One Sunday morning, I caught myself humming a couple of lines: “Cry wolf, verify, verify… brain, let me be.”
I was working closely with someone living with obsessive-compulsive disorder, thinking about what that experience might look and feel like from the inside.
Later, while going through some old statistics notes, I came across the words: “I am the Mean in between.” I had to laugh at myself. And then, suddenly, a thought crossed my mind: “What if we translated DSM classifications into music?”

And so, a year ago, I began writing lyrics. But the project also took me a step deeper: into thinking, researching, exploring, feeling, and questioning different inner worlds.

The Journey Through the DSM** takes you on a journey through various mental disorders and personality disorders. Each classification gets its own musical interpretation, expressing emotions, thoughts, and experiences.
Of course, no musical interpretation can ever capture everything. People are too colourful and too individual for every detail to be represented. Yet one thing has always been, and remains, my aim: to do justice to the people behind the classifications.
I also drew inspiration from the many stories I have been privileged to hear, shared by people who have opened up to me. I have always been grateful for their trust.

The lyrics and music needed to complement and strengthen one another. I have tried to help listeners feel and understand what the world might be like from someone else’s perspective. And make no mistake: the experiences of others may be closer to our own than we think. There is something we can all recognise in one another.
I have also taken a fresh look at the very idea of classification — at labels themselves. “Where does all the madness live?”
Even as a student, I was fascinated by these questions. Who creates the “madness” within us? Is it us, the brain, the context we live in? And when does something become abnormal — and on what grounds do we decide that it is?
Does an average person even exist?

Music inspired by psychology, with room for recognition, wonder, and understanding. Because behind every classification is a human being with a story of their own.