This is mostly a newsletter about circumventing the capital-a algorithm, but even I must acknowledge that a backwards clock is right four times a day. Google knows I’m a sicko for Chicago videos. Add in some advocacy for our city’s undersung beach-town side and yes, I am going to click your thumbnail. That’s how I became a fan of musician and video diarist C.Q. Lucius.
Those are screenshots of handheld video Lucius took two summers ago, recorded on a secondhand camcorder with blown-out highlights, munged through YouTube compression to play back at 480p. It’s pretty far from the kind of 8k 120fps stuff associated with celebrity creators.
Of those options, as you might guess, I am more interested in the former. Lucius uses low-fidelity tools in a way that allows her to record moments from her life, or direct-to-camera confessionals, with a degree of intimacy that is mediated by digital grain. I am fascinated by that kind of thing—the use of a tool’s inherent qualities to adjust aesthetic distance and the warmth of your media. Plus her music is cool!
Lucius graciously agreed to an interview about her work, and I’ve edited together and hyperlinked this post from our conversation. All the screenshots in this post belong to her.
I imagine the first thing most new arrivals will notice about your channel is that you shoot on cassette, with DV camcorders. But it’s more than just an affectation, it seems to be a lifelong interest. You often splice footage of your younger self, recorded on similar gear decades ago, into your present-day work. What first moved you to pick up that kind of camera again?
I was sort of at a crossroads in my life. I was meeting new people, a lot of new things were happening. At the same time, my musical identity had never quite felt 100% me. I started realizing that I had always been trying to live up to other people’s expectations of what type of artist I should be, or even masking in a way.
There was a desire to go back and reconnect to the root of my art which really was a dv camera. So I remembered I still had my old one and the moment I started recording on it, something just clicked. It felt so different than capturing memories on an iPhone, like the “limitation breeds creativity” concept.
I will gladly talk about using constraints for creativity all day. You’ve played with time limitations regularly—like videos taken over the course of a week, or 24 hours, or an overview of a year. At what point in the process do you figure out what span a video is going to cover?
If I’m doing anything like a week or day in the life type thing, I have to decide right away when and how it’s happening so I can stay on schedule and capture everything as I go. It’s a little more of an adrenaline rush and what I enjoy about these is leaning into imperfection. If something goes wrong because of a time constriction, it’s funny to just go with it. I guess that could apply to any video, but it’s not like you can reshoot something if you’re trying to genuinely capture it as you go.
Working with a camcorder has its own constraints too. They might be as simple as not being able to record selfie-style with your camera that doesn’t have a wide lens. Or not being able to shoot at all unless you had a way to carry one of your cameras with you. Does that need to plan affect the material you record? What does it do to your creative perspective to see things through a flip-out viewfinder?
It does affect how I film material and that’s what I like about it. We live in a time where anyone can capture anything so easily I think we take it for granted. Using a dv camera, looking through the viewfinder just feels much more intentional. I also have to make sure the battery is charged and I have room on the dv tape. Features like zooming in or the 4×3 aspect all add to a different feel as well. To me it feels more real even though it’s lower quality.
It also makes it more obvious in public for sure, which has taken some getting used to because I still get nervous that I’m being annoying or attracting too much attention. But it’s also sparked more conversation with strangers who remember the camcorder days and it brings up memories for them which is cool!
It’s great that your camera is a conversation starter in that way! When I think about trying to navigate around a stranger taking video with their phone, I do feel some instinctive wariness. But yeah, if imagine it were a camera, it doesn’t bring up that feeling. It’s got such a different connotation. I have to ask: do you think you could use this power for evil?
Honestly, the camera’s power cuts both ways. I guess it looks more legitimate, but that same quality has made some people wary. I’ve been told “you can’t film here” in places like the mall or at baseball games while someone right next to me is filming in 4k with their iPhone which is so confusing to me! So I suppose my window for using my power for evil has closed, haha.
You’ve been a musician since before you started your video journal, and you’ve collaborated with your brother Schaeffer on several albums. Does that part of your life go back as far as the early camcorder days? When did the two of you first write songs together?
Yep, the camcorder days were actually a catalyst for the music. From a young age I was classically trained on piano and later took guitar lessons (I was just okay at that), so I technically had a musical background but the “soul” didn’t come until later. I was making little movies with camcorders ever since I can remember, maybe 7 or 8 years old. I’d use toys, claymation, sometimes my brother and I would act, etc.
It continued into my early teens and I was starting to become more seriously interested in film. I was still making movies with my dv camera starring my friends, but I was also making music videos and even lip syncing to famous artists’ songs – like Avril Lavigne, Evanescence, haha. One day I thought – I like music videos but I want this art to be 100% mine. So I started writing my own songs and making music videos for those.
The rest is history, I forced my brother to join me in a “band”. He wasn’t super on board at first but as we got older he surpassed me in guitar skills (he’s a super talented guitarist) and we started writing more and performing.
I’m still working my way through the videos you made before I found your channel, so I’m not sure if you have used clips from your childhood claymation videos in any of them. But if you have, please tell me which ones, because I urgently need to see them.
Unfortunately I’m not sure what happened to some of those old videos, and the ones that I have found are pretty low quality. I’ve been digging through old hard drives recently though and am determined to find whatever I can. It would be really cool to incorporate them into my videos. It’s pretty upsetting to think some of those are possibly lost forever!
You often use the music that you and Schaeffer have made as a score for video segments, and it’s one of my favorite things about your channel. You’re like the one vlogger out there who’s not just using royalty-free Kevin MacLeod tracks. How has making personal content fed into the music videos for your songs, or vice versa?
Yep, that started when Schaeffer got into composing – first for a 2023 documentary called Melomaniac. He started getting more serious about making instrumentals so it was perfect timing. Some of the music you hear is his, some mine, some both.
I love that we can make something specifically for a vibe I want. For instance in my video “i wish the only place i had to be right now was the grocery store” I threw together that track because I wanted something jazzy but a little creepy.
But back to the main point – I feel like the vlog (which is the newer venture for me) and the music videos I’ve made have mirrored each other in a way. Most of my music videos haven’t been a super big production. Just like my vlog, they’ve been a little mundane and focus on the every day. It feels more real and grounded to me. Going forward I’d definitely like to delve more into combining the vlog and music and sort of morphing into one.
It’s pretty common to associate the look of cassette recordings with nostalgia; I think you’ve mentioned that people often apply that association to your videos too. But you’ve kind of pushed back against that sort of sentimentality in your narration. Indeed, you have a running theme of working to focus on the here and now, even if it’s mundane. Can you say a bit about where that motivation arose from?
There’s a sort of melancholy we can get caught up in, especially as artists and relating to nostalgia. Growing up I was exposed to a lot of dark things, death, mental health issues, family stuff, etc. and there is sometimes this tendency to hang around in that darkness and sadness and explore it. Which is fine, but as I got into my late 20s and 30s I just felt how dangerous that can be.
It can feel really good to chase the light and humor in things instead and not look back too much. Who likes being sad? Maybe some people do. Nostalgia is popular these days though, so I understand hanging onto the comforts of the past. I just don’t like to dwell on the sentimental weight of it.
Your practice of recording, and of what you called “changing the lens on your mind-camera,” must affect what you notice around yourself in daily life. What have you found yourself zooming in on during this beautiful week of Chicago spring?
I’ve noticed how loud birds are. The moment spring hits, if you sit still you immediately hear the birds and I’ve recently realized they are SO loud. They really use their voices. And they suddenly appear everywhere, all types – hopping around, swimming in the river. The other day there was even a goose outside my apartment building just walking around being bossy.
Finally, how is fan-favorite channel mascot Simon doing??
Haha he’s doing well! We’re celebrating his 6th “gotcha day” this month which means he’s probably about 6 and a half now. Time flies, but honestly he’s always looked like a grumpy old man even when he was a puppy.
