In 2009, I began composing a follow-up to Initials B.R. called Nine Lives . What started as an exercise in math-rap became over time a much grander vision: an exploration of agency, meaning, mortality, and legacy inspired by the Voyager mission , its Golden Record , number stations , Holst’s The Planets , and the Maraṇasati of the Satipatthana Sutta 's "Nine Cemetery Contemplations" .
Each song bears a time signature or cycle derived from its track number. Each song represents a planet in the solar system along with its mythological namesake. (Yes, including Pluto.) Each song is a meditation on life and death from the perspective of a particular developmental stage. And thereby the album as a whole functions as a life in itself—a movement from phase to phase through our moment in the universe, drifting on momentum like a probe sent to study what makes a life well-lived and what does or d
Over the course of the nine years I’ve worked on this album, I’ve changed significantly. I got married. I learned a job. I earned my master's. I made a career. I discovered things about myself I never would have anticipated, but which make perfect sense in hindsight. Meanwhile, the world around me changed too, often in unpleasant ways. Family and friends became sick. Some died. Relationships fell apart. We witnessed again and again the tragedies of racism and sexism in America. World politics entertained an