Hello!
Regrettably I am late to update this; just two days, but I have an ironclad set of excuses: I was in Massachusetts getting my mind blown by the Blood Incantation, Gorguts, Mayhem, Cannibal Corpse gig, staying over at a friend’s house in Ashfield with no service, playing my songs on a boat in half-secret for two dear friends and other insane strokes of luck that aren’t conducive to the big “sit down and write;” and then, my god, this morning, I sliced the tip of my thumb off on a mandolin slicer. The horror! The bleating sounds I made! The incredulity - where is the skin off my thumb in the salad I was cutting stuff into? Did I eat it? Why is it so deep?
I will be fine in a week, but the nurse said I can’t really play this gig I had going on tomorrow- Snack Mix, on the roof of Sultan Room, which is an amazing thing that I am heartbroken to miss - and I can’t really play for at least 5 days, at least not the stuff that requires my right thumb, which is my favorite thumb despite that this is the second major lashing I’ve given it in two years. Last time I couldn’t do a thumbs up; this time I am stuck in a permanent thumbs up, lest it stay bleeding out.
Luckily, I have an album about this, called Bloodletting, recorded some time ago. The gambit with that one was to memorize a long block of text (an unpublished poem I wrote) and then use the fallibility of my memory, extra fallible because of C-PTSD, to turn that text into a score. I am proud of it; I do one version on guitar and one version on banjo. My right thumb bled out that night too, at Firehouse 12 where it was recorded. What luck.
Anyway, here be the gigues! There are not all that many because I am rehearsing HARD for a new big songs record. Interest piqued? Mine too, to the point of nausea.
Sunday the 15 Editrix plays trans-pecos with Dumb Waiter and Netherlands. We are mostly finished with the new album so this will be a showcase for many sick new songs. 8pm.
Sunday the 22nd Darlin’ plays the Owl opening for Stephen Becker for his album release. We’re gonna be tight and so will he. Angel.
Thursday the 26th I play in Floating City with Mark Helias, Sara Serpa and Erik Friedlander for his stone week. What an honor! Doors 8 show 8:30
Friday the 27th I play with Erik again, this time in a duo he called Haywire - is it named after Lee Friedlander’s press? Let’s find out! Doors 8 show 8:30
AND a sneak peak into November:
Friday Nov 3 Darlin’ is playing an away game at the Dreamaway Lodge in Western Mass. Rise up, hive! Most of the rest of that month I’ll be on tour with Bill Orcutt in Europe so I want to see all of you there.
On My Stereo:
Judee Sill, Songs of Rapture and Redemption: Rarities and Live
The Jabbers, Always Was, Is, and Always Shall Be (1980)
Barre Phillips, Journal Violone II (1980)
Laurel Halo, Atlas (2023)
Bad History Month, God Is Luck (2023)
Wadada Leo Smith, Mass on the World (1978)
On My Bookshelf:
László Krasznahorkai, The World Goes On
Annie Ernaux, A Girl’s Story
Boris Groys, On The New
Susan Taubes, Divorcing
Lillian Ross, Picture
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex
On My Mind:
Perfectionism has a weird relationship to blame or fault. I enjoy being beautiful, I enjoy being smart, I enjoy more when I am blameless, I enjoy in a different way the endless inspiration of sincere and committed observation, but only when it’s pointed outward (though towards a mirror), I enjoy the crisp air reminding me I am awake, I enjoy being worried about, which is its own crisp air. My thumb is wrapped thick in a pink-covered gauze and heaves from time to time to remind me that it is a real thing that I did even though I didn’t feel real when it happened; the skin will grow up from the inside rather than be sewn shut and one day I will actually give up my childish, wounded hope of perfect self-sufficiency.
I am a perfectionist because I am hurt in a way that was not my fault but that fact keeps hurting me. Every day is the most beautiful day, looked at through multiple walls of glass or, even better, no glass at all.
“The eternal irreconcilability between the dedicated life and the personal life….although every serious person is expected to fill a responsibility towards work, as well as towards the people he loves, there’s a point beyond which his devotion to his work cannot go without arousing the antagonism and jealousy of the people who love him, and whom he loves.”- Katherine Butler Hathaway, the little locksmith
“What I used to think about as inexplicable coincidences I have come to regard as points at which the vast warp and woof of cause and effect briefly open to sight. And every now and then a skein of this meaning is gathered as if into a net and flung free so that I can see that it is a whole within a larger whole as well as whole in itself.” - Anne Truitt, from yield
more soon
I love you!
xo
w