u/LongTimeChinaTime

Artist Statement — "We Don't Even Know If There Was Cake" written by Tristan H of Tristan BAMW - Electropop artist.
This song isn't a retelling of anyone's story. "We Don't Even Know if There Was Cake" was written during Summer 2026 in part in tribute to Tristan Courtland Turner. Inspired by one of his public case photos, it's about the specific, almost unbearable smallness of not knowing —  Not having much in the way of facts about the case itself, a person's attention can turn to what details we do have and then the mind wanders from there. The fact that a person can be present at an ordinary gathering, dressed up, standing near other people, and that moment can then simply vanish from the record. No context. No explanation. Not even something as trivial as whether there was cake.
The track and performance are entirely my own — written, produced, recorded, and performed by me, with no AI involvement in the music itself. The meeting hall seen throughout the video is an AI-generated space; it isn't a real location and isn't meant to represent one. I built it because the song needed a room that felt like every room and no room — generic enough that it could be anywhere, specific enough to feel lived-in. Everything else — my performance, the ghostly duplicate figures moving through the hall, the compositing, the color work — was filmed and edited by hand in Premiere Pro and After Effects, with some visual contributions from pexels artists: Miguel González, Utopla 36, Taryn Elliott, Ilya Klimenko
This song is dedicated to Tristan Courtland Turner, missing from Montgomery Village, Maryland since August 20, 2005. One of the only images that exists of him shows him at a gathering — a room full of context none of us will ever have access to. This is not an attempt to speak for him or to reconstruct what happened. It's an attempt to sit inside the shape of that absence.
If you have any information about Tristan Turner's disappearance, please contact the Montgomery County Police Department at 240-773-5070, case #M05-045881.

🐻

Because the world is a wood chipper
Wood chipper
Big Dipper
Tristan was down for whatever
Tristan had a big heart forever

Tristan Pours his heart out weirdly

Unrequited Love.

I’m a 42 year old gay man who spent my entire life searching for “The One” and ultimately still spent most of my adult life alone. I’m sure some people can relate

Which is why I realized it was fitting when I took the name “Tristan” 25 years ago.

As a result, I opened my DAW, took out the camera and exorcized my demons.

I’m a roach. Oh god, I’m a holy roach.

None of this would have been possible without my miraculous team: Lisa Johnson. Ira Longhorn, Vince Parton and Maggie Frowstein.

Thanks again guys !

A special thanks goes out to Heidi, Lisa Johnson, Peter M R Haun, and Vince Parton for making this video possible.

Videography funded by the Pam Jennings foundation

Hi I’m Tristan

I often pour my heart out on here

Lonely, but with skin that hasn’t kept up with the calendar,

I’m making these sexy dance moves in effort to communicate with all the lonely nerdy laptop goblins out there that … I wish you could come over and jump into my arms and take the pain away.

Oh and the banger I made for it slaps too.

Love y’all, be nice to ppl

Mwah 💋💋💋💋💋💋

Hi. I’m Tristan

I love you. All of you. Every day for my entire life I’ve been on earth (since the 80s) your existence as people has been central to my world and how I negotiate it. Then of course when I came up I discovered the beauty of intimacy (with guys though), and I fell in love even harder.

I am not a super active person in every way but I do make music and in spells I contribute pattern recognition to socioeconomic and true crime situations on forums. I try and help in other ways when I can

I don’t know why the world insists on beating me down, but just know even if you have beat me down it never stopped me from loving you. And sure maybe the gods or god didn’t approve of me so that’s why his people beat me down, but since my world needed people, that’s why that hurt

I wound up more alone than not the older I got, and some of that is natural but not all. But compared to being 17-27 the difference in social companionship was so painful to enter, as if I were spit out into the void and the pain and suffering was existential and all of it was only happening because I loved you so but you no longer loved me back at least not every person always and I became alone

But never mind all my ranting

The point is, I’m going to sleep now and I love you all and will not forget you with each day that passes I’ve always remembered all of you

And hopefully one of you brothers will some day be in my arms to love

Hi I’m Tristan

So I have come back again, my purpose being… I’m trying to convince the internet that men can be masc and wear makeup and be stylish and that just because you’re in your 40s, doesn’t mean you have to wear drab clothing and appear past your prime.

1. I am using multiple shades of shimmer eyeshadow, specifically Dragon Fruit Palette and some $9 single shade Amazon shimmer palettes that slap.

2: very baggy, nearly sleeveless graphic band shirt,

3. Short shorts that emphasize legs and frame.

4: most importantly, I’ve made sure to consume 2 cups of berries and other superfoods EVERY single day for a year, which caused dramatic but very slow and steady weight loss over a year.

5: topical retinoids, Korean peptides, other serums by “the Original” at Sephora, but the Korean multi peptide serum is quite interesting as the formulas beat American ones by far.

6: gel nail polish: this is my first gel application at home but be careful as I subsequently learned that if you get the uncured nail gel on your cuticles or skin, after several exposures you can develop a nasty and inconvenient allergy. I’ll keep you posted in the future if something like that happens.

But people underestimate the power of superfoods when it comes to weight and aging, I want to emphasize this because it can completely overhaul one’s look for the better, meaning if someone chooses to eat them daily it might bring you glamorous happiness you didn’t imagine possible, and I want you to get access to that.

I had done several of these posts in March/April but backed away for awhile to give it a rest and develop myself some more. Im a musician so I have a reason to do getups like this, but anyone can look more stylish and you don’t have to age out into elderly land just because you’re older.

Ok love you guys, take care, I’ll come back in a couple weeks with a new one

Fly

And maybe I’m looking for kisses.

Ok no FRT, my offering today is a 2026 coded version of my electropop get-up vibes.

This is another post about makeup as a man, to enhance male beauty.

In this case I just have some brightener, followed by some bronzer, and some shimmery white, silver and graphite eyeshadow for a subtle but vibrant look for my eyes.

You might wonder about the glass necklace, this I crafted myself using 14mm round glass beads I sourced on Etsy, strung with only stainless steel wire and findings. The necklace is what I consider to be a nice adornment for a guy, maybe for a night out or just to feel fabulous when I’m producing in my studio (which happens to be a microphone mounted to my nightstand. The necklace features a standard necklace loop with 12mm clear druk round glass beads, and the 14mm ones hang in individual strands, outward from the central necklace.

All of this is on top of blue short nylon adidas shorts, and a brand new champion Tshirt I got on Amazon.

So all in all what I am trying to convey is how I present myself in an artsy, gay, but masculine vibe that ties to my electropop chaos, and my unmet daily yearning for kisses.

Love you all, so make sure you find someone to love and don’t hold back on being stylish.

By the way I should point out that I’ve lost 30 pounds in 1 year and dramatically youthenized my skin from taking up a habit of consuming 2 cups of mixed frozen berries every single day, blended into a smoothie with ground flax, olive oil, collagen powder, whey protein complex, cinnamon, and sometimes a bit of oatmeal. Ensuring I consume this every day, I lost weight and regained youth without doing any changes otherwise. Since that don’t require any strange diet tricks other than making sure I consume that daily, I thought people might like to know about it. It’s not rapid weight loss, but it’s ongoing, and I basically have a semi flat belly again for the first time in 3 years