [laughter]
It was also just… distancing ourselves from being in the mindset of making a Line Rider track. Like, “I really want to convey this one listening experience that we had, and this is a medium that I feel comfortable conveying this in, and I think would be able to convey it well, because we have, like, a person who is moving through a physical and somewhat introspective landscape,” and that ended up coming together really naturally.
But for the zoom-outs... I’m stalling, because I can’t think of exactly how I came up with it. We had never done any kind of zooming or panning before. I guess it was just experimentation, and playing around. There’s no zooming or panning - except for one very gradual zoom-in and zoom-out - in the first 12 minutes. I guess the first moment of that is the sun in the sky. This was not gonna be as huge of a moment originally. We had originally drawn the second sun - the second “You are a ball of fire” moment, which is a much smaller sun - in that first location, and then you - Ava - were like, “Maybe put that in the second spot, and make this one this big sun,” and we were like, “How do we do that?” And then, tinkering around with that was like, “Oh, the immensity of scale is something that’s extremely important to embrace in this.” And then, the “WHAT DO YOU WANT?” moment - it’s such a—
AVA: It feels so distinct from everything else.
JADE: It’s a moment of many things - we’re being faced with future, and we’ve been asking ourselves this question a lot, especially with where we’re at right now, with transitioning gender-wise, and also from childhood to adulthood, which Phil was also dealing with when making the album. He described it as the album representing a mark between childhood and adulthood. The immensity of that “WHAT DO YOU WANT?” moment is so grand and menacing - this huge landscape of, like, “Ahh! So much possibility!” It felt right to put it as text in the mountains - this jagged, almost carved-out text - and that also plays into giving nature a voice.
And also, something that I paid really close attention to, because it’s extremely important in the album, is the voices, and who is voicing what - because Phil is always Phil. Like, Phil is always playing himself - he’s not playing any of the other characters in nature, like the sun, or the clouds, or anything. He is always Bosh, in this case, and until we get to almost the top of the mountain, his lyrics are always reflected in Bosh’s movements. But the first thing that gets said by another voice is, “I know you’re out there,” in the second song - these female vocals coming in like water rushing in, this ghostly voice of longing - and that’s the first text that also gets written in Mount Eerie that’s lyrics, because I want everyone else’s voices - not Phil’s, but everyone else’s - to be reflected in the track itself, in nature - the staticness of everything else - but show that it is also living. Part of the “WHAT DO YOU WANT?” moment was the first introduction of that voice.
And then the zoom-out at the very end - you might notice that in the ending credits, there’s an inspiration listed that’s very peculiar, Cats and Pumpkins by Rabid Squirrel. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a rabidjunk release, a monthly patreon-suggested track, where it’s like, “Oh, it’s a Halloween-themed track, and there’s cats being combined with pumpkins, and Bosh is riding on them.” It’s very simple, but at the end it zooms out, and the entire track is encompassed in this very small space within this giant cat’s eye. It’s basically just a gimmick, in this case, like, “Whoa look how far we can zoom out! Cool!” but we were like, “That’s so interesting to have this entire universe be reflected in someone’s eye!” It’s also a very A Shiver Sequence ending, like, all this writhing possibility is within the mind of Bosh, and that was important to the ending, being like, “What if we see the entire universe become, like, nothing?” [laughter] And that’s very connected to the themes of people dying, and how there are universes inside of us, and how those universes, too, are not lasting.
That zoom-out at the end kind of accidental? [laughter] When I was making the sun zoom-out I didn’t know how to do the code properly, so I put in, “zoom-out level, negative 1000,” [laughter] and then I crashed Line Rider, but before doing so, I watched everything that I had made so far, which was, like, 17 minutes, zoom out into nothingness, and I was like, “I think I just watched the universe happen in reverse!” [laughter] and I was like, “That’s the ending. I’m not gonna tell anyone, but that’s how this track ends. Hopefully it doesn’t crash the exporter!” [laughter] The actual zoom level at the very end of the track is negative 150.
AVA: Which is wild, because the zoom code is exponential! [laughter] So each number is exponentially more!
JADE: You can tell we know what we’re doing with technical things, definitely. This track is very technically advanced. [laughter] It’s not. [laughter]
AVA: You’ve mentioned several tracks through our interview. In many ways, Mount Eerie feels like this love letter to Line Rider and Line Rider art. I think the credits are emblematic of this. You take this time to draw a little personal representation of each of your influences - you don’t list them in the description, you give them a picture, which is such a kind thing to do. How do you think this track fits into Line Rider as a whole?
JADE: It’s interesting to think about, because I didn’t really intend for this track to be for Line Rider creators. Like, they can definitely enjoy it, but it’s more of a musical experience - a more broad thing. For the credits - obviously, when we’re doing stuff in Line Rider, we’re gonna take inspiration from other tracks, because if you’ve seen stuff done well in other tracks - or even, like, not done that well, but you want to expand on that original idea - you’re gonna take inspiration from lots of different places, and that ended up happening in Mount Eerie, of course. This Will Destroy You - the first Line Rider feature film - has this really long credits sequence, listing a track that inspired it, and then giving a reason for how it inspired it - like, for showing that this technique can be really expressive in this circumstance - really explaining that word-for-word, and I wanted to do something similar, but I couldn’t really do that. [laughter] Like, I could give Shortcuts by banky as an inspiration, and be like, “This track is an inspiration because it shows the musicality of nature - it’s one of the first tracks to embrace how nature can be a way of showing how music flows,” but I thought it would be more fitting, and also weirdly easier, for me to do a credit sequence in Line Rider, rather than editing it. I know it’s unhinged [laughter] that I’m probably better at making a credit sequence in Line Rider instead of just putting text on a movie maker app, but also it’s so much more fun to do. We were like, “I want to show what aspect of this track is really vital to it, but I don’t want to write it out.” [laughter]
Within the world of Line Rider, and how it fits into that - I didn’t really think that this track - would be, like, that enjoyed? [laughter] I thought maybe two people would like it, and I would be like, “It’s okay - I’m making this really weird, unconventional thing, it’s fine, I’m okay with that,” but a lot of people have really loved it. Some people have called it, “the best Line Rider track,” which is the weirdest fucking thing! [laughter] But I’m excited to see if Mount Eerie shapes more tracks going forwards, especially in uses of color, and how color can be used more narratively. I mean, My Boy did that first, that’s why that’s listed as an inspiration—
AVA: Yeah, but you really took that to, like, a whole different level, in my humble opinion.
JADE: Most of the inspirations listed there are like, “This technique was used really well, and I took it and kind of made it my own to fit with the story,” but the main really big inspirations for the whole narrative of the track are… Shortcuts is one of them, because - nature, music, very good - it’s my favorite track, I could get really into it, but I won’t right now. [laughter] But, Descenso del Monte Rascaestrellas by El Loco Invisible is really significant, because it literally is an eerie mountain. [laughter] It’s one of the first tracks I’ve seen to depict nature in this emotional way, and it’s really raw, and reflects the feelings of nature, and we wanted to take that even further. Also, it just lets time exist - like, it doesn’t rush through anything, it just shows this experience in a really raw, unfiltered way. Heck, he fucking filmed the screen, [laughter] instead of a normal export! And also the movement of Descenso - the way Bosh traverses through this environment - it’s not precisely synced or technically impressive or anything, it’s just how Bosh naturally follows this path forward that feels almost undetermined.
Another big inspiration was Cold Death by vsbl. At the beginning of making the track, I joked around, like, “I’m making Cold Death Colorized.” [laughter] I love Cold Death, it’s a really interesting piece. I should probably watch it again, I haven’t watched it in ages.
AVA: Yeah, it’s really hard to watch. There’s something weird with YouTube going on with it unfortunately. But also just viscerally hard to watch, as well!
JADE: Yeah! [laughter] But, just going to this destination - having to go there to die - and also not reaching the destination - dying before you actually get there.
In Mount Eerie the recurring mountain appears a lot, especially in the dream sequence - Solar System, the second song - and I always put these hearts on top of Mount Eerie. It’s kind of a gavinroo538-inspired thing, the idea of putting this personal motif that might not make any sense to anyone, but you commit to it! Gavin uses two trees to be some kind of place and environment, and I will put a bench in all my tracks! [laughter] I don’t care if it doesn’t make sense, it’s just part of the personal aspects of it. So that led into A Rush of Blood to the Head being an inspiration, but that was definitely a thing, where I was like, “Okay, A Rush of Blood to the Head exists - someone else has made this really long-form track - I feel like I can do this too.” I also made a 28-minute track before - I mean, it’s not the best, [laughter] but it took a long time - it took a year to make. When starting Mount Eerie, I thought the project would take a year - I was ready to spend a really long time with it - and then it took three and a half months, which is super short!
AVA: Wild that you made it that quickly.
JADE: I wanted to find a balance in the storytelling between the level of detail in This Will Destroy You and A Rush of Blood to the Head, because This Will Destroy You is like, stark minimalism the entire time - just, the most bare-bones a track can possibly be - which is great, it works super well for This Will Destroy You. There’s no physical-world narrative being conveyed in This Will Destroy You, it’s more emotional and introspective, and I wanted to see if I could do both. And then, Gavin’s has physical locations, and it’s mostly introspective as well, but it’s full of detail - it’s a 54-minute film, and there are moments where you will blink and you will miss important stuff! [laughter] And I’m like, “Okay, this is awesome, but how can I find a balance between these two really extreme things?”
And the idea of an album track always circulates around in the community, like, “Hmm, what album would I make an album track to? Maybe this album, because I like all the songs,” and then you’re like, “Whoa, this would actually burn me out so badly.” [laughter] I was really surprised how fast Mount Eerie went, but it also makes sense, because it’s just such a connected piece of work - the album - like, it’s five songs - five movements - but they’re connected together in a way that’s not just cohesive - it’s one story, one continuous thing. I felt a need to show that more clearly, because it’s a great listen, but I wanted to share our interpretation of it, and also show that there doesn’t have to be distinct parts. In the two other album tracks there’s a lot of distinction between each part - in A Rush of Blood to the Head, there's text saying, “Part 7: this song,” and there’s this ten-second gap between each of the parts, which really makes them feel separate. There’s none of that in Mount Eerie, and that’s all thanks to the way that Phil thought about how the music would be made - like, it’s a story.
I don’t know if more people are gonna make really long-ass tracks. [laughter]
AVA: It’s wild that we’ve gotten two in such a short span of time.
JADE: I’m kind of hoping that that’s not the direction that it goes in, because making really big projects for the sake of making a really big project is never a good idea, I think. Maybe it could be, if you’re trying to work on your technique, but personally I can’t justify it. In Mount Eerie it was, “I have this story, that I feel the need to convey,” the same as any other track that we’ve made - Pink in the Night, or Something Just Like This, or Widows in Paradise, or any of them. Like, “I want to communicate something, but, in this track, I just need a lot more time to do that.”
AVA: It just happens to be a 45-minute story. [laughter]
JADE: It’s the perfect length! [laughter] It conveys everything that needs to be conveyed in the right way. Also, having that confidence throughout the track of like, “This feels natural to me,” is something that made it so seamless. It’s hard to find those projects that really click for you - with Line Rider artists, and artists in general - but finding which stories you want to convey, and which ones that matter to you, and finding a good routine of how to work on it - I hope more Line Rider artists can find that for themselves, because I think that makes the world of art a lot more interesting and beautiful.
AVA: How do you feel about this track, now that it’s out in the world? How do you make sense of it, as a piece of art you’ve actually made, and finished, and is something people are watching, and talking about, and all this shit?
JADE: It’s very weird to say, like, “Oh yeah, I made Mount Eerie,” past tense, because it feels like the creation of it is still ongoing - I mean, it’s just our life! [laughter]
AVA: Right
JADE: Like, life goes on, but now this thing is… My writing teacher - this writing teacher was pretty important [laughter] - he said, like, “No art piece is ever truly finished, we just choose to stop working on it at some point,” and that’s kind of how it was with Mount Eerie. I was like, “I could keep going, but, I mean, there’s no more album left, so-” [laughter] “I will keep it here.” I’m mostly looking forwards now, to the future - being an adult, I guess, [laughter] and also being out as a woman! Oh my god! Yay!
AVA: And that’s a perfect lead-in to our final question! What do you hope for from the future - in terms of Line Rider, but also in terms of your life, and the world? Brutal question, I know.
JADE: Brutal question - “What do you want?” [laughter] This is the question of the track. I guess I'll start with Line Rider. We make art in other mediums as well - we mentioned Geometry Dash, but Geometry Dash is kind of this dumping ground for fun ideas. Line Rider has always been a space for more thoughtful narratives - I don’t know if it’s something to do with the form of it, or if it’s also related to the incredible community surrounding it, and how people will actually take the work you make seriously. It sounds simple, but other communities can’t do it. The Geometry Dash community is huge, so there’s gonna be people who take it seriously - but not very many.
In the chain reaction community, which we kind of abandoned - I mean, we stopped making domino art - it’s a tough place to be in, because it’s a very small community, and it’s very male, and no one means to be transphobic, but there’s no other trans people, and also most of the community is too young to really get it. I remember distinctly, there was this one incredible machine builder who posted maybe 300 machines to her YouTube channel - this unstoppable force of machine making - but she started slowing down, and at the same time she stopped using her voice in the videos. The person’s name is Allison Drake, but they had a different name beforehand, a male deadname, and she started slowly revealing little things - dropping little hints in her videos, like, “the lady of many names presents…” She reset her number of machines - she would number every machine like up to 300, but then she started over, and she was considering, like, “I might just delete all my machines,” and it took a long time for anyone to actually understand, “Oh, this person is trans,” because people just don’t fucking know about it in this place. I’ve tried to be like, “Hey, let’s talk more about this,” in Discord chats, like, “Hey, this is important, let’s not just be silent about this, let’s actually discuss it,” and then I just get thumbs-up reacts.
AVA: Yeah
JADE: I’m like, “There’s a reason that every trans person who does dominoes, fucking… is not doing dominoes now!” It’s uniquely isolating in this way, and it’s suddenly, like, “Oh my god, I can’t relate to these people, and their humor, and the way that they talk about their art,” There’s another trans woman who hasn’t posted in, like, a year - it seems like she still builds a little bit, but nowhere near as much as before. And then I’ve tried to be different, like, “I’m gonna try to stick around in this,” and it’s just not happening.
I think what I want in the future is to be understood, and to have people who are going to understand, and are going to be responsive about these things, and actually show up and be there. It’s tricky to talk about, but that’s what I want the most right now, and I want everyone who’s going through this kind of thing to also have those safe spaces, and be open about those things. And for me, Line Rider is a place for that open expression, even though I don’t know a lot of the main community - in particular the Artists Discord was so instrumental to making the piece how it was - I would never have the inspiration and the confidence to go into this project how we did, if it weren’t for the community, and the communal experience of making this art piece. And having more things like that in the future, having more spaces like that, in other forms of art making - we’re probably going to go into music making, career-wise, and studying that - but I think the most important thing is to build connections through the art, and to let art be a safe space for people to explore these things - explore queerness, explore nature, and explore yourself, and your relationships, and your connections. That’s what I want. I want people to feel safe, and to connect - in Line Rider, and everywhere else.
AVA: Thank you so much, Jade, for this really incredible interview.
JADE: Thank you too! [laughter] I was very rambly! Thank you for putting up with us! [laughter]
AVA: No, it was perfect! It was great! It was an amazing first episode!
JADE: I’m super excited for what is to come with this series as well.
AVA: We’ll see!
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