Hello and thank you for joining me here! I am an musician/artist finding my way forward in the ever changing landscape of being a working creator. I have a long history that I will share in brevity, however, the important thing I must disclose whenever I introduce myself these days is, I am disabled. I don't look disabled, at least not when I am seen, the days I cannot get out of bed are hidden from public view, however, I am still disabled. I have several conditions that are being treated and managed to good result and because of this, I am ready to begin producing again, on my own terms and at my own pace, which is why I've decided to start here.

The world cannot accommodate my needs, so I must create my own. World, that is. And I would very much like those that are interested, to enter that world as friends, collaborators and patrons. My condition requires an unprecedented amount of support that is nearly impossible for able bodies to imagine. But I am still a creator and through extensive physical therapy have become able to walk and stand and sing again! If I am very careful and patient and don't over-do it.


Many decades now have past and all these stories have been studied and their secrets become known. So this process is a way for me to create a record that is that story and all the words and sounds and feelings I have created along the way.

I am extremely excited to work with legendary producer John Fryer (Black Needle Noise, This Mortal Coil, Cocteau Twins, Nine Inch Nails...) having recently collaborated with him on the song Messages By Dreams which released on the album Before The Tears Came. His work has been very influential and has always been there, the soundtrack to my journey.



However you have come across me and my music, whether by discovering The Soldiers of Everyday, my collaboration with Daniel Ash (Bauhaus, Tones on Tail, Love & Rockets) or through my rock band The Seraphim Rising and our EP Life In Suspension or via Black Needle Noise or even as a photographer and fine artist, this project is for you.

The VISION I am creating includes my various musical influences and styles, electronic, industrial, psychedelic, goth, punk, classical, spiritual and folk as well as including my photographic art Freed From Rage and Sorrow to create my Debut Solo Album. Not needing to be one thing or another, but all that is true to my experience.
 


Thank you very much for becoming part of this creation.
Your patronage makes this project possible and I am very much looking forward to sharing the music, the art and the journey with you.

Welcome, welcome, welcome and thank you so much for Taking the Dream!


THE JOURNEY

Born in Venice Beach, Ca. and raised between Los Angeles and the wilderness surrounding the Ojai Valley, my creations are a fusion of the urban experience and the insights afforded by the natural world.

My name, Attasalina, is my birth name and was given to me by my godmother, a pioneer teacher of Buddhism in the West, and has a loose translation as “providing the meaning”. She intended it as a blessing and trained me in Vipassana Meditation (which means to see things as they are) in the belief that I would some day become her dharma heir and teach at Dhamma Dena in Joshua Tree.

My musical abilities can be traced to my grandfather, a Cuban-American progressive jazz drummer and singer.

I began writing poetry as soon as I could write, perhaps four or five. My mom found one of my journals and said they were like haiku poems. My childhood was very traumatic and unstable and those books have been lost to chaos and time. My saving grace was telling my father at the age of six that I wanted to learn to play piano. I was reading the classified ads in the Sunday LA Times and showed an ad for a piano teacher to my father. For some reason he was very excited about the idea and immediately began lessons and purchased me a piano that I write music on to this day.

As the arduous years of my childhood wore on I became more and more ill and more and more depressed. Later I would come to understand that what I was experiencing was depersonalization and split personality, but all I knew is that no one could see me and I couldn't see myself. I was being erased. But I am a survivor and have a powerful will. I hid myself away, safe and sound, deep and dark where I could not be found or corrupted and there I remained for a very long time, and like sleeping beauty, one day I awoke. But that came much later.

I kept journals throughout my life, making notes in poetic code, reminding myself not to forget the story I couldn't remember. Turning poems into songs, I taught myself to play the guitar. Trusting no one and committed to learning truth by my own experience, never telling my story to anyone, I journeyed on.

And so, I ended up dropping out of high school at sixteen. It seemed reasonable at the time. I was not going to go down the beaten path. My life required a different kind of education. And the school I was at was insane. Coincidentally, I met the love of my life a year later.

I went to college at seventeen and studied creative writing and art. I took a couple photography classes. We got married when I was eighteen, an unusual type of marriage in a religion that most people do not understand or even realize exists. It was 1995 and gender parity was far from the norm. So, that was an exhausting hurdle of projection and double standards from the world that is still a challenge to over come.

We both were trying to put ourselves through school with no parental support. It didn't work. We both dropped out to get full time jobs. I luckily landed a job managing a high end wedding and portrait studio in 1999, I was twenty-two. That changed my life. Unexpectedly, it began a long career in photography both commercial and fine art that transformed my position in the world and taught me the invaluable tools needed to create, produce and manage a business.

I continued to do music but my life was unusual and I didn't belong to a social scene or attend very many parties. I was disabled but able to hide it well enough, but I didn't have energy to spare, I put it all into my work and my art and my home life. And it was very hard. But it was also good and a lot of shit happened.

And so finally in 2008 I managed to start performing again and ended up creating a band which became known as The Seraphim Rising and I recorded a song with my friend who is Daniel Ash of Bauhaus, Love and Rockets and Tones on Tail and I tried to make a go of it, but my body got in the way again and I finally crashed really hard and all the way and have been very disabled now for seven long years.

During that period, I stayed focused on recovery and managed to create and perform sometimes. I released two solo singles and I collaborated with producer John Fryer for his project Black Needle Noise. He is a founding member of This Mortal Coil and has produced for an incredible array of artists from Love and Rockets to NIN and The Cocteau Twins and has shaped the sound and esthetic of gothic and underground music for decades. He inspired me to create a video for the song Messages By Dreams that includes my photography project Freed From Rage and Sorrow that has helped to unify my creative vision.


And so, here we are, entering 2019 and the journey continues! I originally created this Patreon in 2014, however, I quickly realized I was not well enough to engage and produce in a consistent manner. Five years later and I have very literally gone through the worst of the worst, to the point of being unable to walk for six months in 2017. I am currently experiencing at long last the fruits of my healing commitment (not that there was much of a choice) and have also been able, with help, to create a studio space that I can create in, so, happily it seems to be the right way forward to continue the process here.



Thank you for reading my story and joining me here. Onward!

Much Love,
Attasalina



Press

“Messages by Dreams is soulful dreampop; a tangle of barbed wire and muslingauze that unwinds only by tearing into fibres.” – Cold War Night Life

“In 2000 Ash hooked up with a brilliant musician and a ‘Annie Lennox’ style singer, Attasalina, and cut a song titled, ‘Soldiers of Everyday’. The song contains such a compelling rhythm that with Ash’s combined guitar work it makes the song a transcendental journey. This track could’ve easily been a Love and Rockets song. Personally, I think this is the most unique work Daniel Ash has done during his solo music sojourn.” – Jefferson Laufer, Rock Bands of LA

“This is a track that is for the smokey, coffee house crowd…beat poetry with a spacey, electronica soundtrack. To be truly appreciated it requires a bit of intellect, something that is needed these days as it is decidedly lacking in mainstream music.” – Fourculture Magazine

“Chilling and assertive social commentary.” – DJ Mac, Woody Radio

“This belongs to that holy 0.01% that totally shines!” – Dani Macchi (Belladonna), The Noir Hour – Rock n Roll Radio, Italy

Exhibitions

Group
2013 “Group SC 2009” Medium Festival of Photography, San Diego, Ca
2010 “Autumn Lights” Pershing Square, Los Angeles, Ca
2010 “Group SC 2009” MOPLA – MINARC/Gallery Skart, Bergamot Station, Santa Monica, Ca
2010 “FADA LA Art Show” LA Convention Center, Los Angeles, Ca
Solo
2009 “Freedom” Firebird Plaza, Ojai, Ca
2007 “Strength Is Beauty” Valley of the Moon Gallery, Ojai, Ca
2007 “Strength is Beauty” Ojai Art Center, Ojai, Ca
2006 “Liberation” Secret Location, Ojai, Ca
2006 “Flowers Within” Upstairs Ghost Gallery, Ventura, Ca
2005 “Cow and the Moon: A Traveler’s Photographs” Ojai City Hall Gallery, Ojai, Ca

Music Video
Debut solo single Heart of the Beast


PS Please send me a message if you have any questions, suggestions or just want to say hi!