Call It What You Will

Theflyty

Interview by L. Valena

Why don’t we start from the top! I wanna hear the whole thing. If you could just start by telling me what you responded to?

Initially, when I read through the poem the first time, I took it at surface level and just thought, “This is a really good poem.” The imagery was beautiful, and the shortness of it and the ability to get a story out in those few lines were really telling to me. So I stewed on it for a bit and didn't go back to it for a minute. My life was going along; something happened that kind of sparked something in me and I can share that with you. 

My partner and I have been living in Seattle. It’s been temporary since April because we sold our house in Vegas and we sold our car at the same time. So all this stuff happened when the pandemic was starting, and then we moved. For the past almost year now we've been here, staying with a friend, thankfully. Really lucky for that. Then my partner started going back to school. He had been wanting to go back but hadn't been able to because he was battling cancer. Now he's getting back into it and because of that, he is going to be relocating to Houston for a couple of months on his own, to be closer to work and to be able to focus on school a little bit more. 

Typically, my creative process is driven by happiness and joy. Most of the music that I write is joyful because I like the ability of music to bring joy to people. I think what's so beautiful about this particular project for me and for my art is that it's so different than what I'm comfortable with. Something that I eventually want to do is write an R&B album. I was really touched by the poem, and by what it pulled out of me because I wasn't expecting that. I actually want to use this song, this little moment that I wrote, as an intro to an R&B album. 

That's awesome! 

Yeah, so I'm really excited because this one little push gave me this idea for all of these things that I've been wanting to write about and just haven't found the time or the right type of brain space for it. 

That's great. You said that the poem really touched you. Can you speak more to what feelings it brought out in you? What happened next?

I guess the way that I felt after I read the poem was just this sense of sadness, but hopefulness. It's funny because the first time I read it, I actually misinterpreted the word ‘cell’ and thought that they were saying something about a cell phone instead of a literal cell. When you think about it like that, it's very similar. And so I was thinking about people being on their phones all year and how we've just become like that. I know it actually didn't play into what I wrote, but it's weird that it's where my brain took it. 

The main thing that I got out of the poem was that it ends with this hopefulness: “I'll build the bridge to you.” While you're sitting here in this darkness, you're also, in that latter half of the poem, breaking down everything and facing it. While my little singing bit obviously isn't identical to the way that this is laid out, I think the main points are kind of there: the feeling of lostness, the unknown, the general feeling of being scared and not knowing. But then this general sense of hope at the end. That’s what I was going off of: more the wavelength of the feelings, rather than the words themselves. Even though I did steal the first word. 

I think that's so cool. As you’re talking about it, I'm thinking more about your lyrics: “Call it what you will, you could call it a bitter pill or you could call it love”. The idea that those things are two sides of the same coin is pretty fucking powerful.

Thank you! You hit the nail on the head. 

I think it's really interesting how the experiences that we have in our lives, and especially in relationships, just continue to teach us more and more about how complicated it all is. I know that every time I think, “Okay I've got this figured out,” something happens and it’s like, “Nope, I haven’t figured anything out!”

Right. Yeah, you can think about it a million different times, and each time, you may come up with a different realization. I think both the beauty and the tragedy of the human brain is the ability to overcomplicate everything. We have so much brainpower and we're not even using all of it. We have so much power to do so much and think about so much and intake so much information and output so much more information based on what we've been given. 

I didn't realize how impactful this was going to be for me and I really appreciate it, because it totally made me think of my creative process differently and that was really special for me. I just get so stuck in what I'm used to as anyone would, and so it's just really fun to take someone else's words and do something else with them. I've never actually looked at a poem and thought, I'm going to write this into a song. 

I have eight-year-old students who I'm teaching to write music and it's the cutest thing in the world. They'll just give me a stream of consciousness and I take all of that and formulate it into a song. Its honestly the easiest thing I've done, because these kids are so brilliant and they just say these things that are so funny, and I'm like, “Stolen! Putting it in your song!” They're like, “I did this??” And I say, “Really you did most of the work. I just copy/pasted and cut things.” It's just super cute to see that creative process naturally occurring in young individuals who are going to be doing all of this too. I'm sure if you have TikTok or Instagram you've seen these kids. They’re 13, 15 years old and they're massively talented. It is awesome.

It's amazing how much getting older means we develop those inner voices that tell us what we can't do or what we shouldn't be doing. Kids really do have this ability to just go for it. 

Yeah, they’re always literally like, I can do that. They're sitting here and I'm talking about making a song and they're going leaps and bounds ahead of me. I'm like, “Whoa chill, we’ll get there.” They’re just so ready. It's funny that you say that; that's one of the things I've noticed about myself as an adult. When I was young, I was so performative. I was in musical theater, all this stuff. As an adult, I've kind of become more of a songwriter, producer, studio rat, and I have become less naïve, which in turn has made me more scared of everything.

That's been my journey with my art, too. I’m just this wide-eyed, the-world-at-my-fingertips kind of person: moved to LA when I was 19 years old and got a lot of perspective. I re-engineered my life to make myself happy, walked away from music for a couple of years, and have the most supportive partner I could ever ask for. In the last five years, I've really been focusing more on music personally and when I have a day job or when I don't. 

The last three years have been particularly interesting because my partner was battling cancer and so I was helping him through that. Ironically, a couple of months before he started getting sick, I got approached by someone that I'd been wanting to work with for a really long time in New Zealand. He's this really cool hip-hop/soul producer. During that whole time, he and I wrote an entire album. It's not out yet because there's still a lot to do, even though it's been a couple of years. But it's in the works and it's very different than what we both do. You know, it was just really nice to have that to work through and push me into making music again, and really get me into my creative process, the one that I've always wanted. My partner actually co-wrote more than a few of the songs on that album with me. So even though he was sick and struggling, we still put our heads together and made this great album. I'm really excited to get that released, too. It just put me on the track of where I'm headed. 

And honestly, I have to say that this project is a reminder of what I want and what I want to do with my art, and how I think it needs to be shown. So thank you!

God that's awesome! And that's exactly the point. You know, I think Bait/Switch can be a lot of things for different people, depending on where they’re at, but the best is when it's like a game of badminton. It serves something and you have a moment to think, “Oh, what am I doing? How do I want to hit this back? It's just me alone here in this court. Who am I? What am I doing?” 

Exactly. And I guess I didn't even think about it until I was done, but the opportunity for this to hopefully be used as a prompt for someone else just totally blew my mind. I hope that they get something out of it too. 

Yeah, I hope so too! What's so cool is that the project dictates almost everything. The prompt picks the person, you know, and we just facilitate. It has a mind of its own. We’re so delighted to have you be a part of it. 

Honestly, I can't wait to do it again. It's just super cool. It's funny because I'm a huge fan of painting and drawing and all that. I really appreciate that sort of art because it's not something that I do well. When I got a poem I was like, “Huh, I wasn't expecting that.” Again, it was literally just the perfect thing that I didn't know that I needed. 

I want to ask you about your video because you made it outside, which I thought was really cool. Can you tell me why? 

You know, I really wanted to be wearing a scarf and a hat because the weather is a little chilly. I love the Pacific Northwest and Seattle because it's so green. My favorite thing about the winter here so far is that anyone who's lived here a long time will tell you that it's awful and terrible but don’t believe them. Because really there's like two days a week at least when we get a little bit of sun and it's totally manageable. But that's the reason I really wanted to do it outside. There's just this natural beauty that is unparalleled, especially in the shot that I got. It was not really that intentional, but there's that tree with no leaves and then there are evergreens behind it. And then these other types of bushes that stay green all year. So you kind of just get this blend of sad trees and happy trees. There was one thing I didn’t realize was going to happen. I don't typically lip sync to my music, but I loved the effect of the cold breath. That was subtle. 

Do you have any advice for someone else approaching this project?

Just say yes! And don't stress about it too much. Just do what you do. Just say yes.

Call Number: Y41PP | Y42MU.theCa

TheFlyTy (Tyler Robinson) is a genre-bending Singer/Songwriter who was featured on Season 1 of NBC's The Voice, he was raised in Brazil and California and is currently living in Seattle. He Is a self-proclaimed Genre-bender but draws a lot of musical inspiration from jazz, R&B, EDM, Soul, Funk, and Disco. Collaboration is a goal for him and so far he's been featured on songs with SoulChef, Nieve, Abrio, and Korey Wade.