Naked Men Talking: Dominique
In the conversation, we talk trauma triggers, processing emotions through music, and how he has freed himself from his sexuality.
For our podcast, Naked Men Talking, I caught up with recording artist Dominique. His debut release is "You're a Star (Get on Up)."
In the conversation, we talk trauma triggers, processing emotions through music, and how he has freed himself from his sexuality.
Congratulations on the single. How does it feel to have You're A Star released out into the world?
It's very exciting. I love that I'm able to bring something that I think is unique to me. As a composer and songwriter, being able to take something from your brain and transpose it out into the world for everyone to hear is like a special type of gift and a feeling that really is not like anything else. So just being able to create something original from inside and hear it out loud and hear and see others reacting to it is just extremely fulfilling.
You've said that you wrote this track during a particularly difficult period of your life. Now, when you're hearing it back, is that triggering some of that past trauma or is it part of the healing process of moving forward?
Trauma is a complex thing - everyone's different in how they respond to it. We kind of curate our own personal trauma world, you know?
At one point, I wanted to leave that world behind and try and fix it. But now, what I've learned to do is to turn it into something useful - let it nourish me instead of sucking me dry of my energy and my self-control.
What it triggers in me is instead of pain or frustration or being fed up or just wanting to escape, run and hide from it all, it has me facing my trauma and just putting myself out there.
How did you figure that out? Was that a therapy journey?
I did seek therapy. I find that talking to someone who is not someone who's there with you every day - where what you say to them will impact that continuous daily interaction - is important.
What I noticed was that when I would talk to my therapist and I would hear myself dumping or saying too much, I would say, my gosh, you know, there's this new person. I don't want the only way they see me to be this. But that helped me. That definitely helped me to practice those self-control measures to to realise that I can choose what I want to focus on. I can choose what I want to embody or express.
You're a classically trained musician - how did you figure out and start to explore that music was something that you're passionate about?
It's been a lifelong thing.
I just always remember my mother singing to me - from my first years of life. Her singing to me was the best part of every day. She used to sing with her sister at the church - they were from Tennessee.
My mother was Caucasian, southern white lady. It was those days of the country girls outside the church singing on the hill when it was time for everyone to come up the hill and go to church - it was this kind of country hollering type singing - but it was always songs that they had written.
They were songs about God, but to me they always had the most beautiful, simple melodies and like these little catchy tunes to them. She used to always tell me that I would sing along with her, even at seven months old. She would hear me singing the notes and the rhythms and the right key. She knew then that I loved music.
When I was about three, I saw someone playing the piano somewhere. I remember being amazed by the beauty they can make. For my fifth birthday, I received piano lessons. I loved it so much.
Over time, it just became a way of life. It's how I process every single thing in life - through music.
How has your sexuality shaped that journey with music?
When I would get bullied, I would always escape the pain and run to my piano - it never rejected me.
Although I embrace sexuality - it's an aspect of life - I also have freed myself from it. I feel like my sexuality has become more of a spiritual journey.
You grew up in the Midwest, you're now based in Los Angeles. Has the reality of life in Los Angeles matched up to what your expectations were?
I had no idea what I was coming to. When I came out here, I had a major culture shock. It was the first time I was able to blend in - I wasn't the one that stood out. I was just one of many. That has really given me peace of mind to not have to face the realities of a world full of hate.
With the single released, what else is on the vision-board for the months ahead?
The music is running through my head twenty four hours a day. I'm always writing. I could literally be hanging out and doing anything, then I just have to run to the piano - I'm racing to get it out because it's in my hands, I'm just bursting to get it out before it leaves my brain.
I'm always writing those melodies, and then I transpose the melodies from the piano score into various forms of electronic and vocal music. I'm getting ready to get back in the studio, to do a couple of new songs and just preparing the trajectory of all the different things that I want to express musically and in my lyrics.
When you're composing and the music is flowing out of you and you're hearing these melodies, are you hearing your mother's melodies? Is that where that's coming out?
It's the songs of my heart that are coming through. It's the melodies of my heart. So obviously, she's been every bit of that. Whether they are the melodies that she sang to me then, or those beautiful moments of me sitting there and playing piano for her, and that devastation of how I lost her to cancer. All of that struggle, all of that trauma from feeling like I had failed to keep her alive, and the way that that broke me.
When my heart broke, those gigantic cracks and breaks is what made that song that's in my heart pour out. So, it will never ever be separate from my mother or from every single person I've ever loved who's ever impacted me for good or bad - it's all in there.
"You're a Star (Get on Up)" is available on all streaming platforms.
Gareth Johnson