HYD: Joy is a Practice
Something familiar, ecstatic, beckons from beyond. You know it, but can’t place it. An echo, maybe. Could it be yours? Someone you love? Or something else entirely? Listen closely, listen again. What do you hear?
PHOTOGRAPHY SCOTT LEÓN @le0nl3on
INTERVIEW + MAKEUP KATIE MANN @trippychickmakeup using SUBMISSION BEAUTY @submission.beauty
Saturday May 30th, 2026. I meet Hayden Dunham, HYD, at the Echo in Los Angeles ahead of their show. It’s the 5th night of the HYD Infinity Tour, 8 days after the release of their sophomore album, ‘Hold Onto Me Infinity,’ and just a month into their latest exhibition with Company Gallery in New York entitled, ‘NEVER IS OVER.’
This is our second time meeting and working together, the first being when I did their makeup for the “Angel” music video. There’s an intimacy and vulnerability in makeup that I hold sacred; its own transformative magic rooted in identity, visualization, perception. It’s this space that allows HYD and me to slip into our conversation with ease and familiarity; established comms.
So in the tiny green room just above the stage, I start their makeup and hit record. What follows, I admit, is not always sequential, but rather a story that told itself later… upon listening.
Big week for you, huh? (We laugh) It started with the gallery right?
It did! I had an opening in New York at Company Gallery for my show, ‘NEVER IS OVER.’ I was there for two weeks installing, so entering the tour… I was ready for it.
I know, of course, the work is very personal. So in the installation process, is there an unfurling that’s connected to that as well?
Absolutely. I also come with a plan, but then it so much also involves a listening practice and feeling out different things. I really love how a gallery space can be a container, like a petri dish, where you don’t really know what’s going to happen. So I love that element of entropy, or when something kind of unravels in an unexpected way… it was exciting to be there and be willing to flip the script and change it.
As you’re making a work, it’s saying one thing, as you’re finishing it, I’m sure it’s saying another. Does it even change as you’re installing it, once you see it in that space all together?
It absolutely changes. And it’s still in motion now. I feel like when I see it now, it’s still changing for me.
I reference a listening event series here in LA, The Record Club, that I attended earlier in the week, where the album of choice that evening happened to be Prince (Sign of the Times, specifically), to which Hayden exclaims wide eyed, “STOP!” I paraphrase a sentiment spoken by of one of the hosts, Free;
“Music is its own living thing, it takes on a life of its own through its listeners over time, but also in the way that life must be breathed into the instruments through the artists.”
In the way you describe a gallery as a container, I see music, and specifically can see this record (Hold Onto Me Infinity) as a container.
Absolutely related.
In listening to the album, to me, it felt very alive… while also being aware of its limitations? Do you feel that?
Absolutely. That’s such a beautiful description.
When you’re approaching these very real, physical, human experiences - like grief for instance - while also reaching out for that metaphysical, what is your tether? What keeps you grounded and attached?
It’s kind of like making an antenna but the antenna is your body. And your body is kind of a house for movement or transformation or even vibration… Like, when you can allow the music to come through your body, and it can change the way that you feel and completely transform your state of being. I think that reality is something that really motivates me.
Is music, or creation in general, an accessible way of communicating for you? Has it always been accessible or did you struggle to get there?
It was a struggle to get there. It’s a practice. Now, to be in a place of listening, or receiving, it’s something I do every day. The video that we worked on (“Angel”), was so much about, like, how can I be receptive for something to come through? If there are transmissions happening, how can I communicate in a different way? And I think this album also holds that question of like, who is it for? Like, is it actually for us here on Earth, or is it for people who are no longer bodied here?
For me, in listening to the album now, something really transformed. In singing it through every day (on tour), it’s being in the practice of allowing air to move through those places in me that maybe I was nervous to go back into.
I had a lot of fear around this before I did the tour, like, am I going to be living in this world that I used to know… every part of me, every waking hour of my life? Now something is changing where joy is the lead. That’s kind of what I’m listening for.
When you talk about the world you were in, is that grief, specifically?
Totally. Grief space. Perma-grief. It was like being in a mud den where my legs felt so heavy, and I had to walk through muck in order to get through to the other side.. and the other side for me was just being in my body and able to see outside of it. But something about darkness and being in this forever ‘night space’ is really nourishing, actually. It’s a space that holds a lot of nutrients for me, and it’s not coming in the form of water. It’s not coming in the form of vapor or light. It’s coming in this other form, and I’m really interested in that other form.
What is the process of decomposition for you, in terms of writing an album, putting work in, putting the record out, watching it grow, the reaping - but also, your own experience of burying yourself in that space and emerging?
In working on this most recent video for “Watch You Cry,” directed by Azsa West, we were talking about how you can let go of a past version of yourself and return it to the earth… In the video you see this rock being buried and also me riding side saddle with a version of myself that’s crying… It’s this moment when something can transform.
I feel like with this album, there’s also an element of time travel. A version of me that existed 10 years ago sung half of a song, and the version of me in the Future sings the other half, so it’s kind of this collaboration across timelines.
It’s really surreal… even now, when I walk on stage I’m going to be singing with a version of myself.
"I love visiting past versions of myself in the form of songs, and it’s kind of a gift for me, actually, to get to host that energy. It’s really helpful."
Do you see nature as a collaborator or an inspiration?
I would say collaborator, and not someone who can be controlled or moved, but one I’m in constant dialogue with.
On the note of control: through your own experience with temporary sight loss as well as grief, what is it like to lose control in the physical?
UGH, hate it. Least favorite. Those first couple of weeks (of sight loss) were pretty hard because I had to be in a mode of, like, full surrender… asking for help and not being able to put keys in my door, or cook for myself, or all of these things I previously had control over.
So I think this question of not having control, led to me being in a place of deep and profound surrender, and that is a gift that I don’t know how I could have received in another way because of how extreme my relationship (was) to being in control.
I needed something very significant to listen in a different way.
The other side of that is that my experience in darkness was total expansion, like being endless. I didn’t have a body, you don’t see your body, so literally in the mirror when you’re getting dressed, you don’t see the limits of your body. I think that’s allowed me to be so much freer in my body, not being limited to this form, and getting to feel outside of this form. So what I was given in terms of Vision was much wider than when I had my literal vision, that’s how I feel.
You’ve described some of your experience with grief as a darkness, being buried… but losing your sight was a literal, forced darkness that also gave you some sort of expansion. Did it change your relationship to what you could go through, what your limitations were?
It did inform it because what I learned was, my biggest fear… I don’t know if I would have described my biggest fear as losing my vision, but when it happened, I thought, “this is really gonna change my life.” The loss of my loved one was 100% my biggest fear, and I think going into fear and coming out on the other side… when that happens… you can’t imagine that you will survive, you can’t imagine that you will be able to find another path out… and when it happens, you just don’t know what’s possible here on earth. I think that’s where all the other stuff comes through.
And where do you find possibilities in those places?
It might be in silence… I’m not sure. It’s something I can’t control. I was thinking about this on stage last night in Chicago. There was this moment where the sound cut out, and I was performing, “So Clear.” I said, “clear,” and then the audience said, “clear,” and we both said “clear” back and forth to each other. And there was this moment where it was just silent, and I was just looking at them and they were looking at me…
There is something that can happen in those in-between moments that you can’t imagine, you can’t create it…
There’s something really special about the way you talk about your physical self, the physical plane, and creating magic here and looking for it. Have you always sought magic in your life? Were you a witchy kid?
Yes, 100%, willing to alchemy always. I was also really into telekinesis and kind of like, can objects bend through your mind? Can we work with energy in a different way? Or… telepathy… that is a field of interest I am super compelled by. This idea that we can communicate beyond our form is really exciting and compelling for me.
Is there proof of this in your own life that you feel compelled by?
I think it’s more of a practice and something where it’s not so proof oriented, but more process space where you get to continue to be curious because you don’t know when it will happen. I once went to this art piece by Walter De Maria, it’s called the Lightning Field, and this thing happens while you’re in this house and really you’re just waiting for the lightning to come, and there’s all these rods, and you think, “maybe I’ll get to see lightning,” but actually, just the process of listening for the lightning is maybe the piece.
Have you always had ritual practices or is that something also that’s developed over time?
I should mention here, HYD is wearing a custom shirt adorned with specific stones placed sparingly, but intentionally. It is their “Grounding Shirt,” made specifically for them by a friend, for alignment on show days.
I’m thinking about when I was a kid, there was this rumor that if you held two rocks together they would become magnetized and sync up to each other. It was like, you hold them together, and then another person uses another rock and does this, you know, “circle technique” 16 times or something like that, and then you try to pull them apart, and they’re magnetic. So this was one of those things, where you try to prove that something is real or not real, but actually just the experience of doing it… it is real. It’s also kind of a way of coming back into your body.
When we talk about how to build a new world here, how to hold heaven on earth, or how we can co-create a different world than the one that we’re seeing - all of that has to do with belief that we can, and that everything can change through how you hold the terms of this world and create something else than what you can see.
What are your terms?
The biggest lead in my life right now is grounded joy. I feel like I was not led by joy for a lot of my life. I was really ‘rigorous’ or I was ‘excellent’ or I was really ‘diligent’ or ‘perseverant,’ these types of words, but it wasn’t so much joy.
I think getting out of grief, you start looking for different strategies for how to, well, how to live with grief, how to continue holding it here and holding the loss, and also going towards living. I had to connect with joy. It’s not that I didn’t connect with joy before, I did feel joy. When I hear different versions of my voice from that time, and I know something more than that version did, I know what happens in the future. I do think I was connected to joy at that time… it was just a different type of joy.. and now, it’s a practice.