April 06, 2026
The Chariot

I won't pretend to be an expert in or loyal subject of tarot and/or astrology, but I do enjoy oscillating between the concepts of fate and will versus entropy and chaos. Perhaps "vacillating" would be a more accurate word choice. But The Chariot tarot card is an obvious one. It means direction, decision and action. Go time! Get it? It's a chariot, a vehicle. Clever, yeah? Mars also enters Aries this week. Aries is ruled by Mars. Aries is the first of the zodiac: the trailblazer, the "do now, ask questions later," type of youthful ambition that is so, so glorious and somewhat dangerous to experience. And Mars, well. We know him. God of war. Why am I always talking about war? I guess because we are all, always, somehow, talking about war. Or enacting war on each other, or ourselves. 

In many contexts I do believe in asking forgiveness and not permission. This aggressively does not apply to the bodily autonomy or general wellbeing of other living beings—hate that I feel the need to break up my thought to say that, but it does seem like we have fully entered Misogyny, The Culture II. All the rhetoric that made me feel small, stupid, ugly, useless and unworthy as a younger person has come back with vigor and is eating at the brains of The Youth of Today even worse than it ate their parents' brains, or mine. Anyway.

The blog entry dated Jan. 14 is a lie. That is, I wrote it on Jan. 14, but I didn't post it until today. I didn't have the confidence to pull the trigger. I had more work to do on it, or so I thought. And therein lies my problem, a solution to which I beseech the Chariot, Aries and Mars grant me. The truth is you just have to grant yourself the solutions and solace you need to get through the day.

Every time I want to do "band stuff," like update this blog, post something promotional on social media, or even do the rare interview when those come around, I'm mired with guilt and unworthiness. In her book The Writing Life, Annie Dillard posed a question that I have thought about almost every day for more than a decade: 

"Why not shoot yourself, actually, rather than finish one more excellent manuscript on which to gag the world?"

When I read that passage (and the whole book—it's short, I recommend it) I don't find the sentiment to be discouraging. To me, it's inspiring. That being said, with everything going on in the world *gestures broadly* it feels careless and selfish to take up more server space with my thoughts and my art if the output is not directly activist. One of the reasons why I sat on the previous post for so long was because I wanted to include links and other ways to support efforts to free Palestine and support Palestinian families, achieve an arms embargo against Israel, or at least divert our tax dollars from war crimes—and this was written even before the crisis in Cuba hit a critical point and Tr*mp started a bullshit fucking war with Iran so we would look away from the Epstein files, so now there's even more humans in even more parts of the world who need your energy and attention than whatever I'm peddling. AND! I haven't even touched on Doug Ford's latest and greatest hits to Ontario's health care, environmental protection and critical social services (and the corruption... oh my god). And there we go, I'm spiralling. Case in point.

Regrettably and narcissistically, I also worry about the optics. Does this seem virtue signal-y, white saviour-y, am I doing it for the right reasons, saying the right things? Am I doing enough actual activism in my daily life for my speaking on these subjects to not seem performative? Do my previous misunderstandings and mistakes, and my current shortcomings negate any good my efforts might achieve? By the power of Mars in Aries I command my brain to SHUT UP with that waste of time and just go! DO IT! DO ANYTHING! Do we think that will work? 

Anything is better than nothing. At the same time, we are still on Spotify. This is a Google-based website. I discovered recently that our CDs are available on Amazon. We went through TSA while the workers were not getting paid on our way to and from New York City for New Colossus Fest. And some may frown on the fact that we engaged with the U.S. at all, given the current circumstances (I have a lot of thoughts on that which will require its own post. Stay tuned but not too tuned). Something about those being without sin cast the first stone, sent from my child-mined iPhone. 

Point being what? Mea Culpa. Firstly, I am throwing away the need for a point to post these, or a coherent theme or outline, at least for today. I am straight up writing this in the website editor and will force myself to hit publish after a quick re-read to lightly copyedit. The others were drafted in a word processing program, edited and re-edited over the course of days or weeks so I could second- third- and fourth- guess myself (same as I have been with the new songs), only to lose energy, lose faith in the idea, or forget about the piece entirely. Like, who's going to read something this long? These are not meant to be paradigm-shifting scriptures anyway. And, I don't care. That's not the point today because there is no point today. 

Secondly, I'm throwing off the chains of guilt and shame and fear of not doing the right thing or not doing enough, and just doing something instead. Stop straining under the weight of a false perception of perfection and maybe you'll be able to run. The snowflake begets the avalanche on mountains and molehills. Okay, now I'm getting a bit egregious with it. Please do remember I write lyrics for a very earnest goth band and literally none of this is an act, unfortunately. I am really this intense and dramatic and gloomy and verbose every day. It's exhausting (and so is dealing with chronic illness, another demon in my fight for consistency).

We all have war within ourselves if we thwart parts of ourselves, parsing factions and enemies in our bodies and hearts and minds. Often we have thwarted parts of ourselves without even knowing it, that's just the world we live in. How we've been told to exist,  mostly for someone else's gain. Where am I going with this?

Well, yeah. I guess you could say I'm trying to post more, and unabashedly. Whether it is "useful" in a humanitarian sense or not. Or, rather, decide that it is useful because sharing my ideas is, maybe, important. And maybe it will help. Maybe that's what I have to contribute. At the very least, it's useful to me, a writer, to be, well, writing. 

Okay, that's it. Before I share some band-related updates that could cost you money, time and attention, let me first share some more worthy r3ecipients should you be in a position to/interested in sharing a bit of those. 

IT'S EASY TO DO SOMETHING:

Ahmed KM - a Palestinian artist who escaped Gaza and is trying to save his little sister Eileen and family. You can buy his art, donate to his fundraiser, or even just follow him on Tiktok (if that's your thing). 

Toronto Indigenous Harm Reduction - an incredible mutual aid organization doing such backbreaking work to help Indigenous and First Nations people in the city fill the ever-widening gaps that our vicious federal, provincial and municipal governments have left open for many many people to fall into. All proceeds of Bandcamp sales from our first EP, Lunate, go to support this organization since it has been released. If you are in a position to do so, you can even become a monthly donor. Or follow them on Instagram for real-time requests for aid, which are often the most critical/crisis-driven.

Obviously these two suggestions are no more than a single atom in a drop in the bucket. To that, I say, please refer to the thesis of this post. I am very open to suggestions of organizations or fundraisers to signal-boost any time, and support when I have the means to do so (I'm unemployed, hire me).

DERMA COMING SOON:

SHOWS! In... you guessed it - TORONTO! Both really, really good and cool ones that we're very excited about. As much as I am trying to minimize our Toronto shows because how many times do the same group of people want to hear us perform the same songs we have been for the last 4 years and change (we are so incredibly grateful for those who do and from the bottom of my heart I do love every single one of you), these two are both pretty special.

May 16 @ Double Double Convenience with Accelerant, Deposed and Real Silk - $15/NOTAFLOF, no advance tickets, limited capacity, 19+.

I think this will be the first show at this venue. It's the nailhouse convenience store that is in between the two Long & McQuade locations around Bloor and Ossington, and we're playing with some great pals.

May 24 NICKFEST @ Lee's Palace with lots of other great acts including both my and Adam's other bands, Glum and Hyperwar (FKA Computer, or one of them, at least). This show is in memory of Nick Gergesha, an indomitable force, unbreakable spirit, the glue and sinew that held many threads and networks together. Most recently, he played guitar in Sundowner. Dermabrasion toured with Sundowner for their Work Dream LP release/our Pain Behaviour release shows in March-April 2024. But but Adam and I have been listening to and playing with Nick's bands for more than a decade. It's hard to sum up in a tacked-on listicle of this long post. Another one to come soon, closer to the date. Anyway, there's advance tickets for that one and a portion of ticket sales (half, I think?) will be donated to the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund, for which Nick's wife Maddi, his family and friends have been fundraising through various methods in honour of Nick since he passed unexpectedly in late December 2025.

We will have more dates outside of Toronto, and even outside of Ontario, to announce very soon. We're trying to expand our radius wider and wider each year! Invite us places and we will come play. 

What else? I've been working on some kind of a lyric and art zine for Pain Behaviour in an attempt to grease the seized gears of the new record in my brain. I meant to have it ready in January, but being on time is not my style. I intend to distribute these as PWYC and donate the proceeds. 

Not a masterpiece by any stretch but I've always wanted to do visual art, so I tried it. This is all handwritten and handdrawn. The illustrations for each song are basically done, as is the cover. But life gets in the way and I find myself once again in the same quagmire of guilt and shame about releasing something that feels sooooooooooooooooooooooo self-indulgent. I want it to be a worthwhile document beyond being a nice thing to look at. So I need to get to work on drafting some longer-form pieces and curating some lists that can serve as a salve to my guilty conscience. It's a work in progress. Isn't everything.

After that, hopefully we will be able to start tracking our next release soon. We already decided the first single and I am so proud of it. 

Thank you, any and all of you, for your patience and encouragement. This is frightfully long. Good bye!

-K

***

Jan. 14, 2026
Divine Timing

The word divine gets thrown around a lot, more lately. It’s losing its meaning. Or is it losing its meaning? That isn’t a literary device. I’m asking myself this question. Are words not meant to be worn in and stretched thin over time, like your favourite sweater, threadbare, barely there, because it has been so well-used, -loved, -understood? Divine, an adjective. Something as simple as a scoop of vanilla ice cream can be divine. Taking a good shit and a hot shower (in that order) can be divine. Does that mean “god,” whatever you may conceive of that to be, is present in those mundane moments? Well, yes. Without question, for me. Do those moments not make you see god? Mayhaps ‘tis the mark of an epicurean hedonist *tips fedora*.

We have become a people defined by war. Divinity is a weapon. It’s a whole arsenal, and every side has taken arms. Divinity is a slab of cold clay. Worked hard enough, it can be molded and warped into anything you want it to be. A bludgeon, a guillotine, four walls with adobe slats for my girls—by that I mean a strong foundation, sense of home and whole. It gets weirder and worse with The Internet’s regressive and grotesque diversion/obsession/buzzword-ification of “divine masculine” and “divine feminine.” I can’t even start with that now because I’ve already vamped for too long and said nothing. I think my point is that the internet flattens both time and meaning. But I'm not sure what that means yet.

Whether or not you choose to see or celebrate The Divine, or the divine, you are at its mercy. The universe’s best practical joker, "divine timing." A shapeshifter. A straitjacket, a gag. A beautiful promenade, a hedge maze. My manager, nemesis, guardian angel, judge, jury, executioner (one day, hopefully not too soon).

I wanted to make this “blog” a “thing.” Quietly. But the intervening months have been... well, who cares how they’ve been. To those of us who are still here, and still alive, we are all privileged, lucky. So, whatever, we keep going. I wanted to be recording our next record by now but it’s still cooking. I am very happy about it, though. Adam keeps writing excellent songs! And I keep trying to survive and learn my lessons day by day. I get caught in this weird phase of putting too much emotional importance on a piece of work while I’m creating it, or thinking about creating it, that I sink into a mental quicksand of uncreativity. The pressure becomes not the good kind. I keep thinking too hard about replicating my “process” (yuck, shut up) from the last record which is literally impossible because there is no way of recreating any of those circumstances again. Nor would I want to, honestly. And yet I still use it as a mallet with which to slug myself when I try something different or it doesn’t “feel the same.” It’s not supposed to feel the same!

Maybe this is too much inside baseball, but—if you’ve seen us perform in the last year, you have probably heard songs that aren’t recorded yet. And if you think you’ve heard any of those songs more than once, you have not. I haven’t been able to perform them the same way even twice. I haven’t been able to settle on anything vocally for at least three of the songs we’ve been playing for a year and change. Maybe I shouldn’t say that “out loud.” But who cares. I really love what I do. When you hear these new songs, I hope you will think they’re as good as I do and like them as much as I like them.

This has been a long way of me saying, to nobody in particular (other than perhaps myself, to justify the last two years) that this “blog” will become “a thing,” and new songs will become a thing, in divine timing. Ha! It feels so presumptuous and frankly fucking preposterous, positively out of character for me (or so I’d like to believe) to be on Al Gore’s internet in the big two-six talking about “big things coming soon.” Local band ahh shit meanwhile nobody asked, nobody is keeping track, nobody cares. 

But I care, and that’s why it does matter. I literally do not care if nobody else cares. I didn’t ask you to come here and read this. But if you did, and you’re still here, and you do care, thank you so much. I love you. I really do. And, by the way, in case that whole not caring thing comes off as too, uh... abrasive, I share it to set an example that you actually should not care that nobody cares about your art. You should not be making it with the motivation of wanting other people to care about it. That should not be the point. You should do it because you love it, or because you need to, because you have no choice, ~spiritually~ speaking. When I say these things I imagine there is a very cool and smart and very online 13-16 year old who wants to make art but is too self-conscious (and such is life, that’s okay, if you’re here reading this) (yes that was also me) (and the internet was very different then).

- K

***  

Aug. 15, 2025
I guess this is a blog now.

It means a lot that I have found so many people with whom my choice and shape of words resonate. To be able to perform my original music in front of people who enjoy it, who will return to it and listen to it again, who will perhaps feel something from this creative output and engage with me, us, in an energy exchange, and maybe even assign to it their own meaning, emotional tapestry and memories--it is the most life-affirming experience I can possibly have. I didn't think this was something I could achieve by any measure when I was a 14-year-old kid drawing out a map of the Warped Tour dates for geography class or trying to piece together a Chiodos song on the piano in my parents' living room. I never even thought I could write music of my own.

Before I subject anybody else to more of my words, because, trust me, I have so many--I need to once again express my endless gratitude for any measure of attention you, reader, listener, have granted to the existence of this project Dermabrasion. I would bellow these solemn notes into the open skies whether or not there was a single ear to hear it, simply because I have to. But a mythical voice once said, if you're gonna scream, scream with me, moments like this never last. And if I do any of this for any other reason, it is to show the curious that it is not only possible, but highly attainable. 

So while I pay a small tithe to have an uncouth, anachronistic place for Dermabrasion to exist on the internet, away from algorithms and aggregated feeds, I shall too use this space as a repository for all my castaway thoughts and phrases. The things I don't really want people to see, but need to say anyway. If you want it, you have to come find it. That's the kind of internet that raised me.  

This website doesn't even have the UI for a proper blog. I am torn between parting with: "so, buckle up!" and "let's see how long this lasts." The mind is strong, but also weak, and the flesh... unreliable, to say the least.

- K

***  

March 6, 2019 - commissioned & editing by Melissa Vincent for A-Side.com (defunct)
From the archives: Reimagining grrrls to the front for International Women's Day
On women in Toronto's heavy/alternative music scene

AN - Aug. 10, 2025

I wrote this based on my experiences playing with WLMRT and Prettyboy from 2015-2020. I would love to expand on this with more nuance to fit the context of life and music today (somehow 2019 is a lifetime away). Some day in the future this piece will see a reprise.  For now I am grateful for these words to once again see the light of an internet browser.

- K 

---

 I share a first name with a woman who made her mark by proclaiming “girls to the front,” when a woman performing music on stage was still often met with “take off your shirt.” The reason for this proclamation, as empowering as it sounds, was a matter of physical safety for women attending and performing at punk shows. 

In the 20-odd years since Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna first demanded space for women in music, I’m fortunate to step in front of a crowd of people a few times a month with an instrument slung around my neck and not be goaded to remove my clothes, and I don’t often find myself fearing for my physical safety while playing or attending a show. 

But misogyny in heavy and alternative music is as pervasive as it ever has been—it just looks different. I’m still told I’m “good for a girl.” I’ve had a promoter who’s never seen my band play approach the stage in the middle of my set and adjust the EQ on my amplifier. I’ve had a sound technician assume that I was the keyboard player, despite the bass hanging around my shoulders. I’ve been told, in many different ways that I am doing a thing I get paid to do incorrectly. In a city that prides itself on its “progressive attitudes,” my peers—other women in Toronto bands—recount worse interactions, and with more frequency.

But for most, it’s not a heckle from the crowd or the threat of being pummeled during your set that directs a laser focus on the overwhelming shift in behaviour that’s still necessary: it’s the veiled statements or subtle actions that show that the thing we’re supposed to have moved past still lingers.

And it’s not because we aren’t present. Women make up a significant segment of the various Toronto heavy music scenes. We play in bands, put on shows, create zines, take photographs, run distros, make poster and T-Shirt art, take your cover at the door and pay cover at the door. I’m proud to be a part of this network inherently connecting me to so many interesting and creative women in this city. We’ve worked together and inspired each other to become important contributors to our scenes.  

But dig into this further and you’ll be met with the uncomfortable truth that a significant majority of those women are just like me: cisgender and white, making it clear that we still have a lot of work to do.

To my cis, white, femme peers in Toronto’s punk and wider alternative scenes: show up for those who don’t look like you. Show up for the women of colour, trans women and nonbinary people hosting events in your scene; buy their zines, their art, their records and tapes; share their posts and work on social media; actively listen to what they have to say. Use your platform and privilege to amplify their art. Take a step back—literally—so someone else can stand in front of you and enjoy the space you’ve had the privilege of taking up until now. 

To the cis men who continue to dominate these scenes: do the same and more. Show up for all the women, not just those you find attractive. Start bands with people outside of your circle. Pay attention to the bills you play on: are they all-white, all-male? Ask your promoter why, and demand something different. If you have access to a space, reach out to your peers that don’t have access and ask them to book there.

Most importantly, men, dedicate yourselves to making the space safe for people not like you. Call out other men acting badly, and prohibit that behavior. Listen to people who have been mistreated by men in your scene and believe them. Don’t let those men continue without consequences. Toronto outsider art is up against hostile bylaws and ballooning rent. We need everyone to keep our scenes vibrant and flourishing. We want a truly inclusive and diverse scene, so let’s everybody keep doing the work.

***