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.