Meet Vale Aveline | Pianist, Writer, Visual Artist

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

Hi Vale, do you have some perspective or insight you can share with us on the question of when someone should give up versus when they should keep going?
A word that I have grown fond of over time is the word paracosm. This word denotes a personal world in one’s imagination, usually developed during childhood. The characters that blossomed into the books I was writing became so spirited and animated over time that they felt as close to my awareness as family members and friends. Sometimes the characters I imagined in books helped me envisage ways to elevate and cultivate my own personality and path in life.
Even as a teenager, I began to feel that the characters in my books felt like my children, or as one would say, brainchildren. I felt a sense of mission, duty, obligation, and purpose to bring them into the world. If I did not do so, they would literally not exist.
If you take the example of a character such as Aladdin, this character has crossed continents, centuries, generations. It is living, in a sense, in the collective imagination, and beyond the human lifespan. There is a sort of a palpable soul/aura to the character, as it can be recreated by different people, with similarities and differences, but with a soulful consistency.
This character could persist far into the future or into outer space. We have as humans, after all, always named the stars, constellations, and rockets in our sky after characters and animals.
Another book series that comes to mind is Journey to the West, about Sun Wukong, the mythological Monkey King. A writer published the work anonymously; it is currently attributed to Wu Cheng’en. I remember as a teenager being deeply touched that an unknown author from 500 years ago in China had taken the time to write down this delightful legend that I was now reading. That author’s devotion to imagination itself had given me their paracosm to enter and explore.
Also, as a creator, it is not uncommon that the artworks you have presented to others only represent the tip of the iceberg. One’s most creative moments have often all happened hermitically. So revealing the full oeuvre/gauntlet of what you have created is a reason to continue to be an usher/caretaker of your creative works, and more unborn works that you may still midwife or distill into being.
Even when I have felt disconnected/disassociated from all that is grotesquely ordinary, I have been brusqued by this sort of superseding mission.

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?
Following with my previous answer, I would say some of the people who have affected me most are artists who I have never met. This is part of the artist’s dilemma. It reminds me of stories where a character is called to some distant place, that they don’t know if they will ever find or have the ability to find, often with surprises and adversity along the way. Over time, I started thinking of a concept of spiritual gravity. For some unknown reason, in the world of artwork and imagination, you are “drawn” to some particular locus, which often yields coincidences. Artworks you have never encountered before sometimes feel both homely/innate to you as well as mismatched in other ways.
One of the artists that first affected me most was the Mars Volta. That band felt as if a “Morpheus” interloper had entered my life, grabbed my shoulder, and shown me everything about my perception had been errant and limited, and could be amply augmented.
Another was Hayao Miyazaki, who had not yet seemed to gain wider recognition in the United States. Another was Alejandro Jodorowsky. He felt as if some prophetic force pointing to some swirling apex that has never been reached. More are a bit too personal to describe at the moment.
From living in Los Angeles, I have likewise met artists whose work felt synergistic and innate to me. One is Allegra Ondine, an operatic vocalist and keyboardist who first introduced me to VoyageLA. We played some enlivening shows together at the Viper Room in the Fall of 2021, square in the COVID era. Another is the writer Alaska Lynch, his poetry performances, and a coterie of artists around him, who seem to communicate a timeless, bohemian quality I am heartened to see shimmering and flourishing in some respite in our present world.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
My work revolves around multiple series of books, set in clusters of connected worlds in a greater cosmology. I am currently looking to publish one book. There are a few others I finished earlier, which I would revisit before publishing. I am shy and aghast about their need for improvement. There are many more I am compiling notes for or drafting.
The piano songs I write felt like creations that one could release/demonstrate/refine more quickly than full-length literature. Music, unlike language, seems to engender a condensed emotional impact, and this quality can make music seem to bear the qualities of a supernatural language, one which speaks more directly to the senses, mood, imagination, and heart.
I have been playing and writing piano music since I was 6, and many of the songs could be described as soundtracks. Many are interconnected, many are standalone stories. If I take the time now, I can usually connect the “standalone” stories back to the greater mythos by some glimmering thread. Sometimes I simply imagine the songs as if written by a Beatles-type band in the manyverse of the mythos.
My piano-style is largely self-invented and sometimes channeled out through guitar pedals.
I have enough experience with these projects to not feel as perplexed by some of the technical/creative puzzles they contain, and am excited simply about releasing more of their material over time.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I have enjoyed visiting Stories Books in Echo Park. As the less expensive East Side seems to have magnetically amassed artists from other neighborhoods, the space that is Stories Books seems to have routed some of the same population into its small and decorous hearth. I have enjoyed an evening comedy or art show on its back patio as well. The Los Feliz Flea is a teeming market with some familiar faces among its vendors and artisans.
A visiting French painter once took me to a series of art galleries, Bergamot Station Arts Center, which felt like an auspicious find.

Instagram: valemusichq

Youtube: valemusichq

Other: https://valemusichq.bandcamp.com/ Vale Aveline on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/39jdY9lSBAVtVetEt0g7Us?si=pW9du04RSh-DGDC6lrjR9A