Meet William Gooding

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful William Gooding a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

William, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
When I was about 3 years old my parents got a divorce, which isn’t terribly uncommon, but it wasn’t a clean divorce. They fought with each other and would occasionally use me as leverage to win an argument. My parents loved me and I loved them very much and nobody is perfect, but from a young age, I had to learn to withstand emotional turmoil. My mother passed away when I was 9, and my father passed away when I was 15. In between their deaths, I also came out as gay in the South which was met with mixed reception from my peers. Some kids hated me solely for existing, while others were a little more accepting (at least to my face). I graduated from high school in 2014 so it was when public opinion had started to sway in favor of the gay community. However, before that was… unpleasant. All of these things, with the addition of other life-changing events, taught me how to be resilient from a young age. I have “It’s Fine.” tattooed on my arm as a reminder of my resilience. Not in a way that’s dismissive of the things that have happened, but more so as “you’re still alive and you will be fine”.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I live in the realm of audio. The bulk of what I do is sit on my laptop working inside of Digital Audio Workstations, whether that’s recording, editing, mixing, mastering, sound design, etc. My artist name is //Thorns for when I produce my own music or music for other people. The name //Thorns comes from a rose and I’d like to think that I base my musical aesthetic off of that imagery. It can be either distorted and rock-like akin to the thorns, or a little bit more shimmery and romantic like the petals. I want to be able to relate and share my aesthetic with the listener. Thus, creating a separate world to momentarily live in. The inspirations for my aesthetic are kind of a hodge podge of Cyberpunk, Nine Inch Nails, Daft Punk, Flower Fields, the Pacific Coast Highway, and Kurama from YuYu Hakusho (got exposed to anime REAL young).

Otherwise, if I’m just doing blanket audio projects not involving music I just go by my own name. I’ve done sound design, recording, audio editing, mixing, and mastering for non-music-based projects (mainly voiceover, podcast, and YouTube stuff). It’s what I went to school for–twice now–and it’s the way I want to make a living. I’ve got happy clients so far!

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Empathy has been so important to all of my relationships. I try to genuinely care about people I talk to and come into contact with. Enough people have emotionally written me off or blatantly not cared for whatever reason. Combine that with the hard times I experienced growing up and I just want to care for people because I know what it feels like to hurt. I think about the people I care about all of the time, even if I’m not talking to them. My resilience has definitely helped me keep my head above water for the most part. It’s rough out there and learning that it’s okay to be hurt by things but also be able to move on is super important. To me, resilience isn’t blowing things off in a toxic way. It’s allowing yourself to feel what you need to feel, learn whatever needs to be learned and grow from it so you’re better suited to handle it later in life. Lastly, you need to let people love you. Not even in a romantic way, but to feel love from any source is so important and we can’t flourish without it. However, don’t let people walk all over you under the guise of “love”. Taking a step back from something so it can air out is the best way to show how much you value someone or something.

Honestly, the best advice I have is going to sound stupid but listen to yourself. You know what you want, you know when things don’t feel right, so if something feels off then you should make a change. Be understanding of other people but also be understanding of yourself. This applies to your craft, listen to yourself while also being able to understand others AKA be able to take criticism in a way that’s actually beneficial to your art. Be able to sift through all of the different, often opposing, opinions to pick and choose the things that are actually going to help you grow.

Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?
Absolutely! I love working with other musicians to produce some tracks. I’m a multi-instrumentalist who loves to produce tracks spanning from New Wave to Indie Rock to Electronic genres. Some stylistic pop and Hip Hop too! Additionally, as a queer person, I love working with my own LGBTQ+ community. I’m also totally available to work with anyone who needs a general audio professional for podcasts, shows, sound design, music cues, mixing, mastering, recording, audio repair with RX, and all that fun stuff.

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