Hi Nature Lover,
I recently returned from a wonderful trip to Antarctica. I was invited as a musical guest on a trip called the Wonder Summit. I joined Paul Stamets, Rick Doblin, Chelsea Handler, my new friend Snow Raven, and 200 others on an 8 day cruise from the southern tip of Argentina, across the perilous Drake Passage, to the Antarctic Peninsula.
I’ve been sharing clips and stories from this voyage on Instagram, but this felt right to share here. Snow Raven, an indigenous Sakha artist from Siberia, and I spent much of our time on the seventh continent recording and making music. I think this session with kelp may have been my favorite! We had just finished our first landing at Palaver Point. I had my hydrophone on me and was keen to do some underwater recordings. We convinced one of the expedition guides, Becky, to take us on a quick zodiac mission to record some sounds of ice - and lo and behold we came across a small raft of Macrocystis pyrifera - giant kelp - the same species of kelp as we see all over the Pacific Northwest. Apparently this kelp isn’t native to Antarctica, but often floats south from Patagonia. So we had to plug in, and this is what we heard.
Unlike many on the boat, Antarctica was never on my bucket list. When offered the opportunity to join, I was reluctant. Why would I want to go all the way down to the South Pole, spend almost 40 hours in each direction traveling and endure some of the roughest seas on the planet? Well, for very good reason it turns out. I think it was the best trip I’ve ever been on. It’s hard to describe in words how powerful the land is, and how strong of an impression it made on me. The words ‘violence’ and ‘grace’ kept coming to mind.
Amidst ice bergs shaped
Like every turtle, mushroom and swan in the universe
And glowing in every shade of blue
(A blue that doesnt even exist where i’m from)
Amidst ice walls
Towering hundreds of feet
Above narrow rocky shorelines
That only reveal themselves for a few months each summer
Amidst this water
This cold water
Everywhere
Violence and grace
Full of life
Yet deathly cold
And amidst the ice
This ice
Millions of years of memories solidified
Into sheets that coat mountains, valleys, entire continents
Recording the in breaths
And outbreaths
Of all of us
Not only humans
But all of life
All of our passion, love, fear, and hopelessness
Trapped
Crystallized into a living record
A loving record
That melts and hardens like we do
I’m off to Wonderfruit Festival in Thailand this coming week, Dec 11-14. From the Wonder Summit to Wonderfruit! I like ‘wonder’ as a theme for December. Then, in late Jan I’ll be hosting 3 nights of headphone-based concerts at Vancouver’s Bloedel Conservatory. Each night will feature a different guest musician playing alongside me; we’ll be biosonifying the garden at night and taking a break from the cold and rain inside the Bloedel’s warm, tropical ecosystem. This event is 2 years in the making and has extremely limited capacity.
Our baby, the Pocket Scion, the pocket sized instrument for making music with plants and mushrooms, is back in stock. This collaboration with my friends at Instruō Specialist Synthesizers sold out almost immediately when we first released in August. The next production run is now finished and available at retailers worldwide. Or you can buy it straight from me! I happen to think it’s the ultimate stocking stuffer for the plant geek / music nerd in your life.
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