Hi. Just here to make a little announcement, no grand thesis to speak of. There is a distinct possibility that my next mainline LP — Reconstructing Summer — will be the only one of its kind for 2026. Hell, it might even be the only 2026-released Roxy music in general, even accounting for aliases. None of this is a guarantee; you should be all too familiar with the unpredictability of my workflow by now, but still, such drastic measures may prove necessary in the event that A Certain Renewed Motivation persists. The motivation in question being...

For the vast majority of my time as a living Bull of Heaven encyclopedia, I've been burdened by the desire to immortalize that knowledge in the form of an absurdly (but necessarily!) long video essay, easily spanning several hours in total. This video has undergone so many overhauls since 2020 that I'd already consider it a Ship of Theseus, and it's still not anywhere close to true completion. The closest I've ever gotten to finishing it was on my very first attempt, before I'd even become a girl, achieving 35 minutes of fully-edited video, none of which will ever see the light of day. And now, here I am once again revising the entire script, probably for the last time For Real This Time, in light of recent troubling events that really shouldn't have been troubling but embarrassingly still were.

In January of this year, YouTube user McKayla And The Acid Katz released "The Weirdest Band You've Never Heard Of", an hour-long Bull of Heaven video essay unfortunately donning one of my least favorite forms of clickbait title (the kind that directly assumes something of the viewer, in this case that I've never heard of Bull of Heaven.) I still haven't actually watched it, and have no immediate plans to change that, but I figure it's probably Fine. At the time, I felt thoroughly unthreatened. This person had no following to speak of. There was still time for me to fill this gaping BoH video essay-shaped void before anyone else meaningfully could. And therein lies problem number one: my underlying logic asserting the importance of Being The First, viewing this passion project of mine like a participant in a race. Which may technically hold some truth — online video is an incredibly competitive market, after all — but ascribing any substantial weight to that framing is one of the most damaging things you can do to yourself as an artist. Free yourself of the statistical mind virus.

Fast forward a couple months: I receive a screenshot of "The Weirdest Band You've Never Heard Of" from my boyfriend, having appeared in his recommendation feed. He doesn't like the title either. Much to my dismay, I notice the video has somehow suddenly accrued over 178,000 views while I wasn't looking. A pit forms in my stomach. In the heat of a gut reaction, it seemed as though This Is It. My Thunder Has Been Stolen. The Recognition I Feel Entitled To (Because I Almost Certainly Know More About Bull of Heaven Than Literally Anyone Else On This Earth (Besides Maybe Neil Keener)) Has Been Granted To Someone Else. My Ultimate Expertise Has Gone To Waste. Maybe I Should Just Give Up And Scrap My Whole Fucking Video. I regrettably peruse the top comments, only to find the same tired jokes people have been making at the expense of extreme longform music for years, all inexplicably 'loved' by the video's creator. The body of work I cherish most is a laughingstock and I wasn't there to frame it properly. I pull myself together for a time, only to break shortly thereafter. Actual, literal, non-metaphorical tears are physically shed. I'm sobbing so loudly I have to mute my microphone in the call I currently occupy. I still feel sick the next morning, unable to do much of anything.

...Which is a pretty fucking extreme reaction to have to Not Being The Very First Person To Release A Longform YouTube Video About My Special Interest. I'm not proud of the fact that I felt this way, but it is the way that I felt, self-centered & dysfunctional as it may be. I suppose it's preferable that my remaining arrogance only tangibly hurts myself rather than anyone else, but still. It took multiple rounds of reassurance from loved ones that no, your video is not suddenly obsolete, you're making no goddamn sense for me to finally get a grip. So I can confirm The Video Is Not Cancelled, despite the intensity of my neurosis about its ""competition"". I feel rejuvenated after having risen from the ashes of comically disproportionate anguish, and remembering the love of extreme art that brought me here to begin with. I intend for this video to remain a primary focus of mine until its eventual release, and I hope you'll learn something new when all is said and done.