A Name Becomes a World
A history and an invitation
The Birth of an Idea
Many years ago, before the coming of the dark days of Covid, I was brainstorming with members of my filmmaking team (Dark Works) on an idea for a new web series. The premise was a musical space-opera, Red Dwarf meets Phineas and Ferb sort of thing, and the name that I came up with for the project was Cryptid Soup.
Covid happened. Filmmaking altogether paused. Relationships ended. Dark Works went away. And as it sometimes goes, the project never took off.
In April of 2023, I was seriously frustrated with social media and decided to do something about it, so I started a Discord server, and repurposed the name Cryptid Soup to be the identity of the community. I posted about it on Facebook and invited all my friends. 8 people showed up, no one had anything to say, and it sat mostly dormant for about a year.
Take 3
Around September of 2023, I had the idea of building a project plan for creating and launching a band, and using that project plan as the “script” for a hybrid narrative/documentary band biopic film. Think Daisy Jones & the Six meets Purple Rain meets Sun Ra’s Space is the Place, but everyone is trans / queer. Cryptid Soup got the gig as the working title for whatever this would become.
In March of last year, I posted in a couple of Seattle Facebook musician groups to see if anyone was interested in collaborating:
I’m starting a Seattle-based *queer* spiritual jazz / avant-garde / free-improvisation musical collective as part of a larger transmedia project. Neurodivergent, disabled, and BIPOC queer folks are especially encouraged to join. Ages 18 and over, any skill level, any instruments welcome. Music reading is not required, although some theory could be helpful.
There will be hybrid narrative/documentary filmmaking involved, so all participants will be required to consent to participate. Members can choose to use preferred names or pseudonyms, but legal names will be required for releases.
This project will explore music, and especially improvisation, as a pathway for spiritual development, meaning making, and identity development for queer and marginalized folks. Performances will take place in art spaces and inclusive, safe spaces. The general focus is on personal development, intellectual dialogue, and community building… not entertaining loud bar patrons.
Please DM me if interested, and please avoid tagging folks who might not want to be outted in this group.
About me: I’m an autistic, disabled, non-binary/transfemme artist, musician, and filmmaker with over 130 albums. I’ve directed a number of short films, including a documentary on lyme disease, and crewed as a sound recordist for a number of documentary and reality projects. I’m easily found on Google.
For anyone who knows me, reads my newsletter, or had more than a 2-minute conversation with me last year, you’ll know that Cryptid Soup, the queer contemplative improvisation ensemble, sort of became all-encompassing. I met a documentary filmmaker who signed on to the project, became very interested in the system of harmony I invented, decided I was the subject of the film and could no longer direct, and took charge of capturing what was happening in the studio. All good things. So my focus shifted to making the music parts happen.
I spent a lot of 2024 in the studio with a revolving cast of musicians trying to figure out how to expand what I was doing musically into a group context. There were lots of great jams, and we even played a show as Cryptid Soup at the Chapel, which is an important venue in the Seattle experimental / avant-garde scene. Ultimately, the ensemble didn’t come together and solidify in the way that I hoped, and after a cancelled show and a booked-and-paid-for studio day where only one other musician showed up, I decided to bring an end to that chapter.
Teaching my system of harmony to a bunch of other musicians really helped me clarify the concepts and resulted in me finishing the book and getting it out into the world. I put “Cryptid Soup” right on the cover of the book, and when I released it on Metalabel, I used Cryptid Soup as the label name. So I suppose, officially-ish speaking, Cryptid Soup is currently “an experimental music label and collective that is dismantling, deconstructing, and decolonizing sociomusical norms.”
Looking forward
The documentary is still in progress and will take whatever path I take, I suppose. I plan to release more things on Metalabel in the future, so that face of Cryptid Soup will remain. I sort of have the itch to revisit the web series idea, which could also maybe use the name, and if I put together another film team, that’ll probably be Cryptid Soup, too. At this point, Cryptid Soup is a container of meaning for things that are Qid Love plus one or more others, and I’m ok with it keeping an amorphous, pliable shape for now. As the title of this newsletter foreshadowed, Cryptid Soup has become a world of its own with people, things, places, ideas, a history, and a specific kind of vibe. There’s really no stopping it.
About that invitation
Cryptid Soup, the ensemble, ended up using the Discord server I set up for communications, and I’ve expanded it quite a bit into a community server with some bells and whistles. I didn’t make any specific resolutions for 2025, but one of my goals is to fully move off of mainstream social media, and I’ve all but stopped any of the ones you can think of. That means I’m reliant mostly on Substack, Discord, email, and real people in 3-dimensional space, so I’m hoping that anyone who wants to chat or collaborate with me asynchronously in the future will hop into my Discord server.
So, if you want to hang out and talk about music, film, books, poetry, gaming, or just life, please click the link/hit the button to join. I’m especially interested in “dismantling, deconstructing, and decolonizing sociomusical norms”, talking and learning about experimental art and music, and collaborating with other artists in any medium who are expanding boundaries, so if that sounds like fun, definitely get in there.
DO PLEASE NOTE that this is a queer-first community, and I have a mighty ban-hammer, so be nice to my quierdo peeps. Also, if you have a cool incognito Discord username, please DM me and let me know who you are because it makes me anxious not knowing who I’m talking to ;)
Another Invitation
Another thing I do is creativity and existential wellness coaching. I’ve cut my rates in half for a bit to give more folks the opportunity to work with me, so if you’re interested in learning more about that, head over to my coaching page and book some time with me.
Thanks as always for reading. I’d love to connect or re-connect with folks in 2025, so drop a comment, send me an email, or join the Discord and let me know what 2025 has in store for you!