The Corrupting Sea: Lungs Like Lead is the most difficult album I have ever made. It wasn’t because of the change in recording techniques or the change in textures associated with the album but rather with the subject matter. This album is about my mental disabilities, especially my struggles with PTSD caused by over a decade of trauma.

Further, the album packaging comes in a handmade book expertly put together by Simple Box Construction. It is hard back with cloth covering and the pages are sown into the cover. Each track has an image associated with it. The first page in the book has this statement:

“This album is dedicated to all who suffer from mental difficulties, disorders, or whatever adjective one might give the struggles many of us work through daily. This is a very personal album. I suffer from PTSD, depression, and social anxiety disorder and, unlike many others in the population, I process sensory data in ways others don’t. As I recorded this album, I tried to be as open as I could with my disabilities, taking the lines of a poem I wrote in 2013 as the title for each track and attempted to transform them into a sonic story telling of the struggle. What I want to say is stay strong and, even when your lungs feel like lead, breath. You are loved and the world needs you. I struggle alongside you.”

The poem was written while I was teaching a course far from home and having a mental break down far away from any of my support systems. Lungs Like Lead represents so much of what has happened to me, the struggles to find a path to health which have eluded me, and the process of coming to terms with my very real disabilities. As someone who fights his own brain to stay alive on a constant basis, Lungs Like Lead is a sonic vision into my struggle as well as a means to communicate with others like me so they don’t seem like they are alone.