John Dorian on Love, Loss, and Letting It All Out

The name John Dorian might not be familiar, but his voice, and face, will be to those who’ve been involved in NYC’s indie music scene anytime over the past decade.

Formerly the frontman of the band herMajesty, John Dorian – who then went by his birth name, John Pasagiannis – performed on some of the most well-known stages in the city.

herMajesty, however, have gone their separate ways, and John is now embarking on a solo career with a new name, a new sound, and a renewed outlook on life.

This past week he released his first solo single, “LOVE I REMEMBER,” and it’s a hope-filled anthem for anyone going through a difficult time.

I caught up with John to find out more about “LOVE I REMEMBER,” his continued appreciation of writing about heavy topics, and his desire to keep the community aspect of music alive and well.

“LOVE I REMEMBER” is your new single. It’s your first solo release, and your first release as John Dorian. What inspired you to go solo? 

What happened was that the pandemic, and the timeout that I had, gave me an opportunity to reflect on how I wanted to proceed with the music that I was writing. So choosing to go solo was an opportunity to really work with as many people as I wanted to work with, and bring in folks to play on tunes that I was either writing by myself, or co-writing, who would do wonderful things with a particular song. So that was the inspiration for going solo.

Going solo to work with as many people as possible is an interesting concept of solo. 

Yeah, I think so. For me, it became about the song, and how could I get the most out of the song, and the music that I’ve been composing.

So that was my motivation – how can I get the most out of the songs that I have been writing over the last six years? With it came this sort of newfound freedom to express myself.

With “LOVE I REMEMBER” being your first solo single, what message do you think it sends when your introduction to listeners has you literally leading with love? 

Last year I found myself washed ashore in the Lofoten Islands, which is an archipelago off the northwest of Norway. I was wet, and I was cold, and I looked around, and there were many other people like myself who had washed ashore, and we were all cold and wet.

Of course, this is a nice fable – finding oneself somewhere, and looking around and saying, “There’s more to this than I originally thought,” and hanging my doubts, and my losses, and my grief on whatever I found.

What I found was this incredible landscape, and it reaffirmed my belief in this wonderful planet that we live on, and I rediscovered love within myself.

I wanted to write something, and the line that came to me was, “Love I remember you sometimes,” and I thought, wow, this is really about my battle. This is my inner struggle to stay connected with compassion, with responsibility, with care for myself and for other people. And so began the journey of composing this tune.

Where was the boat supposed to go? 

Good question.

The metaphorical boat didn’t know where it was going.

I suppose that’s the allegory of this whole thing – the boat has some kind of destination, and then the world has other plans.

You mentioned reconnecting with the concepts of compassion and love within yourself. Are there other emotions, or stories, that you find coming out of you that maybe weren’t things you would have written about five or ten years ago? 

Sure. That’s a very good question.

The stories are about self-compassion.

There’s stories of loss, and stories of grief – some themes that I had approached in the past, but somehow, over time, they’ve taken greater resonance, and significance in my life. Those are the themes that I’m trying to explore now, or that I am exploring to the best of my ability.

This morning prior to our call, I started listening to Bob Dylan’s “Tangled Up in Blue,” and I realized that what makes great music is the ability to sit with one’s grief, and one’s loss, and express it in a genuine way. Of course, Dylan did it. Miles Davis did it in his own way. John Coltrane did it. Some of my other favorite artists have done it, as well. David Bowie did it as he got older. So I think I am doing the same thing, I am expressing loss, and I’m expressing grief, and I’m expressing what I find in the mirror.

Each song holds up a mirror, and what I find in it, if I am strong enough, I find and I see different parts of myself within that reflection.

Getting these very personal emotions out, when you’re writing, do you find being specific leads to your stories being relatable on a universal level, or do you try to avoid specifics in an effort to be universal? 

The thing about songwriting is if you go in with any kind of intent, the boat will be sunk. So when I sit to write music, the inspiration can come from a simple line like, “Love I remember you sometimes,” so that becomes the first reflection, or the first concern that I have, or preoccupation that I have.

Out of that initial preoccupation comes a stream of consciousness. Within that stream of consciousness, sometimes I find more of myself, or sometimes I find more of the human condition, and that’s how I write.

It’s out of my hands what culture does with it. I put it out there, and we’ll see what happens. The people that can find parts of themselves in what I write about, or in a particular piece of music, are the people who are going to be drawn to the songs that I write.

With this being the first release, and with you working with so many people on new music, is there an EP, or a full-length project, on the way later this year? 

Well, what you can expect from John Dorian is a succession of single releases.

There’s a good amount of music in the vault that’s been recorded, and is in the process of being mastered right now. Whether those singles can be unified under an EP, or an LP, release remains to be seen.

I do know that the next single, called “Two Swans,” will be released at some point in October.

That’s a long time in-between singles. You’re letting the first one have a significant time to breathe. 

That’s right. I would like this single to have an opportunity to breathe, to lay down some roots. We are going to certainly work it to the best of our abilities.

I’ve been told now there is such a thing as an algorithm that we must feed, and you know, commerce kicks in, and so do other things, of which I know very little, but I’m open to learning about.

Yeah, the music distribution world has changed considerably over the years. I find it to be a lot less fun right now in terms of how music gets out there, and the obsession with playlists, and things like that, where it used to be just put a song out there, and see if it connects with people. 

That’s right. It’s become increasingly impersonal. I remember when we first met, and I was doing herMajesty, it was such a joy to meet people over Facebook, and exchange a few lines of encouragement, and then go out and meet them in person. It seems to me that’s become increasingly more difficult to do, and that’s a bummer, because all of this, as a songwriter, I can only speak for myself, but what I do, it’s about relationships through music. It’s about connection through music. It’s about sharing good times, and sharing melody and harmony and lyrics. When the way we connect is disembodied in the way that it’s been disembodied, it loses community.

It’s tough because the algorithm has no soul. It just thinks, oh, you listened to this, so you’ll listen to that. 

That’s right.

You know, there’s something about creating a playlist for yourself. You go in, and you begin to scour. I remember when I used to make playlists I would scour my music collection, and one song would lead me to the next, and to the next, and to the next, and when I was done with a particular playlist, I realized that I was telling a story. I was creating a diary entry for that day through the music, through this succession of songs that I had created.

The algorithm can’t do that for any particular person. What it does is it approximates musical taste, but musical taste is not a substitute for, “I’m feeling a particular way today.”

Until the algorithm can do that, we have a ways to go.

Yeah. Now, you did mention the herMajesty breakup happened during COVID. Was it amicable? Is everyone still friends? 

Yeah. Everyone is still friends, and I still bring in a couple of the folks from herMajesty to play on these tunes.

These are folks who are a part of my life, and will continue playing on my music.

And herMajesty never officially broke up, herMajesty went on an extended hiatus. So it could very well be that in the future we find ourselves under the hamlet of herMajesty once again.

herMajesty at Pianos back in 2016

We have to talk about the surname in your new performance moniker. I know that’s not your real last name. Is there a reason you chose Dorian? 

Yes.

I was very much a Victorian novel fanatic, so at some point I got into The Picture of Dorian Gray, and I thought, man, I can’t use the name Pasagiannis, it’s just too long. Dorian Gray really spoke to me. Here is this very self-absorbed, narcissistic guy who over time, his beauty is unchanged, at least his physical presentation is unchanged, until at one point where it just goes, and he has to confront himself. I thought that was an interesting metaphor that I wanted to explore. I wanted to take that on. So here we are with John Dorian, not in decay, but in the flourishing part of the creativity.

For more John Dorian, check out his Bandcamp, and Instagram.