Eleum & the Halloween Party

Goodbyes

I ask Eleum what it's like to say goodbye to their home in LA. They think about the last 7 years here. They’re excited about the music scene in Portland and the opportunities it will bring. I wanted to know the hardest part about uprooting your life.

“Getting to say goodbye to all of my friends. That's gonna be the hardest thing. Everybody's speckled out, we all have different schedules. I was texting a friend, the friend who asked me to move out here, and talking about how so much wild shit has happened in the last five or six years. But I don't regret a second of it. Everything, even the challenges, were steps in the right direction.”

“I feel like I'm finally happy in life. I've built a life here and finally got to be the person who I feel comfortable being. I think that’s why I've had such luck with making friends. You always hear these stories in the news about how the average 20-30 year old doesn't have more than three close friends. I understand why that happens because there's so many alienating things about the society that we live in. But I feel very lucky. Friends are the priority, the people in my life are the priority, honestly.”

Sitting on a record

Eleum grew up in DC and was always on the move. It was difficult to create lasting connections. Growing up in a strict religious household left them feeling alone. They remained in the closet for much of their life. They hid who they were. A close friend introduced them to the band Nirvana. A guitar followed soon after. Singing and playing became their outlet throughout high school. After college they moved back in with their parents and subsequently fell into a depression. In 2017 they received a text from a friend, the same friend that introduced them to Nirvana.

“Out of the blue, one of my friends was like, ‘Hey, I live in New York with my girlfriend. Do you want to Move to LA with us?’ I don’t have anything else going on here, right? I was selling cheese at a farmer's market. It was a nice change of scenery. I got to shed myself a little bit. Relearn who I am.”

At the end of 2019 Eleum began to experience worsening anxiety. They had visions of dying in an earthquake. They realized they’d never recorded any finished versions of their music. Eleum worried they might die with these songs never being captured. The pandemic hit and suddenly there was nothing but time.

Eleum released their first EP, “Nothing in this life is sure” on March 3, 2020. All the songs were written from 2014-2018 at the height of their depression. The instrumentation is sparse and raw. Their voice is ready to fall apart. There are references to self-harm and substance abuse. The lyrics speak about loneliness and regret. The songs offer glimpses of hope but never a full embrace of it.

Eleum had no sound engineering experience at the time. They ended up meeting their future engineer right next door in their apartment complex. I asked Eleum about their thoughts on the first EP.

“I still have a lot of affection for them. That first record was recorded in a period of deep intense anxiety. I was very frightened, very anxious. I was like, ‘I just have to get this shit out.’”

“For that first record and for the songs I had written in high school I was so fucking depressed. I was on medication that I shouldn't have been on. I wasn't sleeping. I wasn't eating and it made me worse at the guitar. Objectively on a physiological level. There's no getting around that.”

“If you're not eating, if you're tweaked out on Vyvanse, you are not going to be able to hold the guitar steady enough. You will play it jumpy. You will play it aggressively. Especially back then plucking with the pads of my fingers meant that the sound coming out of the guitar was more aggressive and twangy and not in an intentional way.”

“I look back on those songs with a certain amount of fondness but also a little reserve. I'm glad that they're siphoned off because it does give me the opportunity to maybe revisit those. Clean them up a little bit. Update the lyrics a little. Make them a little more considered. A little less wound licking. They are associated with painful memories, but I take solace in the catharsis of it. It was good to get it out there.”

What’s next

Almost 2 years on the dot, Eleum released their 2nd EP, “Where Could We Go” on March 10, 2023. The instrumentation is lush and uplifting. They are references to spirituality and purpose. There is an awareness and gratitude for the simple pleasures in life. There is an acceptance of uncertainty rather than a fear of it. I asked them what their inspiration for the new record was.

“I was thinking a lot about faith at the time. This most recent one. I want to make clear that my folks have done a lot of growing. I'm out to them.That wound has healed. But because [my upbringing] was so religious and because there was homophobia, when I was young I rejected faith.”

“At this stage in life I feel myself loosening against that. For a lot of people I feel like faith is an answer and that's fine and that's good because that works for them and that's one of the purposes of faith. But for me there is that doubt that I cannot shake. Through questioning, I come to what I think is a better and more comfortable understanding of how I want to engage with spirituality.”

“Very recently I've started praying to my grandmother I was very close to. She passed away a couple years ago. I don't believe in God but I still want to talk to her, right? That's kind of the way that it expresses itself. I don't even know if that's the end point. I will always be questioning these things. I will always have that doubt that's inescapable.”

“I've written so many songs and so many of them are sad. I got into a good middle ground with the latest EP. There's still that melancholy and so for my next thing I want to write love songs for my friends. They're not necessarily romantic in nature but I feel a strong connection to them. That’ll be a nice direction to take things in. To really reflect on those friendships and ponder how they affected and changed me, you know?”

Building memories

“My calling in life is loving my friends, giving them as much joy as I possibly can. The things that I gain the most lasting joy out of are when I have a good time with my friends. They come over and we all watch a movie or we go out to the park and we have a very nice day. You get to know people even better and less in life details and more in just their behaviors and things that they like and want to do. You're building a memory out of building a relationship, instead of learning new information about somebody.”

“Creating a sense of community is the most important lesson I've learned. You'll never regret having a support network of people who you can depend on. Being kind and being sociable will always lead to good things. You'll find your people. Start local. You'll find someone who will know someone who knows somebody. And that person might be the perfect fit for a friend group that you want to create. Go out and be comfortable putting yourself out there.”

Most treasured memory

“Oh man. It's a good question. It's got to be a Halloween party from many many years ago. I had just moved out here. I was working at Pacific theater and that was where I met my current girlfriend. It was a very fun evening and it kicked off a tradition of us always hosting a Halloween party. We were all young then, we could be up late and not wake up the next morning shell shocked.

“We ended up staying up. There were a lot of folks, maybe like 8 to 10. And we stayed up all night until the sun came up. [We were] watching movies or way back in the day, when vine compilations were still like the thing to be watching.”

“Everybody else had fallen asleep at that point. My girlfriend and I had not started dating yet and I had only just realized I have romantic feelings for this person. The next day she came over and we had a conversation. ‘Hey just so you know, I think I like you.’ I've been in that relationship for five years.”

Most important self-discovery

“I think broadly speaking coming into a better understanding of my Queer identity. It’s the most significant thing that uncoiled the most things inside for me. I started dressing how I want to. I'm actually thinking about style instead of just wearing baggy, sweaters and sweatpants that are both gray.”

“I can think about how I want to talk and come across and how open or how guarded I should or shouldn't be. It's good to know this thing about myself. That was the real issue in hindsight. There were a lot of signs. Because of my upbringing I had crammed those so deep down. That shit builds up and it tangles you up inside. I had not even realized that about myself until I was like 23.”

“Thinking about those things and coming to terms with them, even though that year after was a very depressing, bleak time, it did lead to that confrontation in myself. Then from there being able to chisel out the statue. Create the being that I want to be.”

What gives you hope?

“The alternative to me is just not an answer. Giving up isn't really an answer because then what's the purpose? Especially having spent a lot of time in my life being suicidally depressed.”

“I am at a stage in my life where that's just not a fucking answer. More on the societal level the thing that brings me hope is very tiny interactions with strangers that are nice. Obviously my friendships are extremely meaningful. But they fill me with peace, they don't fill me with hope per se, although it touches on that.”

“Whenever there is some stranger who is just jovial and says hi. Some guy tried to sell me LSD outside of my apartment complex. I want to be clear he was very chill about it. He was very normal, he was not being sketchy. That's a very absurd moment and this guy's super chill and completely harmless and did a very silly thing. Stuff like that is what gives me hope.”

What are you most grateful for?

“Being alive. It was truly very touch and go for quite some time. I got very lucky a lot. It's given me a profound appreciation for getting to wake up. See the things in the street, say good morning to my girlfriend, things like that. You never beat the thing but I've wrestled this dragon to the ground. To be able to say that with confidence is one of the most profoundly satisfying things that I get to experience in my life.”

Eleum Loughney • March 23, 2023