Diamond Sinatras
I didn’t plan to become a painter. A friend invited me to a painting class on a whim, and I almost didn’t go. But I showed up—and something clicked. I became obsessed. It quickly stopped being about learning to paint and became something else. It became about the music. And the story.
It begins in the gesso. Thick grooves and lines are scratched into the surface before the painting even starts—guided by the music. Lyrics are scribbled into the underlayers like a prayer for the journey. I don’t plan compositions. I follow the sound, play the canvas like a washboard, and pay attention to what the painting wants. It's a dance.
Not long after I started, the paintings began revealing a story I didn’t expect. One that seemed to already exist beneath the surface. I didn’t invent it—I just keep finding pieces of it.
Even those first early panels—when I thought I was just learning techniques—now hold uncanny places within a much larger myth. In hindsight, I knew they were speaking from day one.
At the heart of this is music, especially the work of The Gaslight Anthem and Brian Fallon. The songs aren’t just background—they’re part of the structure. They're a map and part of the myth. Old New York. Hollywood. Bridges. Red dresses. Dreams. And souls reaching across time.
There have been synchronicities that defy logic—so specific, layered, and constant that I’ve stopped trying to explain them. They happen too often to be dismissed or fully recorded. Some are so impossible they border on absurd. I’ve started documenting them, but already it feels like my entire life is one long synchronicity unfolding in real time.
Rick Rubin has become something like a mythic figure in this process. I listen to his podcast, and somehow, it always offers exactly what I need for the next stage of the series. Lost in Hollywood only exists because of his conversation with Daron Malakian—but that’s just one of many. His face has now appeared in multiple places, before I consciously realize it’s him. He feels like a god or a guide, which is fitting—his podcast is called Tetragrammaton, a four-letter word for God.
And let’s be real—if you tried to draw God, you’d probably draw Rick Rubin.
The paintings often name themselves. In the Mist of Mulholland came out of the Gaslight Anthem song Mulholland Drive. Someone later pointed out the uncanny similarities to the film Mulholland Drive—a movie I had never seen. When I finally watched it, I was stunned by the parallels with what I was creating. Blue cubes and blue keys had always been part of Eden’s genesis.
Another figure keeps surfacing—everywhere. Steady and undeniable.
The characters in the paintings began mirroring my life in a way that led me to something I’ve only yet partially found.
And a girl with orange hair has been there from the beginning—clearly not Eden, and not me.
She feels like a prophecy waiting to unfold.
At some point, the line between the myth and my life dissolved.
There are literal marks on my body that came from nowhere and correspond with the myth.
The paintings began showing me things I hadn’t lived yet. The songs did that first.
They brought forward what I couldn’t yet see, and pointed toward what I didn't yet understand.
They became both a mirror and a guide.
I still don’t know what this story is or where it’s going. But it’s gotten me through the hardest part of my life. And it’s still unfolding.
The story isn’t finished—and I’m not guiding it.
If you're here, maybe you're meant to witness it too.
Brian Fallon once shared that the phrase Diamond Sinatras maybe didn’t make perfect sense—but it was an image, something that came to him when he needed it.
I’ve probably painted over 200 paintings, and I believe in the end they’ll all be revealed as part of the series.
Every one is a Diamond Sinatra that came to me when I needed it most.
Art heals. Music saves.
And it’s all connected.
@djlovesyou33
