Ricochet

I rise in darkness now, again. The light has left the shores of 5:30am, just as it has left the shores of 8pm, shrinking and receding inwards. I guess that’s what the great wheel of the seasons does: creates a ricochet, the light bouncing from one end of the spectrum to the other as if meeting a wall. Eternal squash game of the universe.

August itself is a muscle contracting, bracing for what’s to come. We pick the final blackberries in the meadow; what were recently ripe, beaded globes are now small pellets, seedy and hard, hitting the metal bowl like the last clatters of applause.

As with all living things, the season reaches a point where it cannot grow any greater and must begin its journey in reverse. It’s all recede and return, growth and diminishment. Are you getting taller? my father asks me, again, when I see him, looking me straight in the eye when he used to have a good four inches on me. I blame it on the floorboards being uneven, or wearing platform shoes. I don’t have the heart to tell him that he’s the light leaving the shore of himself.

I’m writing in the early morning darkness because I have news to share. But I don’t know where to share it! Over the last 3.5 years, this Substack has been a space solely for my writing, as opposed to straight-up news and updates. I have wanted to keep it that way, to sidestep the barrage of promo hitting our inboxes and tugging at our attention, to instead be a steady quiet drip of thought, like a droplet of water casting ripples out into the world.

But I do have news. And, I hope, will have more to share in the near future, as I begin to stretch and move after many months in the baby cave, as my latest album takes shape and the dreams I have dreamed in the dark start to worm to the surface.

I’m telling myself it’s okay to redefine spaces, to redraw lines, to experiment and test, to be wrong and rewrite your life, to offer up to each other the model of not knowing it all, all of the time; in brief, to change.

And this is a newsletter after all. So onward, with some news (or: some truly ordinary talk).

Registration opens today for the next iteration of SPIRAL VEIN WEB, my online songwriting workshop inspired by nature’s sacred geometry. I truly loved teaching this for the first time in the spring, and it has fundamentally changed the way I think about writing and listening to music.

Beth says, The world Nandi creates is an amalgamation of existential, humanist, ecological, and avant-garde philosophies (with some theory mixed in) that make songwriting sexy again. I promise you will get in your zone and you won’t want to leave.

I can’t wait to get inside these shapes with you!

Learn more and sign up here.

If you’re in the New York area, come on out to Public Records on 9/28!

This will be my first show in a long while, since the See You At The Maypole tour ended last March. It’s an Elliott Smith benefit concert, featuring both artists who knew Elliott personally and artists who grew up inspired by him. I’ll never forget a cool upperclassman putting “Baby Britain” on a mixtape for me in high school and then spending the rest of that year listening to XO.

Josh and I will be doing a duo set, and I’m very excited to play a couple new songs I’ve been working on, a couple old songs, and a couple favorite Elliott songs.

More info and tickets here. All proceeds go to the SIMS Foundation, which connects musicians with mental-health resources, and WIN, which shelters homeless families.

1. Homemade chocolate torte

2. Using my Zoom H2N recorder again to capture every moment / sound

3. Zadie Smith’s essay on joy vs. pleasure

4. Dressing up a bit, if only to have my toddler say to me, Mama you’re wearing nice!

5. CSA pick-up as the social highlight of the week

6. Morning pajama walks, coming home with an inch of dew soaking the hem of my pants

7. Russel the Leaf’s ambient album Summer of ‘24

8. Going to popular places at non-peak hours (looking at you, Greenhouse Cidery)

9. The perfect peanut sauce does exist

Thanks for reading this bit of ordinary talk!

May you stay soft inside the ricochet.