Pride Month Event 2025: The Aftermath. On music, love and community.
Hey y'all! It's telemist, back with an extremely long post for no reason. I can't really seem to write short pieces, for whatever reason.
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Back in June I started a little movement that I mindlessly coined "telemist Pride Event", for the lack of a better name nor time to think about one. As part of it, four full songs or "drops" would be released throughout the month, one for each week of june, and half of the profits would be donated to four different charity organizations. The chosen charities in question ended up being FELGBTI (www.felgtbi.org), Trans Lifeline (www.translifeline.org), The Trevor Project (www.thetrevorproject.org) and True Colors United (www.truecolorsunited.org).
It was a hectic month to say it briefly. Aside from those four songs, I also worked behind the scenes on a project I will very soon unveil, which also involves charity work, as well as more solo material and collaborations that I had pending from months before. I was able to work on and release three very cool songs and one even cooler one (you can find them all together here: https://soundcloud.com/telemist/sets/telemist-pride-event-2025). I'm equally proud of all of them, although for different reasons. I explored what I believe to be three different dimensions of french house/complextro, a heavier side with my remix of Crazy by Le Sserafim, a more pop-ish, older sounding side with the Headlock remix (special shoutout to my wife for putting me on Imogen Heap) and a much more melody-centric side with the Deltarune remix (which I did on a whim right after finishing playing Chapters 3 and 4).
"illusion of home" is a whole different vibe to the rest of the playlist, and while I didn't intend to release it this soon, it still felt appropriate. In it, I try to convey without words what it feels to live in a place that harbors anxiety, loneliness and fear.
There was a time I used to dread getting back home. A time I felt like an outcast in my own room. I was nothing close to a family member. I got screamed at, belittled, humilliated and, when lucky, completely ignored. I started to build up unhealthy amounts of angst and anger which manifested in places where they shouldn't, past relationships with friends and important people rotting because of it. Eventually I had a breaking point and left much less glamorously than I'd have liked to do. I freed myself.
In my case, there's a lot of factors that contributed to my unwellbeing. One of them, sadly, was some of my family's disgust towards my bisexuality. One side of my family has always been very close-minded, and the other side has never cared about anything that isn't treating family as an enterprise. I'm sure there's a lot of people that can relate to the feeling of their home being just a house with people in it. The whole song is a story of growth and reflection, and eventual liberation. The broken chords in the beginning become melodic and harmonious, the anxiety in the middle section stops once the new chords set in, and it all comes down to the breaking point after realizing what I'm missing by not taking control of my life. 1 minute of pent up anger released, followed by a gathering of thoughts and hope for the future. The song itself is an outcast in the playlist, yet it perfectly fills the space left for it.
Self-explanation aside, let's talk about community.
This month, counting only full digital discography purchases and single purchases of said drops, I've made the following profit:
A whopping 371,64 euros off of Bandcamp! Huge numbers for me, I've only had 1 month where I had more profits than this and it was back in 2022. There will eventually be numbers for "illusion of home" for Spotify, but Distrokid works with numbers given to them with around 2 months of delay. I have all of you who supported this pride thingy to thank. June is always a hard month for me for reasons I've explained before (https://x.com/telemist/status/1929100197050589628), so seeing people also caring for the same cause I'm fighting for fills my heart with... you guessed it. I'm glad I worked on this and that I can support people like me with what I do.
Back to the nitty gritty though. 250 euros will be sent to the charities mentioned above, splitting it equally (62.50€ each), and for living expenses I'll take the rest. Which yeah, 121 euros to live an entire month? That's kinda impossible.
Here's where the love part comes in.
Right now, I'm pretty much living off my wife and making music in the middle. Whatever I make is half disposable income and half living expenses. She trusts that I, or rather, we'll make it work, and she insists I don't get an office job again. Even though I don't trust myself, I trust her, and everyday I put a bit of me in every project I start and every stem I send away. It's paying off, I have to give her that.
My wife, Lesda, is a trans woman. She's strong by necessity, fierce by choice and has overcome so many adversities it'd be hard for me to count them in whatever body my next life blesses me with. I am blessed to be able to love someone like her, and I'm overcome with joy just thinking she loves me too. She's the prettiest woman in the universe too, who would've guessed!
Sometimes I feel extremely bad for not being able to earn the same as her. I feel stuck trying to chase something that maybe won't ever happen, and that wouldn't make me happy. I'd love to give her the life she deserves, and while I know she's going to read this and tell me she already has that because I'm with her, I can't convince myself it's true without proving to her that this is going to work.
I've been on the fence of transitioning myself. Tried certain pronouns, tried dressing up as what I thought was my idea of a woman, and it eventually didn't click, which is fine. I was lucky to have an environment where I could try those things and see if that was me or not. Many people don't get that. Some of them, like my wife, had to bruteforce their way into being what they are and risking it all in a sometimes life-ending gamble. There's few things more courageous than that. Being able to contribute to having those safe spaces is something that I'm extremely interested in, so that nobody has to gamble their life like my wife and millions of trans youngsters had to, have to and will have to (hopefully not).
That said, thank you all from the bottom of my heart for empathizing and helping me try to make a safer space for everybody. I'd love for more support towards my art, but honestly that comes with the work that I put into it. Soon I'll be fully living off of this. I promise.
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As always, DMs always open, commission spots for videogame music, montages, ghost production and everything else are open. Meanwhile, I'll continue doing what I love the most: telling my story through a pirate copy of FL Studio, just like when I started at 10 years old.
