I'm The Black Smoke Rising ©

The story — in my words

I wrote this one while sitting on my porch, watching the sunset bleed into a hazy, smoggy gray. I was thinking about a specific person I used to know who was so bright and vivid, but she ended up tethered to a guy who just brought out the worst in everything. I wanted to blend that gritty, rural imagery of salvage yards and old trucks with these digital metaphors—like her life was becoming a low-res version of what it used to be. It’s a helpless feeling, being the observer in the rearview mirror, watching someone you care about drift off the pavement and turn into that dark streak on the horizon. We tracked this with a heavy, steady beat that feels like a heart skipping, trying to capture that tension of watching a wreck you can't stop.