Meet Alexander Bozicevich | Writer/Actor/Singer-Songwriter

We had the good fortune of connecting with Alexander Bozicevich and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Alexander, is there something you believe many others might not?

I am wary of specialization. My final year of college I tapped into the alumni network and called several people in creative careers asking for advice. The third alum I talked to ran a production company. He asked me about my goals. I started detailing my efforts in writing, acting, and music. He cut me off.

“No, no, no,” he said. “That’s too much. You need to pick one thing and get really good at it. That’s the only way to succeed in this business.”

I don’t believe this is how creativity works. The idea of specialization is a concept made for the job market, but even in that space it is losing relevance. The job market keeps going through seismic changes. With recent advances in AI, generalists are getting some vindication. It’s hard to find security doing just one thing. But I didn’t go into arts and entertainment for security reasons, and I don’t keep an array of multimedia projects going for security reasons either. It’s just how my brain works. Most creative people I know are similar. They need several passions to fulfill themselves.

I struggled with describing myself for quite a bit. For my first few years in LA, I just called myself an actor. After I completed a novel and several scripts, I called myself a writer and actor. Now that I also have music to show, I call myself a writer/actor/singer-songwriter. I keep looking for a more concise title, but most of the punchiest ones have been worn out to the point of parody: artist, storyteller, creative, etc. They’re a bit too vague to answer the question: “So, what do you do?”

When people look at my Instagram, they often get confused. A music video might sit next to a comedy sketch, which might sit next to a high fashion modeling photo, which might sit next to a goofy headshot, which might sit next to a bit of graphic design I whipped up on Canva to promote a project.

“It’s all over the place,” someone close to me once said about my Instagram. “But you’re all over the place, so it’s okay.”

That still makes me chuckle.

I write, I act, I make music, and when I’m happiest, I’m doing all three of these in conjunction. Them’s the breaks, at least for my scattered brain. But something tells me that most of us have scattered brains, and that for people to flourish, they need free rein to explore all the tributaries of their creative flow. Finding stable success in the arts has always been a nebulous enterprise. I think it takes a bit of meta-creativity to navigate said enterprise and find fulfillment at the same time.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?

This has been an exciting year creatively. It was the first year I was able to synthesize writing, acting, and music into one project: The Promised Land.

The Promised Land began last summer. By some stroke of serendipity, I ran into a fellow alum from the University of Virginia named Joshua Blackwell. We shared an improv class together during our final year of college. Joshua is the founder of a company called BLCK UNICRN that helps artists create immersive music experiences, and he encouraged me to make an audiovisual album for the platform.

The project came at a crucial time. I was battling a condition I now know to be long Covid, and my symptoms had reached a climax. I could barely leave my bed. An echocardiogram indicated that my heart was not pumping properly. I was dizzy and nauseous all day. My body ached. I thought I might be dying.

The Promised Land gave me an outlet to make sense of everything I was experiencing. The story follows my character after I fall into a long Covid coma and wake up in purgatory, which happens to look like a magical swimming pool with healing powers. To immerse myself in this healing pool, I must get the procedure approved by a metaphysical insurance agency, which requires interacting with all sorts of zany characters and confronting the contradictions keeping my soul sick.

The process of creating The Promised Land has aligned with my own journey of recovery. I wrote the script and recorded the album during the first eight months of crisis and mystery. I released the album February 3rd of this year, the same day that I was diagnosed with long Covid. Filming took place in March and April, when I was in the thick of working with various specialists to manage my symptoms, and now I am coordinating with BLCK UNICRN for the post-production phase, a phase that coincides with what I hope to be my final stretch of healing.

Some other highlights of this year included the release of a single called Rikki-Tic-Y-Tavi, a dance track about Tourette’s, which my good friend Terin Ginn choreographed and performed an original dance for. This past month I also released a comedy sketch about a virtual meditation session gone wrong called In Your Headspace, which was directed and edited by my good friend Anthony Papastrat.

In terms of upcoming projects, I have some fun stuff planned, as I am halfway through a new album. I am also planning to publish a novel that I have been working on for some time. Stay tuned, as they say.

Creative work has always carried me through crises. This past year’s crisis was perhaps the most acute, but it also brought a new level of urgency and discovery to my work, and for that I am grateful.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Last winter I was diagnosed with long Covid. The diagnosis clarified a constellation of symptoms that I have been battling since March 2020, symptoms that became debilitating this past year. I struggled for some time to find a team of medical professionals who would take my condition seriously, but doing so has made all the difference on my path to recovery. To the medical providers listed below, thank you for giving me hope when my supply was exhausted. Thank you for rekindling my belief that I could get better.

With gratitude to:

Dr. Cesar Palana, MD
Marilyn Thompson, OTD, OTR/L
Dr. Ashkan Naraghi, MD
Keck Medicine of USC COVID Recovery Clinic
The Pulmonary Rehabilitation team at Cedars Sinai Medical Center

Website: https://thebestofboz.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bozalexander/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaWvUgW-UztG3jY9NsSqhTw

Other: https://artists.landr.com/055120359125 https://www.blckunicrn.com/

Image Credits
Todd Tyler Anthony Papastrat