Ageless Extended: Thoughts on the Bonus Tracks

I was 25 when I wrote the entirety of Ageless. It's an extremely complex and enigmatical concept, but I sometimes feel like I didn't write it at all—that it's separate from me—and that calling it mine would be, in part, like stealing it. Though, I think that's part of the mystery of art. There is an element of detachment that occurs, in that, when the artist endeavors to create something, they do so transactionally, out of responsibility. I'm sure there is a universe where I never released this album, and I'm so sure it's directly adjacent to this one. The decision was that small. It was the difference between taking a left or a right out of my driveway to dinner. I would have been happy either way, and I likely would have gotten to where I wanted to go, simply because that's how it all works—everything you do is meant for you and all that jazz. But the one thing that swayed me to the other side was the possibility of an amended album. An album without two songs that felt totally outdated, unaligned, and gratuitous—where the other ones felt... well, ageless. However, as custodian of this music—music from a different time—I still, ultimately, bear a responsibility to these two extra songs—bonus tracks, if you will. Not because I think anyone needs to hear them, but because my younger self—a girl who was not quite done hashing out a long, drawn-out breakup, and a friend who was sick with grief over mean girls who liked to play the victim—needed to say them.

Artist to Artist: Blue Monkey Discusses Creative Freedom

I think artistry, like life, has unique, cyclical timing. We are constantly coming home to ourselves. So, to speak on rebranding as a manifestation of intention rather than instinct feels backwards to me. Dangerous, even. If something of intention can be done, it’s surrender. Surrender to what is. But when we’re told from a young age to do something “meaningful” with our lives, and in a very specific timeframe, going with the flow gets lost in the ideation of sunk cost. Alan Watts calls this a “great panic to […] achieve something,” and in that great panic, there is little space for unparalleled expression. 

Life is about gathering information. When we stick with a career or a relationship not because they’re fulfilling but because the idea of starting over sets us back from this imaginary finish line, we miss out on the opportunity to inform our lives with the information our lives give us. It is certainly true that, if you let it, life almost always finds a way. And so, I let life, and Blue Monkey, find a way. 

Allow for a Slower Pace 

The period of convalescence between releasing my final pop album as Charlee Remitz and my first single as Blue Monkey was the most uncomfortable part of the process for me. I feel I totally misunderstood its purpose, and because of that, I was resistant to it. Knowing what I know now, that that limbo would come to an end, I fear I missed out on the chance to be intentional with rest. To allow for things. For the pace to be slow. For the days to stack up where nothing of consequence was created or destroyed. But I was too panicked. Too pressured to do something swift and seismic. I’d been raised to contribute to society’s machine, and I was relentless in my push towards progress. 

You’re Never Late to a Place You Were Meant to Go 

The music was fully recorded, mixed, and mastered in 2021, and I spent two years with it in my SoundCloud library in complete denial of the fact that I wasn’t ready to share it. There was a lot of ego in the urgency I felt to disseminate the work. I feared I would lose steam, that I would never put music out again. It wasn’t owed to a primordial need to create, rather, it felt important in my pursuit of prominence. How would I become someone if I resolved to never releasing another song? To me, that seemed like an obvious place to start. First, I set out to understand why I made the art in the first place, then I severed myself from the art’s function. It was only then that I could accept the timing of it all. We talk about late bloomers as though they somehow lost their way, but where I eventually landed is: nobody ever arrives too late to a place they’re meant to go. 

So, in 2023, I surrendered. I chose to find purpose in the downtime. Instead of posing a question about where and when, I wondered if perhaps the answer would only find me in the stillness. In the silence. In my peace. There was no Titanic or nuclear event when it finally did, I woke up one day in March of 2024 aware that I had arrived. Looking back on the three years of objective nothingness between 2021 and 2024, I see it for what it was: a gathering of confidence. There was simply no way I could have embodied the moniker Blue Monkey in 2021. I was not ready for the level of self-sacrifice Blue Monkey would demand of me. 

Community Over Individualism 

There’s an extremely polarizing discussion in The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin around creation, and whether a creator would be willing to give up authorship if it was the only way their work, which the world greatly needed, could be published. It’s a troubling thought, but I find more and more that being known is of little significance when the world is drowning. 

Blue Monkey believes in community and Charlee Remitz (the musician) believed in individualism. To become Blue Monkey, I had to become extremely angry at the state of things. I had to reject any presence of the self in the work. If it was only to my benefit, there would be no reason for it. This is all to say, Blue Monkey wouldn’t be if I hadn’t given in to the extreme discomfort of idling. If I hadn’t rejected this idea of scarcity, that there isn’t enough for everyone to go around, that time is running out and resources are running thin. I started to believe in a utopia where everyone starves and eats together. It changed my entire mindset around releasing music. I didn’t need this music to do anything for me, rather, I needed to release the music hoping it could do something for all of us. Whatever that means. 

So, if there is any advice to reap somewhere in this long, drawn-out explanation of how I got from point A to point B, it is to embrace the times when nothing is obvious, and to allow for things to be confusing. Being in flow means that not everything makes sense all the time. Because we grew up with tangible goals like finals and graduation, we’re always looking for some kind of indicator that we’re on the right path. But there is no right path, there is only movement and stillness. 

Visit instagram.com/bluemonkeypresents. 

An Additional Sentiment: Charlee Remitz on Ageless

After I wrote this album and I was trying to design the track list, I broke it up into three categories: friends/growth, self-love, and time. I’ve always been very literal and chronological, and while I admire the artists who lean into the abstract, I prefer to tell my stories exactly as they happened. And what happened is my grandfather died and I grew up. It’s an interesting phenomenon, but the first place we tend to experience growing pains in our lives is in our interpersonal relationships. I lost a handful of friends. I sometimes miss them, but mostly I feel grateful for their absence. They left space, and I moved into it. Without that vacancy, there would be no Blue Monkey. See, we need meaning in our lives, but we often look for it in the wrong places. My life didn’t need more people, things, etc. It needed stillness. Idle hours. Boredom. I don’t think there will ever be a moment when I can plainly say, “I found myself.” I think the self is a concept that evolves over time, and that what we’re really meant to find is fluidity. I’ve struggled my entire life to accept that someday I will die, and in every project I release, I imagine that tug-of-war between wanting control and surrendering to what is, will be the most enduring theme. I wish I could say I wrote Ageless from a mountaintop, but I didn’t. I wrote Ageless as a lament. I don’t want to grow old, but I’m going to. It seems to me that the world’s most major issues could be resolved if only we found a way to live in this truth. We will never be ageless. But, we can be conscious.