Sort of a circuitous meaning here from me for an album about colonialism but it is as it is.
The images I sourced for the cover are from a baseball field in the early winter. I am not sure how it happened but tiny clumps of the clay became lifted up by the irrigation which then froze. I took a bunch of photos because it felt so weird and wrong… almost fungal.
I think my brain sort of just went the path of “This shouldn’t be here, this baseball field shouldn’t be here. What the fuck did we do?”
So I used some of those photos to layer the main image. For the dark spots and texture: it’s a close up of the side of my face. I took the color out and upped the contrast and used the pattern from my vitiligo.
I am of Ecuadorian heritage. My family’s history with colonialism is complicated. Going back through the family tree there are those who ( as far as I can tell) did well for the indigenous people of the land as well as those who were absolutely terrible. My great grandfather authored a dictionary which translates Quechuan to Spanish language in effort to preserve it. Sadly more terrible ones than not popped up, and mostly related to the Catholic Church. If you go back a bit there is even a catholic saint in that family tree. Woof.
I am also of Irish heritage. I don’t have any cultural connection to “being Irish”. Super unfortunately, if you you dig into that family tree not far at all, Mel Gibson is my second cousin once removed. DOUBLE WOOF.
And I live in America, one thousand vigorous WOOFS!
All that to say, these images and these thoughts bring me to here:
“Imperialism, which today is waging war against a genuine struggle for human liberation, sows seeds of decay here and there that must be mercilessly rooted out from our land and from our minds”
Frantz Fanon
For the nonexistent “back cover art” I traced out the “pointilist map” of the United States and its territories from the book “How to Hide an Empire” by Daniel Immerwahr. Cover designed by June Park.
The album and front cover art are titled “Germs of Rot”, which is just an alternate translation from the same passage that is more commonly seen as “seeds of decay”, the title of the back cover art.
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