playing

It feels like pure freedom to play music. As many online have noted, the world is getting pretty bad when folk music gets good. And indeed! It is bad! And yet to play music is to resist this pervasive sense of doom, at least for a bit.

I write songs of the end days, of personal loss, and ecological destruction. But I am hopeful! This weekend, the debut show of my band, Ah the World, at Tend Space was so beautiful, so community filled, so freeing, so grounding, so delightful! These things too, in their small way, in combination with other actions are an antidote.

There’s this feeling I get when I am able to drop into the flow of a song, when everything is going right. I feel that out of all my mediums, I am most able to be free form and flexible in music. The feeling is so pure, like deeply uncomplicated childish play.

When I write music, the lyrics culminate over months and years from snippets and images of my life, of what I read, of images that coalesce, and stories told. These things collect over time and I usually write my songs in one short burst when I feel very strongly about something, usually in the luteal phase of my cycle.

After this weekend I am yearning to be a musician full time, to quit my day job and lean into this feeling. Instead, I will teach my three classes tomorrow and continue to cut up my life into small bite size pieces.

I am concerned in the rotation of things I do that I do not put enough time and attention into certain things. It’s hard to know where to put my energies. Tattooing pays off. Ceramics pay off (more or less). Music on the other hand notoriously is impossible to live off of, canonically, in fact. But if I look at these skills not by their live-supporting ala moneymaking potential then my priorities can restack from the bottom up.

I have so many goals for this year. I am getting so excited about them. I am trying to record my first album with the band (my first EP is already almost available! watch this space) and shoot some music videos to go along with them.

Here’s a clip from the show!

Here’s a quilt I made as part of my residency at Directangle Press many moons ago. The poetry book I printed whilst there “The Goya Lepidopterist” is still available!

The world is dark and scary but I am heartened by the conversations we are having collectively. This moment, These Times, feel like one of deep reckoning with our current shape of the world. A new world struggles into being.

I’ll leave you with the lyrics of “Ah, the World” which feel as fresh as when I wrote them two years ago.

running with a plunge of wind

as a wave comes tumbling

over sea and grasses blue

in blows a gray storm

knocking all the towers out

as I dream unknowingly

ah the world that I have known

surrendered lovingly

darkness came though it was day

a cloak pulled over sunny skies

leaves turned brown though it was spring

things are mysteriously shifting

merry mausoleums fells

paintings marble dust debris

panic met the banker’s heart

stocks and cities start sinking

do lonesome swans pray for the moon?

do wistful kids play in the street?

stacking blocks of currency

papers burn off the presses

the fearful ones they built a boat

as their books told them to do

I just hid under the quilt

hoping that it would save me too

fingers came out everywhere

pointing blame at other folks

in their hilltop fortresses

kings laughed till their heads rolled

money bought their safety once

in a world long mined to death

the emails are collecting dust

still we’re waiting on answers

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