Seymour the Invisible Man
Joiebyrde
2022 | Pop
— track 6: “Do What Feels Good”
Seymour Mothman: I've always been into music. When I was a little kid, I would just be singing all the time. Like, when I was in elementary school, I was literally singing all the time. I'd be singing at recess, I'd be singing in the classroom, I'd be singing in the bathroom. [laughs] And then when I was in middle school, my brother's laptop had a free music software production demo, and I started making beats and stuff. And I just kept doing that, ever since then. It's such a release for me. It's a really therapeutic process. I do everything in GarageBand. Most of it's synths, but I also have a little keyboard in the house, and I have a crappy bass that my parents bought me off of Amazon. So I'll record that stuff. And then I have one track, "Defined," where a lot of the percussion is just sampled from me slamming things around in my house. It's kind of tedious. I have the audio track and I just cut up the little sound bites and arrange them the way I want them.
I was also in a little band for a minute with my friend, Mei. She also puts out music. I think you interviewed her. She's Goyaconnect. We're friends. The first time I met her was at a protest, and she came up to me and she's just like, "Do you want to start a band?" And I was like, "Yes, of course I do." We did a little goth, dark wave project. We only recorded two things, she edited them and put them together. It was a really long band title, I can't even remember. That was 2020.
I put both [Seymour the Invisible Man albums] out in 2022. My first one was Songs for Safety, and that was a really personal album because when I was recording it I was actually homeless and I was couch surfing. So I was really dissociating from my life at the time, and this music was where I was pouring all of my hope for myself. Trying to focus on the things that make me feel good. I make a lot of music that I don't put out, and that I won't ever put out, because a lot of it is just really sad and angry in a way that doesn't feel helpful. You know, it's just me getting it out there, and that's a really important process, but it's not stuff that I would necessarily share with other people. But I also have my songs where I'm imagining what I want the world to look like, and what I want my life to look like. It's almost like praying or manifesting or whatever. But I think that's something that art is great for, all kinds of art, it is a way to make the things that seem so out of reach and impossible, it's a way to make those things real. And by making them emotionally real, it makes them closer and more possible. It's like, if I can just get myself into this mindset of "this is what I need, and I know that I can get it, and I know that there's a way for me to get it that doesn't involve sacrificing my own wellbeing," if I can imagine that, then I can move towards that. I try to be really intentional about my music too, with my lyrics. With the music that I share, I want it to be something that is going to be enriching people's lives. It's not just the lyrics either, because the music itself has its own message and its own truths that can't be conveyed through words, but they work together to create this mindset. It puts you in a mood. I want my music to make people feel like it is possible for me to live a life that's full of joy, and love, and community, even though we live in a world that's really isolated a lot of the time. And so that's a lot of the intention that I put into my music.
I kind of dig into my own grief, and pain, and stuff. I've had times in my life where I've been really depressed, and what that is like for me, it's like being numb. I can't feel anything. And so for me to have the joy in my life, I need to be able to feel the pain too. In order to be able to connect to my body, and those feelings that happen in my body, I have to be there for everything. And so part of that is processing all these huge things like grief, and trauma, and pain. But then once you go through that, and you feel it, and you sit with it, it's such a release and a relief. You can feel so much joy and happiness by allowing yourself to feel this pain.
//\\//\\//
This new one [Joiebyrde] it's a little bit more like processing, right? Processing this crazy few years that I've had, and releasing some of that, but also still manifesting and hoping for things to keep getting better. I really like the song "I NEED YOU LOVE ME." I feel like it encompasses this anger and sadness at the same time as this hope and joy and love. It's like, "I deserve this. Fuck it. God damn it. I deserve good things."
I am in Sioux Falls. So I played a show this last year, it was actually my first show that I played with my own music. I was opening for Spaceface, which was a really fun indie pop kind of band. And so I really wanted to put together a set that was really fun and dancey. I just had such a great time playing that show. I was at Total Drag, and the audience was all my friends, and it was just so fun. And so I wrote the song, "Do What Feels Good" that same week. I went home and it's like, "I need to write another fucking dance bop." Because it was so fun, I just wanted to keep that energy going. I feel like South Dakota show-culture is very, like, you see a lot of people just kind of standing around with their arms folded, and nodding along to the music, and that drives me nuts. Whenever I go to a show, I'm always out there dancing like a maniac. I do. I go so hard. And it's such a freeing and important experience. Dance is so important to me. It's really helpful to move through your emotions and your feelings to be able to physically release them. I was talking about how in my music a lot of it's processing, and dance is totally part of that. If you don't move your body, your feelings get stuck in there and that just doesn't feel good. And so I want to encourage people to get in touch with their body and the reality that human beings, we are animals, and we have certain animal needs just to be weird and wild and have fun.
//\\//\\//
The reason why my name is Seymour the Invisible Man is because I'm a trans man. I don't pass as a cis man, and I'm not interested in passing as a cis man, because why would they get to decide what being a man looks like? You know? I go through life and I get misgendered a lot. People look at me and they don't necessarily see a man. But that doesn't mean that there isn't a man there. So that's why I have my name the way it is. I kind of get frustrated sometimes with the lack of representation for trans men, especially for trans men who are not passing, who are non-conforming.
I do a lot of different kinds of visual art. I like paint. I do embroidery. I've made costumes for myself for drag shows before. I have one costume that I was really proud of, it was just this dress made out paper envelopes. And I wore that for a Kate Bush number. I did the cover art [for Joiebyrde]. I don't remember who took the original picture of me, it's a picture of me in drag on the cover. I used to do drag. I don't do drag anymore for a lot of different reasons, and one of them is just I can't wear wigs anymore because I get so overstimulated. But yeah, I just edited a bunch of pictures together and until it felt right.
I really want to play more shows. I'm not sure when I'll be able to do that again, but it's just such a fun time, and I love performing. I've always loved performing. I just get on stage and I feel like, "Wow, I'm alive right now. And it's amazing."
SOURCES
Mothman, Seymour. Interview. By Jon Bakken. 19 January 2023.
