the music

Alex writes comforting heartaches – songs that soothe and break you apart at the same time. Her signature move is a musical trojan horse: devastating lyrics paired with the sweetest and softest delivery. Alex’s writing captures the push and pull between comfort and growth, optimism and pragmatism, faith and fragility.

Despite her background in classical music and theory, Alex believes that sometimes the most touching music is also the most simple. Musical influences such as Michelle Branch and Kina Grannis are evident in Alex’s work, both in the honest and unembellished lyrics and in the fragile vocals. Her music is soft and delicate, healing and calming, and always verging on a beautiful sadness.

the healing

Alex See (she/they) lives on the unceded and stolen land of the Musqueam Nation. I am a second-generation, able-bodied, cis-presenting, uninvited settler in so-called “canada”. I am grateful to have been born of this Mountain, Water, Land, and Sky. I am grateful to live amongst Cedar, Bear, Whale and Salmon.

Whose land are you on? | #Landback

I live with neurodivergence (ADHD) and invisible disabilities (PTSD, CPTSD) that are the result of mental injuries from childhood abuse, workplace bullying, rape, and prolonged exposure to rape and rape culture. 

I trace my ancestry both with pride and mixed feelings to Hong Kong and to the Teochew people of what is now Southeast China, where around 2000 years ago, the Han Chinese, fleeing conflict and famine, displaced the Austronesian peoples. My life is the process of embracing all my Ancestors’ complexities as my own. I lean into the grief of our participation and complicity in colonization and other forms of harm and exploitation. At the same time, I celebrate our medicinal wisdom, the fierce 家己人 (Ga Gi Nang) pride and joy in our people, the insistence on food, family, and culture. 

I forgive my Elders for their offenses and violations while bowing in humble gratitude for all the gifts they have bestowed upon me. I am the opportunity to amplify what was brightest within them while seeking healing and reparations for their debts. I am the opportunity to make us all whole. I am grateful and humbled to have been entrusted by my lineage with this work. I accept generational trauma as both a curse and a gift. I accept this divine assignment. 

My positionality as a Han Chinese means that I enjoy unearned privileges and can navigate in spaces that many other Black, brown, and Indigenous peoples cannot. It means that I can choose when to stand in allyship and when to seek comfort in the refuge of my privilege. It means that I owe a debt and kinship to all BIPOC communities. I acknowledge the teachings of many BIPOC teachers, without whom I would not be doing this decolonizing work today. I extend a warm embrace to white allies who have bound up their liberation with ours.

To start on your own journey of decolonization and allyship, check out Len Pierre Consulting.