How long

must we keep

wanting things?

Wanting Things | Violet Eileen

  1. Wanting Things, 1944-58

  2. Wanting Things, 1958-67

  3. Wanting Things, 1967-98

  4. Wanting Things, 1998-2021

  5. Ira

My mom’s name was Violet Eileen McLain. We were a lot alike—especially in the way our dreams had daily drag-out fist fights with our shyness. 

 A bit of a tension developed between us as I got older and began to do some of the things she always wanted to do but lacked the opportunities I‘ve been blessed with (primarily for being born a generation later and male). After she passed, I started signing my creative work Violet Eileen as an olive branch to her and as a way to come to some sense of resolution with our conflict.

Wanting Things is the second in a series of soundscapes designed around the symbiotic relationship between presence and absence. The first, Homemaking, is introduced here and below.

Homemaking (EP) | Violet Eileen

  1. My Mrs.

  2. Wash the White Clothes on Monday

  3. Wash the Black Clothes on Tuesday

  4. Amen  

Release Date:  November 17,  2023

Back in February 2023, I invested in a Moog semi-modular Sound Studio. I’ve since been teaching it how to frame silence, something it didn’t want to do at first because the Studio is essentially a system of four sequencers—and sequencers gonna sequence. Beep, beep, beep…

But now my Moog does this job more beautifully than any other instrument. It is now, in fact, a silence machine.

I first started making this music solely for myself as it was something I’d been looking for from other artists for years. 

As I refined my practice I started to see the most valuable contribution I can make to you—our shared culture, media environment, and network of algorithms—is: 

Pause. 

Rest.

Space.

Spaces, I hope, where you can reclaim your own mind, your own feelings, your own vision, your own identity. 

Your presence

through my absence.