A Milestone Amidst The Storms 🌟

Finding Diamonds in the Rough

Oct 20, 2024

About a week ago, a prayer came into my mind. The prayer was, “Lord, if I am to walk by faith and not by sight, then give me faith.”

I’ve often struggled with keeping faith and a grounded mentality when all seems turned on its head. The ability to continue walking, even when everything appears grim and you feel gutted; that’s why we see the light again.

Whether we recognize it as faith or not, it is — because a human must be moved by something.

And Then There Was This:

Some of you are here for esoteric or philosophic musings. Some of you are here for the literary knife party that my poetry and opinions often are.

Some of you are here for the anti-government and pro-humanity rhetoric, some of you are here for the music, some are here for… who knows?

This is a milestone as an artist (singer, songwriter) I want to share, because this is really cool. It’s never happened before.

Spotify makes an *insert artist name here* Radio once an artist has, well, I’m not sure. Released enough tunes? I think you have to put enough music out for the Spotify algorithm to determine what you’re about.

Then, you get a radio station.

For those of you new here, I started making music after I got clean from heroin, which was November 27th of 2009.

I didn’t start putting the poetry I’d been writing since age 10 to music (or singing, which I did for the first time at age 21) until around 9 months to a year of sobriety.

It’s been a LONG time coming, and it’s been hard — the irony of being an artist mixed with the terror of being seen.

However, It gives me life like nothing else, and the baseline intent is to bless others with the message in the lyrics. To show people they are not alone.

I know how it feels. I think we all do.

Regarding noticing that a Tesstamona Radio now exists:

In a time where I’ve been immersed in chaos (two hurricanes in two weeks) and death (suicide of my close friend 2 weeks ago, anniversary of my former fiances death yesterday) I could use something like this.

Something that makes me shed tears of gratitude— not despair.

Maybe it’ll make you feel happy, like if you work at something for nearly 15 years, stop and start a million times over, run from your purpose bc you’re scared, then run right back because you know to turn you back on your soul is worse than anything, start 100 songs and maybe only release one, go through creative paralysis for YEARS, doubt yourself, still keep pushing even though people likely think you’re nuts—

you’ll arrive at this point:

The point where you’re like, holy shit, thank you Spotify AlGoRitHm, thanks for not censoring my anti-government pro-sovereignty ass, because I’m used to quite the opposite.

Secondly, thank you for immersing me in over 2 hours of music that your data has determined I’m somehow in the same lane of, whether vibe/sound, or lyrical content, here’s WHY:

Have you ever felt real strange for not being “in the box” and it often made you hold back because you couldn’t find your reflection anywhere?

This is what kills originality - it’s terrifying to not know where you fit.

I’d imagine we all deal with this in different areas.

This is why people conform.

However, I did not conform. Yes, you will get a lot of hate for that, and I wondered when I’d ever quite make sense. I wondered what other artists did similar things, especially females.

So thanks Spotify, because this Radio / algorithmic playlist you made introduced me to 2 hours worth of other artists that have a lot in common with me, and as I listen now, maybe 8 songs in, they’re all women so far.

This means A LOT for all those reasons.

I’m glad I never gave up. I’m glad I’m finding others. I’m glad I’m learning how to be happy for myself, instead of feeling like I need to shrink or minimize these things.

Especially in times where my normal reaction would have been to halt this operation entirely, which I briefly did.

Turns out you can take care of yourself, others, and do hurricane relief and still not abandon your responsibility as an artist/musician.

As a friend told me recently, “You don’t get bonus points for suffering.” - she was encouraging me to stop shelving myself and take care of myself, and I salute her for delivering this message.

I’m grateful for you guys here on Substack,

because there were a lot of times when I was silently losing steam, and several of you encouraged me at pivotal moments.

You didn’t know how much I needed to see your words, but I did - and it kept me going, and helped me to release this song, and to create the debut album that is a few months away from being done.

To finally break through inner blockages that I’ve struggled with since I began making music 14 years ago is a huge deal - it felt like an indescribable weight on my soul that is slowly starting to shift away, for the first time.

Thank you. Love you.

Here’s to a milestone, here’s to the official existence of Tesstamona radio, and here’s to the release of Algorithm Ghetto.

I hope you like the other artists on here. There’s so many!! And they’re amazing.

HEY YALL, I’m making a last minute edit to this, I had no idea that

Donn Harper Jr.

was an incredible musician. I knew he could write poetry but WHAT. He made an album and it was released today. It’s on Bandcamp. PLEASE CHECK IT OUT!!!! HELLBILLY BLUES - Absolutely phenomenal:

Hear His Album At This Link

You can also find it via his substack post. The bandcamp widget does not want to work for me for some reason, but it plays on his post!

I am so happy to have discovered such beautiful music. Especially from such a phenomenal soul. Wow. If I needed more evidence that music is necessary when the world is going crazy, I just got it! Because let me tell you, THIS HELPS A LOT!! Thank you

Donn Harper Jr.

!!! This is another diamond in the rough, absolutely.