We Do Not Forget reflects on recent global crises and personal struggles, exploring trauma, neurodivergence and the search for understanding through music, analysis, and deeply personal reflection.
[The following text & images are taken from chapter 2 of the article ‘What We Do Not Forget,’ first published in the zine accompanying our 2024 We Do Not Forget mini-album / EP release]
“Why Shit So Crazy?”
Reggie Watts
The songs on We Do Not Forget embody a process of coming to terms with a particularly turbulent and challenging time in both the wider world and in our own lives as individuals. To recap the former: we had the pandemic from early 2020 until 2022, the war in Ukraine from February 2022, the genocide in Gaza from October 2023 and the looming spectre of climate change all throughout. Not to mention the many other humanitarian crises in Somalia, Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Yemen, Syria, South Sudan and elsewhere.
Apart from the emotional turmoil and the toll on mental health for those of us outside of these wars—let alone inside of them—a combination of the pandemic aftermath, Ukraine war and climate change in particular have raised the cost of living considerably for most people across the globe. Many resources are overstretched; some staple crops are failing or falling short and the wars are still raging.
We can’t speak for the people directly impacted by these wars but we do feel compelled to amplify perspectives that question what is actually happening and why, and help to reconnect us with the humanity of those who are suffering. The suffering and trauma are immeasurably vast and their justifications seem to have little basis in reality. We believe those justifications must be interrogated and called out for their deceptions.
We Do Not Forget represents a journey of processing the past few years through that mysterious synergy between words and music. It is a coping mechanism, an interrogation, an investigation, an analysis, an emotional outburst and an affirmation (among other things).
These little articles aim to help to visualise that journey from a more personal perspective. In support of the printed words are illustrations from my daughter and my parter along with calligraphic quotes handwritten by me, artwork designs and paper background textures from our family archives.
Different Brains
Neurodivergence is another key theme in this journey. Both of my children now have autism diagnoses, one also has an ADHD diagnosis and the other ADHD traits. Their mother has an ADHD diagnosis, my partner is neurodivergent and so on. As I write this I am in the process of self-referring for an autism diagnosis that has required me to reflect on my entire life from the relatively newfound perspective of undiagnosed autism.
Reframing my past through the lens of undiagnosed and largely unsupported autism has been its own challenge. While I’ve learned to recognise and acknowledge my considerable privilege as a white middle-class male, I’ve also struggled silently all of my life with challenges that I’ve only recently begun to understand. As I grow older and bear the responsibility of raising two neurodivergent children in a largely neurotypical world, it is becoming steadily more difficult to cope with these challenges. Making records still happens, it just happens slower than it used to. Please keep bearing with us.
Rabbit Holes
One beautiful consequence of the autism self-referral process is that is has made me reflect more deeply on my life’s core learnings from my earliest memories, how and why I’ve learned them and how that all relates to Fold.
Like many of my neurodivergent peers, I am a person who frequently falls down rabbit holes of research when an interesting thread presents itself and indeed all members of Fold have similar tendencies in that regard. If I have anything like a neurodivergent gift it is the ability to connect seemingly disparate dots and see bigger pictures. I feel compelled to know why things are happening and can’t rest until reaching a satisfactory conclusion which, sadly, is not always possible.
Over the years I’ve spent a large chunk of my brainpower attempting to understand why things are the way they are in the world, with some success. The world of humans is a profoundly confusing place and the reasons for that are both complex and fascinating.
[To be continued in Part 3: The True Nature of Power]
