I used to make music in my cellar. Bad music (think Jonah Hill in Cyrus). Then I started writing short stories (not bad, but not particularly good). I suppose I’d still like to be a musician though, which is why my writing touches on music a lot (lyrics, club scenes etc). 

I grew up listening to Beck. He also started out making music in the basement. Look at his first 2 or 3 albums: Golden Feelings, Stereopathetic Soul Manure. Low fi, fuzzy round the edges. Noise tracks inserted here and there. Grunge and the abstract.

Then Odelay happened. Yes, Mellow Gold has Loser on it, but Odelay changed things for him. Slicker, yet still distinctively Beck. Cut and paste, highs and lows. Pop and folk. Rap and rock. The sound of the 90s.

I’d like to think that’s where I am with my writing. I wrote a book when I was 20, a tuneless debut that has its moments, has potential. It got released last year, after I finished my 2nd novel. It’s experimental, raw. Abstract.

Now for 2013, and my 2nd novel is my Odelay. Me finding my tune, my audience. My pop music, pop art, Pop Tarts. Like Animal Collective, Flaming Lips, I’m rising from the obtuse into opus territory. I’ve even used a Beck lyric in my epigraph to the manuscript.  It’s a tale for the millennials, too.

Maybe this is an apology for bad art. But I really do believe everyone starts somewhere.

- Giacomo Lee, 2013