This is the first interview forged through audio recording, with my dear friend Alex Duccini of Floating Clouds. We talk about spheres of creative influence, spiritual language, childhood, craft, band dynamics, and other summations of our little creative hearts. If you prefer to read, I’ve also offered a written version below!
Floating Clouds comes out with a new album soon, so keep your ears open!
Hannah Althea: How did you start songwriting?
Alex Duccini: I started songwriting probably in earnest when I was 14 or 15, but my older sister and older brother and my dad are all musicians, and my two older siblings who are musicians are also songwriters. So basically I just from a very young age I saw people in my family doing that, and it was always from very early on that I knew. My sister started writing morefull style music, but my brother was in Emo screamo bands and both of those genres were things where I looked at them, and I wanted to do that too.
That's so cool. How much older are they?
My brother is 10 years older than me and my sister is a year and eight months
Did you have any other family members who are also songwriters?
Both my grandparents, on my mom's side, were singers. Oh, and I never met my grandma. She passed away before I was born, but she sang professionally for a while. That's a cool record. I think there was a recording mostly as a background singer. But my family is just very always about music.
So it's in your genes, your blood! Do you remember the first song you wrote?
I don't remember the first one, but I mean, they were definitely all really bad, ? And When I was a teenager, I was really into horror movies, and so I was writing a lot of gross, Cronenberg body horror stuff…blood and guts stuff.
What was the genre/style of music?
Well, my first bands were really noisy and loud, and I would try and write songs that were less that, but it alway just ended up being dark things. And for a long time, I think that I felt that my lot in life was that I had to make ugly stuff and because my sister made really beautiful music…so that was her thing?It was also a little bit rebellious thing so I'm gonna make the worst sound and saying about the worst thing you could ever think…
When did that change?
It slowly changed over time, but really, in the last few years I took a little bit of a break from writing too. But in the last few years, I finally got the courage to say “I'm gonna write, I'm gonna make something pretty and write about myself and be vulnerable about it”.
And I think also I finally had affirmative feeling about who I was and and to feel comfortable being: “Oh, I'm gonna write about what I believe and what I think about things, instead of ‘here's something that from a movie that’s cool.’”
I can't remember exactly when I started writing songs, but it's been a thing I've done…when you're a kid, you write songs about just what you're perceiving all the time. And that's part of writing or doing anything creative is getting back into that child-headspace a little bit.
I definitely agree. So then that's a good segue into the next question: What themes do you find yourself writing about now?
With the album that we're putting out in April, the songs actually had a big theme: me trying to get back into experiencing the world in more of a child way, and then also being really upset and revealing that I couldn't do it anymore than the same way. But I also think, mostly I think all the songs are about love in one way or another. I would say mostly love. I also try to be thoughtful now about what I say in songs.
Why?
I feel there's more responsibility as I've gotten older to have an opinion…I just got tired of writing from more of an emotional vomit place than I feel [is more frequent] when you're a teenager that comes really easily and the iron’s not so hot. Now, [I can be] calm about this stuff, someone can really hurt your feelings, and it still hurts, but you can step back and be “Oh, this probably isn't about me either..”
There's wisdom that you get when you get older…So you that shows up for you, and how you write your songs?
Yeah, those adult mechanisms for dealing with the hurt that you have. I think when I was younger, too, I thought I was always scared of therapy thinking that if my mental health got better, I wouldn't be able to write.
Oh, yeah, that's a trope! That's a trope of the 90s and 2000s in any indie film, the “tortured artist”
But the funny thing is that therapy is just for me, it was just a matter of learning the language of what I was experiencing, which was those songs. It's just having language about what you're feeling.
Did it feel it opened you up to because you had more language?
Totally. It's one thing to say I'm mad another thing to say this thing happened, and it made me angry because of this previous experience I have.
That's so much more…a way better song! that makes sense…Better than “I’m so mad, I’m so sad” Are there themes you want to write about, or do you feel you can pretty much tap into whatever that you want to write about?
When I was younger and I had a bit more trepidation and was scared to get elbow deep into myself I was avoiding it. And my songs would be about movies, or about or they would be jokes in a way, and then I got to a point where I was “Okay, I need to, I actually want to go really personal.”
But I think I would eventually find a way back to sort of writing in a more narrative way, or story driven, because I feel Like otherwise, I'll probably run out of stuff to say about myself.
So you have your own solo project, and now you're in a band. So has that changed your approach to music or songwriting, or how you see yourself as a musician at all?
I mean, I was always in bands when I was younger, and that's always been my life [for so long], so it was a big leap of change to take on the idea, or have the self belief to have more direct control over everything and and feeling it will go well. But now it has turned into a band. So I'm still figuring out what makes sense, what it's gonna look like now. I think I really like being in a band. I think usually my experience is that if you give other people space with your songs, they'll make them better, but I also did really enjoy being a little bit of a dictator for a while.
But it's nice to know that I know I can do it by myself too. Maybe it'll ebb and flow, I'll have phases where I'm, I'm sort of more group focused in phases where I'm more doing a thing by myself?
Yeah, because they both bring their own challenges and gifts. I'm in a phase where I'm really learning that I like working with other people. I mean, I've always been that way, but it feels really clear to me now, because I have that experience of when you give people space, they have good ideas you wouldn't think of or couldn't think of, or just don't have skills or words for. And I've been really, really appreciating that fact of life.
And I think it takes away some of that ego that I think can be limiting to building community. And I think in the context of creative projects, that's a particularly potentially difficult dynamic. Particularly about your own songs! Because it's about you, and it's vulnerable, and so I feel it would be a potentially complicated experience because you have your own vision and mitigating that, or making that mesh with the people in your band.
I've never had that experience. I haven't been in a band. The only music I've made has been mostly by myself, or with friends. I don't have the same breadth, and any art I do is generally pretty solitary, with some exceptions, but when I did the play that was a time where people had really great ideas, and it made it better…even though I wrote the script, right, it became this much cooler thing I couldn't have done by myself.
So it's so great to start with an idea that maybe you feel really strongly about. But it sort of is a baby idea for me, it's one thing to have a song that's just me and the guitar. And sometimes that's enough for it to be great. But then that beautiful moment where you bring it to other people, and you all connect in a way it feels holy, sacred when you all connect, and you're far beyond the sum of your parts… and it becomes this amazing thing. It's to me, though, it's nice to sort of debate yourself and feel the directness, from your brain to the page. There it is.t here's something that's so much so amazing and rewarding about that group assembling to create something beyond what you could ever imagine. I'm always in awe of how that happens. It feels like it'll just spin out of control, out of your hands…but in a beautiful way. “Oh my God I don't have the reigns at all, but it's growing to this thing that I could never carry on my own”
As a listener, a dynamic I really enjoy is hearing music in the context of a band, and getting to know the music really well, and hearing it that way. And then getting to hear it stripped down, just with a guitar or whatever, because I get to understand the song in two different ways. So from that perspective, I've heard your songs both ways, right? And when I hear them both ways, they just do things slightly differently for the songs. There's a different emotional result, musical result that I think is really cool. And I have experienced that holy feeling of when you play music and it just really fits, or even after hearing it too, when you can hear: “it's really working, this is really good and nourishing”.
I wonder how that'll continue to feel, because the band as it is now, it's relatively new still and you just got some new members, Jakee and Matthew who are really great [additions].
So far it's been feeling super energized and good.
I feel it matches the upcoming season too. I feel like summertime is good for that kind of energy.
Experience tells me that I know eventually that that sort of blissed out zone will fade and something will make it feel tense along down the line. It’s inevitable with any group thing ever but I'm just trying to ride the high, the bliss really.
And who knows, maybe it'll keep feeling good. From what I've observed from people who play music in bands, it sometimes just gets stale with doing the same thing all the time. So such a good discography right now that I think that'll cushion you from that feeling of playing the same stuff over and over.
I want to try and roll really fast and not get too stuck in doing the same thing. And especially in this period of time where everyone's just really excited about playing together. I feel that's a good time to just sort of “All right, let’s do it as much as we can this year..”
Okay, so your parents are Orthodox Christian, right?
They are.
And you grew up raised Christian, but you didn't subscribe to it yourself.
So my parents weren't orthodox. My whole childhood, they were just Protestant, yes, and then they converted, shortly after I moved out, yes, but really, for the last four or five years where I, when I was still in high school and living home, they really weren't practicing in a in a very real way (Christianity).
They stopped going to church because we had had just really negative experiences with the communities in churches that were around us, and so I think they felt they still held on to some faith, but they felt disenfranchised with the community.
But then they found this Orthodox Church, and they really connected to it.
Is it on Whidbey Island?
It’s over in Linwood, so they have to commute to go to church. It's not that long, but you have to take the ferry, but it's not so long. When I was younger we were going to church weekly. Normally, I would put up a stink about it, because I wanted to sleep in, and it was really frustrating to me that I had to get up early another day of the week.
In middle school, I made friends that were not of that, were not raised with any sort of religion, and who were musicians, and I was very drawn to those people. And some part of me was still “Oh, I'm a Christian.” But I didn't really, actually have a whole lot of idea about what that meant. Protestant Christianity, to me, is a religion that is a little bit void of spirituality, it's really just a self involved thing. So it didn't take me long after that to sort of just stop thinking about [religion]...I’ll just think about music.
Then when my parents converted, and their experience of their religion started to be very spiritual, and it coincided with the time in my life where I was embracing the idea of spirituality, again, from a place of many years of not thinking about it, and just living for music.
But I think it is really beautiful…we all need some sort of spiritual practice. And I think what's really cool about the arts, and particularly in places culturally, where spirituality isn't something we're really raised with. Even if you're raised or Christian in America, it's not really a spiritual practice in the same way that various religions globally have true spirituality as part of them. I think a lot of people turn to art for that experience. And I had periods of time where I read books and meditated and thought about spirituality. And it was a thing where “Oh, I've been doing this my whole life by making art... the practice is already there.”
And for a while I thought I needed to find my way of doing spirituality…it didn't really dawn on me for a little while that being a musician, writing songs is how I sort of commune with, “God”.. And so now for me, it's not there are certain practices that I have taken from dipping my toes into these various ways of being spiritual. But ultimately, I've those practices to be creative and that's the practice of spirituality for me.
I think spirituality is more open - in my experience - when you move out of adolescence and that interest in being accepted or liked, when you move away from the social in-group/out-group thing. I mean, obviously adults such as myself, still want that, but it's less intense. Moving back towards spirituality allowed me to get really vulnerable and be silly and imaginative, and be less frigid. And I think that really helped open me up creatively too. They definitely inform one another, at the very least, that it opened up my vulnerability capacity.
And, I'm curious if you experience this too. I think spirituality is also a lens. I mean, it is a lens for understanding the world, thus it allows you to notice. And I think that also, vice versa too, if you already have this creative practice where you're noticing or observing, embodying the world around you, and interpreting that through your own voice.
The reason why I like to do these interviews with artists is because of how songwriting, writing, or making art is such a mysterious force. You can't see where it comes from, just see the result. It's very esoteric, and it's this big mix of things. And everyone's process is so different, if they even have one, and it aligns with spirituality too for me. That's why I like asking about both.
I always think about creativity and spirituality and the child self and how when you're a kid, you don't really think about it, but you feel God. And God is a part of your everyday existence because you've not put up this barrier of reason. And it's also when you're most inherently creative. And to the idea of noticing, I feel such an important part of my creative practice is just getting in the head space, of noticing things whether it’s the color that this door is painted, or sometimes it feels small and and silly and not in, not this sacred, huge thing, but it's all really important part of it . But I think I'm just always yearning for that Kid Brain because I feel both that, I feel I'd be happier, but also because I'd be a better artist. I think that every religion inherently knows that children are sacred. And The brain of a child is sacred, and “from the mouth of babes” idea. How children see things, everyone knows it's inherently more real.
That was a theme that came up for me too is the importance of reuniting with childhood. The thing I really like about being an adult is the ability to hone a craft and to figure out how to treat other people totally and to have respect for other people's craft. As a child that more or less exists, but you don't have rational thought about it. It's a lot more free. There's freedom there. And you don't have that likability in the same way. It still exists, but it's a lot, to a much lesser degree.
That phase of when you're a kid, where you're figuring out when you punch your sister in the face and she cries, that doesn't you don't feel good inside.
All that exists. And I miss that part of my life too, a lot because of that, that freedom and there is free for me, personally, freedom in the adult capabilities I have that allow me to see other people, I think more clearly I could have as a kid.
It’s a little bit of, a self absorbed way of seeing people when you're a kid, you're really about your immediate fun,
Maybe that's just me as a kid? I don't know. I mean, kids are just like that. Kids just want to have a good time. And to varying degrees, they think about other people in that context but..and it's good and it's healthy and natural, and all kids should get to do that.
It is interesting when I think about songwriting, I tend to first go, this big spiritual thing, you're connecting with your child. But then that really is…I mean is a big part of the puzzle.
But the practical skill that I had to learn over many years is a huge asset. I'm learning in order to enjoy playing music, you have to be challenging yourself all the time. And the things you would play as a child to your adult self would just not be challenging the way that would stimulate you just lead to, sort of be always, approaching this technical skill side of it, that I think that that falls in a different place for everyone. But all my favorite songwriters somehow meld these two things seamlessly.
That's the sweet spot, yes, if you can do both. I think it was important for me too, because at least when I was a kid, I thought that creative talent: you either have it or you don't. It’s this on or off thing. And then when I got older and became an adult, I got to understand that people worked hard. It's not an accident, I think there is a degree, definitely, again, there's a mystery to it, and there's a degree of innate talent that I think people have, and they worked really hard. I think having that understanding made me less scared to try.
I think when you’re approaching a creative thing and you're not versed in the language, or you're not sort of technically skilled at it, sometimes, a musician or a painter who's really technically able will make something incredibly more boring. Maybe this is just a matter of my personal taste, but I really like art where I can feel the edge of the person who's making it, the edge of their skill level they're coming up against it.I think that's a really magic place to be in, that point where your feet are barely touching the bottom of the ground, and you're in water. And as you get better at it, you have to keep going out further to get to that place.
And that's real too. There's, again, it's that marriage and having an artistic intuition, which, again, who knows where that comes from?
What feels really nourishing to you lately? It could be literal or metaphorical.
I've been - (as I sip this tea) I've been drinking a lot of tea lately.
What kind of tea?
I've been mostly drinking Throat Coat which is nice... I really like licorice root tea, mint tea.. I love herbal teas. Sometimes I'll have green tea. But to me my caffeine addiction is so bad that it's nice to have tea as an alternative hot drink. Otherwise, I'll drink coffee all day.
When I die and you see your whole life again, probably half of it will be on a walk. For me, it's just so much time. There's a song, I can't remember how, but something about just walking filling up time, which sometimes I get a little bit existential about where I'm like, “Oh my God. I'm just killing all my time by going on these walks.” But it's also when I do all of my best noticing, it's on walks. But I just love going on walks.
There are worse things to be doing with your time and walking around..you could be getting into trouble!
My therapist used to say this thing that was hardcore and intense, but also really true whenever I would start judging myself for how I'm spending my time especially if I'm like, “Oh, I'm just wasting my life by farting around on a guitar and going on walks.” My therapist would say this thing that was so intense, but was really true. He would say, “you know, some people pick up guns”.
It’s true! I'd much rather be spending my time walking around and playing guitar than walking stupid TV like I do.
It was just a perspective thing of like “some people are actively choosing to harm and you just sort of being like I’m gonna go on a walk and watch a movie”
And it’s one of the healthiest things you could do! It’s funny that you judge yourself a little bit for it, because there are so many worse things you can be doing.
And I think it's almost primal, walking is our default From early humans that's how we did it. we walked and we foraged and walking around and noticing things is the most human thing you can do, really.
I miss being able to walk to work, because I am seeing the same places through time as seasons change. I was able to live in a place long enough that I noticed patterns and got to return back to them and find the things I enjoyed or did not. There was something so comforting and it felt very just natural. Part of it made me feel alive in a way.
I love when there's a new apartment or home being built, and you just from your daily walking commute, see it from a hole in the ground, people moving it…That was a patch of dirt and I saw every piece I saw at every stage.
It’s like watching a kid grow up! That's so sweet. You should tell the people who move in
Just so you know, I saw your house as a baby!
I have last one question for you, do you have any advice or something you've learned along the way regarding musical practice and trying to create?
It’s hard sometimes because there's certain ways you have to get lucky, in that advice can go awry given the wrong circumstances .I always think it's super worthwhile and rewarding to open up to playing music with other people. That is how I learned how to play music, was by playing with other people. And it is also how all of my major creative breakthroughs come through - my biggest inspirations are my friends who I get to play music with, and that's where I've learned the most.
But I feel that’s my experience. I know that some people who make art, or maybe more adversarial, or have a certain ego about it. Or there are toxic people making music and I would hate for someone to be like, this what I have to do, and then their experience is terrible..because I feel the community aspect of it is so, such a big deal.
And yeah, it's so tender that if you have someone who, if you were playing music, with people who don't make you feel safe, that can really bum you out.
You need people who hold you in a very special way to feel safe there. I got really lucky as a teenager that people who are now lifelong friends of mine, and also people who are older than me who are real mentors, let me play music with them and really help me in a sacred and precious way.
That's awesome. I think that's one of the biggest gifts I think you can give in person. Some of my favorite memories are when people were just really kind when I was learning.
It really is important. I think about that a lot when I know people who are trying to learn things and just the act of being in, trying to be encouraging and it meant the world to me, definitely.
Especially when it feels true and authentic, because I also don't think that's always the case with the times when I feel, “You genuinely mean what you're saying totally when you are being super kind and patient about this thing I don't understand.”
My other advice for anyone who wants to be creative is to read books. Because I think that they are so potent and powerful and in giving you perspective and insight and changing your life and opening you up to the world. And if you, if you have a hard time reading, try listening to them, or however you can. There's lots of great mediums for storytelling, but something about a novel is really special actually, and to preserve that interest in books. To me it feels like the source for me, when I'm dried up, is “I just need to read for a couple months and not think about writing.”
A thing that makes me really sad is people feeling like what they have to say isn't worthwhile, and that's a constraint I hear sometimes between people writing songs, making music. It should be fun, but also you're allowed to take yourself seriously. I know it's really important that we have as many different voices coming from as many different perspectives as possible, in the “creative soup” that we're all taking in.
I want everyone to feel that they're special enough, that whatever you have to say, even if it's just writing about your day. I want to read it, I want to hear it. So, that’s another thing, just try and however you can push through that feeling, because people want to hear it.
I can relate to the feeling of being: “Okay, why should I do that? Why should I write? I don't have anything different to say than what's already been said.”
And I also remember reading something that's maybe very, quite simple about someone's day that speaks to me or how I want to be: that I want to live my life in that way, or it’s nothing similar at all to how I live my life now, or represents a time in my life. And I think that’s really important for sanity….Feeling like not the only person on the earth who's experienced this thing, even though you experience it in your own special way, the “Alex way”. That gives me language I didn't have for context that I didn't have that's important. It's the thing that's really hard to fight.
Especially when you can now, with the internet, look up the most talented people in the world, or people who are so good on the technical aspect of it. And it's easy to feel discouraged, well, those people are already doing it, but I really believe there's room for everyone and it's actually better for everyone.
It doesn't hurt!
Yeah, you write a really corny, stupid song, and that might be a part of their day. And if that, that could be all that that song ever amounts to but that's a positive thing.
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