In June of 2025, after experiencing a personal event that necessitated a change, Dan LaTerra (she/they) took to her blue Toyota Corolla and began the three-day journey to New Mexico from North Carolina. Her retreat aimed to serve multiple purposes. Firstly, it was a much needed reset from the throes of post-graduation life in Winston-Salem, a life containing tribulations seemingly magnified by her predicament. However, she had also intended to revitalize her creative process, attempting to work on a second musical project following the January release of her first album, “7306,” under the alias saturn is changing that same year.
On the way to her sister’s home in Albuquerque, she found herself captivated by the sight of the Great Plains. “There’s this long stretch of just like vastness when you’re driving from west Texas into New Mexico. When you’re from North Carolina, it’s like otherworldly,” she described. However, even more enthralling than the grandeur of the New Mexican desert was the sight of cows grazing before wind turbines amongst the expanse. A seemingly mundane scene to observe, LaTerra dug deeper. “I was thinking about religion, and I was looking at these cows, and it’s one of those scenes in my head that I still think about. This is stark and almost grotesque. There’s this big totem reaching to the sky, and these cows are probably like ‘What the hell is that?’” she recounted.
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We graze under the gaze of the Turning Ones…