ANYMALS -
What The Little One Said

Album Streaming: Oct 10, 2026

I am being perceived.
Then I go still.
I play dead.
The water is rising.
And I am left with the monster.

Songs for the little one inside.

I can hear danger in somebody's tone before I know if danger is there. I can turn around with my quills already raised. I can strike first, watch someone flinch, and hate myself for it afterward. I can panic when I am seen. I can turn one bad moment into evidence that I am a bad person. I say sorry when I take up space. Some days, existing itself feels exhausting.

I gave those parts of me animals.

Porcupine protects the soft place before she knows what is reaching for it. Seahorse changes color, goes still, and tries to disappear when being seen feels dangerous. Skunk marks the ground and refuses to apologize for occupying it. Coyote gets hurt, gets hungry, gets lost, eats scraps, licks wounds in the dark, and keeps walking.

I love these animals because none of them are clean little symbols of healing. They bite. They hide. They stink. They panic. They survive.

Sometimes survival makes a mess.

These songs live inside that mess.

I am the animal protecting myself from a threat that already passed. I am the animal who hurts someone and has to turn around and look at where it landed. I am the animal curled up under the water, terrified that being seen will reveal something terrible about me. I am the animal who wants the ground to swallow me. I am the animal who gets up anyway.

ANYMALS is five songs about learning the difference between what I do when I am afraid and who I am. About protecting the soft place without turning my whole life into a warning. About staying here when disappearing sounds easier. About licking the wound, getting back on my feet, and walking again.

I am still learning.

I am still here.

Little One is the part of me underneath the reaction.

Fear has a job. So do the quills. So does changing color. So does the instinct to hide, spray, run, freeze, howl, fight, or play dead.

The harder question is what happens when the danger has passed and my body is still listening for it.

What happens when discomfort feels like danger?

What happens when the quills hit somebody who never reached for the soft place?

What happens when panic becomes shame, and shame starts telling me that one ugly reaction explains who I am?

What happens when saying sorry becomes an apology for existing?

These songs stay with those questions.

The Emotional Journey

Coyote Part 1 (Left For Dead): The survivor and the guide. Hunted, hurt, betrayed, left for dead. Gets up anyway. They look at the ones who hurt her and sees what they carry without erasing what they did. They learn the way by going the wrong way first. Air. East. The New Moon.

Porcupine (Attack): The part that feels danger before she knows where it is. Waiting for the hurt feels worse than the pain, so every quill listens. Sometimes she strikes too soon. She sees where it lands. She sees the flinch. Then the quills turn inward. Her question becomes: Am I protecting the soft place, or am I protecting myself from being known? Fire. South. The Waxing Crescent.

Seahorse (Panic): The part that changes color when she is seen. She freezes, thrashes, snaps, disappears. Panic makes a monster out of every reflex, and shame calls the monster her identity. Seahorse stays steady while the wave passes through. She is perceived and remains herself. Water. West. The Waxing Gibbous.

Skunk (Un-existing): The part that apologizes for occupying ground. Some days his tail drags simply because he has to carry it. Skunk stays beside the part that wants to disappear. He stomps. He marks the dirt. He locks the door. He stays anyway. Earth. North. The First Quarter moon.

Coyote Part 2 (Licking Wounds): The return. The work circles back. Coyote gets lost, gets hungry, licks their wounds in the dark, and starts again. The step backward becomes gathering. The bones become part of the path. Little One finally stops walking in circles long enough to sit beside Coyote on the hill. This time, when Coyote howls, she howls too. Spirit. Center. The Full Moon.

The Arc

Left For Dead → Attack → Panic → Un-existing → Licking Wounds

The wound.
The defense.
The spiral.
The disappearance.
The return.

I keep wanting to turn a reaction into a verdict.

I snap, and suddenly I am cruel.
I panic, and suddenly I am weak.
I need a boundary, and suddenly I am selfish.
I want to disappear, and suddenly I have failed at being alive.

ANYMALS keeps interrupting the verdict.

A quill is a tool. Changing color is a tool. Spray is a tool. A howl is a tool. They belong to bodies trying to survive.

Sometimes the tool fires at the wrong thing.

That’s important too.

Porcupine still has to turn around and see where the quills landed. Coyote still carries the bones. Survival explains the reaction. Repair begins when I can look at what happened without turning what I did into who I am.

The quills can stay. They just don't have to steer the whole animal.

The Hidden Layers

There is another skeleton underneath ANYMALS.

My daily practice includes the LBRP, the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram. Its four directions and four elements found their way into these animals. The moon phases came with them. The track order follows the ritual movement.

Coyote stands in Air and East. Porcupine takes Fire and South. Seahorse moves through Water and West. Skunk puts her feet into Earth and North. Coyote returns at the center as Spirit.

I love that these correspondences can sit underneath the record quietly. The songs still work at ground level. Fear. Anger. Shame. Boundaries. Survival. A body trying to figure out whether the thing moving in the brush has teeth.

The deeper structure is there for anyone who likes opening little doors inside things.

I'll give those layers their own blog.

This page belongs to the animals.

I Am Still Learning

I am still inside these songs.

I still hear things in a tone that may never have been said.
I still feel my body getting ready before I know what it's getting ready for.
I still react and replay the reaction afterward.
I still say sorry when I have simply occupied space.
I still have days when carrying myself around feels heavy.

Sometimes I catch it sooner.

Sometimes I turn around.

Sometimes I repair something.

Sometimes the quills are already in the fucking cheetah.

The songs are what I play while I'm figuring it out.

I stumble.

I turn around.

I repair what I can.

I keep going.

Album artwork: “Skunk #01”
Painted with my non-dominant left hand using leftover paint from making art with my son. The first painting in my ANYMALS series.