Artist: Eddie Berman
Hometown: Portland, Oregon
Song: “The Wheel”
Album: Broken English
Release Date: January 21, 2022
Label: Nettwerk Records
In Their Words: “Even though this album Broken English was written at the end of 2019, before rumblings of Covid hit any headlines, it’s mainly about isolation and disconnection in an increasingly atomized world. But this song, ‘The Wheel,’ explores a different kind of separation — a separateness from feeling like a real human being in the real, natural world. The digital hallucinatory experience of everyday life is so filled with distractions that make you anxious, and anxieties that push you to distraction. It’s hard to remember that I’m an actual living person sometimes.
“But there are also so many fleeting moments of real presence which I feel, too — the damp smell of the Pacific Northwest woods, the eternal sound of waves breaking on the shore, looking in the eyes of my wife, laughing with my kids. … And so this song is about recognizing that elusive aliveness in yourself and others, and knowing that even though it can become buried underneath miles of algorithmic dread and nightmares of oceans filled with garbage, that aliveness, presence and belonging is always there, and always will be.” — Eddie Berman
Photo credit: Joanna Berman
