#017 Mid-March 2025
Spring break, so back, the ides
Hello,
Forgive the long dip in communique. Burnout gave birth to deeper burnout, went on and off coffee twice, alcohol too, got surgery, surged forth, while I worked, lost and then hopefully, seemingly, promisingly regained myself. Forgot how to read, taught myself again how to read, forgot that I had to read to feel human. Made myself scarce with obligations and, as I showed up to them again, and again, lost something of the thread that makes obligation transcendent.
The songs I’ve been writing recently have mostly been in honor of people who have died; David Lynch and Susan Alcorn. Some new songs have been inspired by the people who piss me off the most, who ask for me to be when I can’t. I’ve struggled to find the connection between these inspirations, but then I realized it’s not betrayal, it’s love. What’s that old thing, every letter is a love letter? Every love story is a ghost story? Every song is a love song?
It’s hot in my apartment, and I’m worried I’m getting sick. My sweetheart is sick in the other room. Last night we rewatched a movie from the pandemic that made me think of those yawning berths of time, endlessness where souls either died or replenished themselves, different manifestations of how we love time. I miss time. The obligations of my life, so joyful, still rob me from me. The updates now are different, harsher. They crash everything. Phones are no longer fun. New things, having ceased being better, are not hooting their sirens but peeling off fast in a dumb blaze. Stuff, being less interesting to me now than ever, has dipped; clarity, learning how to write, became opaque.
I’ve been meeting the political moment feebly in my lostness and disenchantment. It’s not just that it’s cartoonishly bad, it’s that I feel less and less like a cartoon the more I find myself again in the mire, and I don’t know which is more helpful to fight this dipshit regime, cartoonishness or its opposite. I see these cartoon women clinging to the regime for safety, inches of makeup gunned to their face, finding refuge in the normative body of the fearful, as my own body changes, as I feel less legible, as my songs and self commune with the dead more empathetically than ever. I see my friends in their glorious transitions, being despite. I see the world being despite, too, animals making friends with other animals, tolerating the cooling and heating threat of all weather, as language hopefully complicates itself to meet the moment, and becomes more effective than ever, as I trust it less.
That is to say, shit’s bad. All we needed was time for irreverence, the support of earthly pleasures, the abolition of borders, a free Palestine, an observation both of Judaism being weaponized in global struggle and in antisemitism coursing weirder than ever, an acknowledgement not simply that this is not normal, but that normal doesn’t work. Nothing has been working. My dog needs verbal acknowledgement before he joins me on the couch, and then he sits on the pillow and Says It back to me. I sit here next to him and type, finally able to hear some phantom call that lets me write, after months of not even being able to journal without it having a melody or a ghost attached to any words. Either way, it helps.
HERE BE THE SHOWS
Sat March 15 - The Owl. Whait with A. M. Ringwalt and Miles Hewitt. 8pm
Wed March 19 - Union Pool, in a duo with Ryan Sawyer for Andy Cush/Domestic Drafts’ record release. Katy the Kyng also shreds. 8pm
Sun March 23 - Public Records. My band (Ryan and Mari) open for Tara Clerkin Trio.
TOUR as part of More Eaze, opening for Chanel Beads:
Tue March 25 - Ottobar, Baltimore
Wed March 26 - The Warehouse, Richmond
Thu March 27 - Kings, Raleigh NC
BIG EARS in Knoxville TN
Fri March 28 - with More Eaze at the Standard, 2:45 pm
Fri March 28 - with Squanderers at Regas Square, 7:15pm
Sat March 29 - Joyful Noise Presents - Label Showcase of absolute DREAM BAND (Kramer, Greg Saunier, Tall Tall Trees, Thor Harris, and more surprises) at Pretentious Brewing Co - 3:00-5:00
Sat March 29 - I play in my trio with Mari Rubio and Ryan Sawyer at Jig and Reel. Come early!
Mon March 31 - Squanderers play Citizen Vinyl in Asheville NC.
EUROPApril
April 6 - Rewire Festival, in my trio with Ryan and Mari <3
April 7 - Stadtgarten, in Cologne, same trio but also I get to play duo with the lovely Emily Wittbrodt again!!! Thank heavens.
April 8 - Plantage in Amsterdam, NL, same trio, with More Eaze also playing solo and Bhajan Bhoy on the bill!
April 9 at The Lexington, in London. Ryan and I play duo! Kiran Leonard opens.
BACK TO AMERIKA
April 16 - at Roulette in a big band led by Wayne Horvitz.
April 24 - I open solo for Josephine Foster duo with Ryan at PIT in Williamsburg.
April 30 - Squanderers play Roulette :)
On My Stereo:
Negativland - Escape from Noise
Janet Jackson - All for You
The Residents & Renaldo & The Loaf- Title in Limbo
Gene Clark & Carla Olson So Rebellious a Lover
Magical Power Mako - Music From Heaven
Cutt’s Road - The Answer
On My Bookshelf
Sarah Schulman - Empathy
Andrea Dworkin - Women Hating
Pierre Bourdieu - Distinction
Patricia Lee - Sturtevant: Warhol Marilyn
Alan Licht - Sound Art Revisited
Lynne Tillman - Someday This Will Be Funny
On My Mind
Why do I resist writing when it always makes me feel better? Same with playing guitar, why do I hesitate to do the things that feel the best? Is this the opposite of cruel optimisn? I’m looking at my dog in the eyes when I type this and he’s blinking at me so hilariously, and bunching his nose up so I can see a hint of his teeth. I never avoid him, and he always makes me feel better - is this a lesson?
Now he’s passive aggressively lying face down in our ice blue shag carpet, legs spatchcocked, breathing oddly hard. I only have good ideas after 3pm.
Spring is always a memory of spring. When the weather changed a few weeks back, hinting what is now happening, it felt like I’d woken up in Florida at my mother’s house, hotter, energized begrudgingly. Then, as I walked outside, I felt myself in Rochester, in college, thinking beautifully about having a future, like I was 21, just waking up in a different way. I remembered a dear college boyfriend saying, “Rochester in the spring is like a memory of spring,” and think of just how much I’ve learned from every partner I’ve had, every bumbler on the curling road and all their vulnerable, arcing necks.
One of the great joys of anger is the clarifying feeling it gives you, like clearing a forest, burning a path. You dissociate in, vs out - I feel so much of it that I disappear, which is a super mystical state relative to the dissociating out, which feels like a quite self-colored disappearance. My life is boring in its busy energy, I know I’ll be like this even when I want to change it; I have little to say about myself for some reason right now, including my thoughts, but as I sit with this feeling, how pissed off I get for reasons just and unjust, I escape and the sensation I am feeling acts like time, a wind blowing through me, rendering me translucent and dancey, caught in an updraft, not chasing but also not here.
That’s where I was. Work blowing through me like time, rage and sadness too. anything not to be here, but then the song calls me and I’m back in time, writing again, being. It’s less transparent than you think; reading just sells it that way sometimes, with all that flimsy paragraphing and line breaking, bamboo stick on the beach in a dog’s mouth, catching, chasing, lapping at the lapping shore, playing endlessly, perfect.
Thank you for reading this! See you out there. Love to you.
Just saw your set at Big Ears (amazing) and you played the aforementioned tune dedicated to Lynch. I'd love to know the name so I can keep an ear out!
- the nerd in the front wearing the Eraserhead shirt
“and think of just how much I’ve learned from every partner I’ve had, every bumbler on the curling road and all their vulnerable, arcing necks.” — ain’t it the truth!