Today we’d like to introduce you to Bryon Bowers.
Hi Bryon, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My story is complicated. Much of what made me me I have only written in poems and used ai tools to vocalize into song. Birthdays bring me pain and large gatherings of people make my skin crawl. Mirrors make me want to look away and the eyes of others exhaust me.
I was buried alive by neighborhood kids in a poor neighborhood along the Texas oil coast when I was 3 years old. Convinced I would die there, I recall each day that moment of clarity of my impending death. My fathered died when I was 2, so I reasoned at least I could meet him now. When my rescuers came, I see with ultra clarity myself crawling out the ground tears streaming down as I attempted in vain to kick the ass of my tormenters. After they dispersed, I can see the clouds through the trees of the forest around me float by. I can hear the birds chirp nearby, the trees swaying in the wind. I saw the world with a clarity I did not have before that moment. Many people do not remember their early childhood, it is sort of a fog drifting with occasional snapshots.
My recollection for better or worse has the clarity of my yesterday. I remember everything that happened to me after that day with the clarity a child should not have.
I am a child of the 80’s + 90’s. I was born on 82.
My 3 siblings and I went into foster care when I was almost 5. Then 3 more half siblings came into the system in the years after.
Things happened to me, then I found my foster grama and grampa and their youngest son, my uncle; when I was 8. I graduated 3rd in my class, went to college for computer science degree from UT Austin, and had a 20 year career in software consulting. I have an amazing wife and 2 boys now 10 and 12.
In November of 2024, I started turning old poems into songs with the help of ai. It started out as a one off project to honor my foster grama who had passed years ago. I wrote a poem “This One” about who she was and my loss of her that day. I wanted, no, I needed to get out into the universe. A year and half later, I have turned many of my old experiences and poems into songs. It’s a strange itch, when I write a poem now, I need to get it into a song format.
When people meet me, they see me as a social creature, but every moment I am with someone I can feel their eyes, I can feel the feelings they carry behind the eyes. It is exhausting and exciting at the same time.
My shrink has explained the root of this predicament.
My poems ( turned into songs ) are entities born of the mingling of my experiences, my lyrical writing abilities, and the instrumental and vocal shoulders of musical giants.
I usually write song lyrics after I have written my poem, the chorus usually comes after I have written all my verses, but sometimes the chorus comes first. Sometimes I skip the chorus all together.
Each piece is a highly emotional experience of my younger child self seen through my current self trying to make sense of what happened.
I want my poems to be experienced without me.
I enjoy my solitude and could live alone with my wife and boys in a cocoon if it were possible. I enjoy experiencing the world through words, stories, songs, and computation.
Authentic experiences sooth me, and performative interactions destroy me slowly until I can escape into solitude.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I had a lot of obstacles growing up, but many cleared up by the time I was 12. Foster care and moving around was tough, but I think it made me more flexible in my view of the universe and what it might throw at you.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I started making music based on poems I had written of my childhood and teenage years in November 2024. My work can be found here https://thedeadfishpoet.com/
and on all the music streaming services.
I am most proud of “This One” song, both versions I have created. I am also most proud of “Alligator Eyes” and “Barbara Needs Coffee”
What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
The thing I love most about Austin is how it has this flexibility of expression. You can choose to participate in as much of the human experience as you would like introverts and extroverts alike.
Least thing I like about Austin is the dog days of summer.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://thedeadfishpoet.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedeadfishpoet
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@thedeadfishpoet
- Other: https://bryonbowers.org
