#jams
Mar 11, 2026
This ambient jam is difficult to write about for emotional reasons. It already had multiple layers of meaning when I made it, and has only gained more in the time since — though I wish it hadn’t.
On the last day of 2025, my dad had a heart attack. He survived, but it was a close call. I haven’t talked to my dad in almost 13 years, and as you already know if you have ever cut contact with someone important to you, it is not a decision made lightly — or just once. It is one made over and over again in the face of time, evolving feelings, family, and major events like heart attacks.
I’ve long considered whether I would be OK with my dad dying without having reconnected. I thought I would have more time to be unsure, but I was very close to being wrong. Needless to say, it left me with heavy and complicated feelings to work through.
It was in this context that I found myself listening to a lot of ambient music, which is out of character for me. I think it gave me space to brood and let my thoughts coagulate. I’m not certain it was helpful, but it did make me want to try creating an ambient piece, which was also new to me.
At the same time, my cat Data became very ill. He was my first pet, who I loved dearly. I adopted him 12.5 years ago, shortly after going no-contact with my dad.
Like other pieces in the #jams category, this one was improvised and performed live. I pressed the record button and simply let myself feel through the music. Nothing was for certain, but I was anxious about my cat — so I called it “Impending Grief.” Unfortunately, this turned out to be portentous.
Not long after, I considered playing the piece at an open-mic event at my local synth club following an introduction explaining some of the things I just described here. I thought to talk about the very intimate relationship between music and emotion, as well as how I had created the track’s background noise layer from a short rain sample I had recorded in Ethiopia last October — giving the piece yet another dimension of personal connection.
Instead, I spent the next month making trips to the vet and tending to my kitty, who eventually passed away on my birthday a week ago. The grief is no longer impending — it is here, and it is shockingly dense. It feels like an enormous object trying to push itself through a vastly undersized opening. I can only chip away at it, letting small chunks pass one at a time, taking frequent breaks from the sheer effort of it. And all the while, the object keeps pushing, creating pressure, threatening to break me completely.
Originally, I didn’t care much for this ambient track except for the context in which it was made. Now that the promise of its title has come true, I care for it even less. I don’t want to listen to it. But maybe you might.