David Senra

There was one bathroom, the only place to relieve yourself, and no functioning bath.

My grandparents fell into a state of poor hygiene and care that would shock and repel me now.

My grandma slept on a couch with me tucked in at her side while my grandfather had a small cot across the room.

That was it.

This was where I needed to be to feel at home, safe, loved.

It ruined me and it made me.

It made me in the sense that it would set me off on a lifelong pursuit of a singular place of my own, giving me a raw hunger that drove me, hell-bent, in my music.

It was a desperate, lifelong effort to rebuild.

For my grandmother's love, I abandoned my parents, my sister, and much of the world itself.

Then that world came crashing in.

My grandparents became ill.

Soon my grandfather would be dead and my grandmother would be filled with cancer.

He describes the traits that he had as a child that he has for most of his life.

I would say he's disagreeable, defiant, nonconformist and independent.

And he was like that since he was a kid.

He says, I will not conform to the way things are.

I don't know shit nor care about the way things are.

And so he has two sides of his family.

He's primarily Italian and Irish.

The Irish side is full of these soft, kind of weak, demure men.