I'm relieved that you received the letter as I feared my most intimate confessions were being ridiculed by a gang of disgruntled postal workers somewhere, or else were merely lost forever. I also appreciate your response and understand your desire for context. I will give it to you the best I can. Where to begin...

Last summer I wrote many letters to many people.

Wait, before that.... How far back?

In 2009 I fell in love with someone who was in conflict with themselves in a way that I recognized, for it was the same reflexive war that I waged with myself back in 2004-2007. I was living in Chicago for graduate school when this relationship ultimately blew up in a cantankerous mess of dismembered words and fragmented emotions. It was during this time that I should have been so light and focused upon my art but instead drowned myself in books, in absurdity, and in whiskey. I began to doubt everything about who I was in the past, all of the logical aesthetics and reasonable conduct began to implode. I externalized the war stemming from my insides and unleashed a mess upon my art, my peers, my faculty, my faculties. All my relationships were a mess for a few years... In 2011 I moved to Los Angeles and was living with another woman whom I had no business being with. One day it just clicked, all made sense, and I immediately began making changes. I regretted how I had been conducting myself for the last few years and tried to build an outlet in which to reconcile myself with the world. I made a bunch of fucked up crazy music -- which soothed my soul in some ways but also stirred up different issues -- and worked my ass off in numerous humbling positions in service to others -- as a form of foolish repentance. I met a Swedish woman who seemed to signify all that I could not realize in myself, all of the selflessness and empathy that I felt I wanted to cultivate, and I gave up myself to her completely. I gave up too much in fact. I suppressed my own desires for this other and during this time felt a unique form of happiness in refusing to assert my own will. I followed this person back to Sweden, convinced that all the fucking clocks and calculators of Los Angeles were tearing me apart. It's a long story.... But suffice it to say that this person became unbalanced through her giving and through a great loss which she did not know how to grieve, so only a few months after coming to Sweden we were separated. I struggled with what to do next. I did not yet find the catharsis in my relationships that I was looking for and I had given up everything that was important to me -- my art, my music -- in order to focus upon others. I was convinced to stay in this country by the person I worked for, a very kind guy with an incredible furniture shop, so I took it as an opportunity to be alone and isolated for awhile while I reinvigorated my creative practices. I was homeless in Stockholm in the middle of winter, but as the spring approached things began falling into place - and it was all quite healthy for my ego. I found cheap rent in a great artist studio, began recording music inspired by the melancholia of the Swedish landscape and people, started making lots of new collages and videos, and was quite happy being alone with no attachments for awhile. I did a lot of thinking about those individuals that were the most important for my development and it was while reading a text by Georges Bataille on his theory of potlatch that I decided to dedicate myself to a sacrificial task of writing letters to those beacons. The list consisted of maybe 15-20 names, distilled down to the 8 most significant, of which you were 1 of them. The letters were written spontaneously -- the typewriter provides the perfect tempo for this quality of thought. I would meditate on this individual, on our history of shared experiences both positive and negative, brew on it, chew it over for days sometimes, then one morning just sit down and let it all flow out. Some letters were very abstract and some where painfully concrete, but always I tried to be as transparent as possible. I finally found the catharsis I was looking for, but I maintain that I was not motivated by selfishness but rather to give up as much of myself as I could to those that deserved it most, how I wish I would have acted when I was still in their presence, in a way that they would understand and hopefully appreciate, without any expectation for them to ever respond or reciprocate. I meant what I said and I'm glad you received it.

Fuck ok so when I put it like this it all sounds like some therapeutic exercise, which I guess is true in a way, but I was focused on the more profound philosophical ramifications. I saved copies of these letters and when viewed all together -- only by myself of course -- they help me remember who I am and what the fuck I am doing in this world, and that is extremely important. I often forget... strange to admit that. Anyways, it doesn't have to end here, if you don't want it to. Let's have a conversation, or more letters, or some pictures perhaps, or some kind of active (not passive) interaction, whatever you can stomach. If you're not up for it, fine. No pressure, no stress. That's it.