issue #6 Hi friends, it’s been a couple of months since my last newsletter, which found us sweating at summer’s peak. Now, it’s cooler and damp, I can see my breath some mornings when the windows are
issue #6
Hi friends, it’s been a couple of months since my last newsletter, which found us sweating at summer’s peak. Now, it’s cooler and damp, I can see my breath some mornings when the windows are open. The squirrels keep digging in my potted plants, storing away food for winter, which they will surely forget about the moment they scramble away. What a useless endeavor, I think to myself, but really we’re all doing the same thing - evolutionary survival instincts driving us to spin in circles.
Since I first read Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim At Tinker Creek, a book that has become one of my all time favorites, I’ve thought many times about a singular scene/moment in that book, it lights me up every time I re-read it. It’s on my mind lately:
“This is it, I think, this is it, right now, the present, this empty gas station, here, this western wind, this tang of coffee on the tongue, and I am petting the puppy, I am watching the mountain. And the second I verbalize this awareness in my brain, I cease to see the mountain or feel the puppy. I am opaque, so much black asphalt. But at the same second, the second I know I've lost it, I also realize that the puppy is still squirming on his back under my hand. Nothing has changed for him. He draws his legs down to stretch the skin taut so he feels every fingertip's stroke along his furred and arching side, his flank, his flung-back throat. I sip my coffee. I look at the mountain, which is still doing its tricks, as you look at a still-beautiful face belonging to a person who was once your lover in another country years ago: with fond nostalgia, and recognition, but no real feeling save a secret astonishment that you are now strangers. Thanks. For the memories. It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize as separating us from our creator--our very self-consciousness--is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution, cutting us off at both ends. I get in the car and drive home.”
Something I’m feeling
Nina Simone Who Knows Where The Time Goes
Something I’m thinking
This is a picture of me (far right) wearing a Ren and Stimpy t-shirt (where the heck did I even get that?!). I’m with my cousins Colin (middle) and Robert aka broie, pronounced “bro e” (far left). We are probably around 6 or 7 years old here, on my uncle’s boat, crabbing out on the bay, in my hometown. I think later this day we took our haul of crabs to my grandma’s house and had a big cookout on her back porch, all of the adults slopping and slurping crabs, while us kids hung out in the shed, which we called the shanty, where we’d eat popsicles, the ones that are primary colors, and a foot long in clear plastic, and drink cokes.
This picture brings me joy and it’s the version of myself that I picture when I’m scared, or sad, or lonely, or longing to feel seen. I think of that little guy in his Ren and Stimpy tee, just hanging with his buds, moving from one wild feeling, one wild moment to the next.
Something I made
Time spent with babies can live in two extremes - deep joy and deep boredom. Life is slow and exuberant in the next turn. Often, I zone out on my phone, and feel guilt in return for not being utterly present with them all of the time - an impossible feat.
Prompted by a recent cohort/class I was apart of (Tech Support), I was curious to try to spend creative time with them, to bring an activity from my phone into the material world, to listen to their sounds and musically react, for us all to play in the ways we like, I made this piece.
Using the voice memo app, I made a recording of my twins, Ruby and Arthur, playing in their room while I laid on the floor. I then took the recording, and while re-recording it to tape, I improvised a subtle ambient musical accompaniment that was recorded to tape at the same time.
I found the experience to be deeply intimate and quite moving. When I record music I listen a lot, and in the process I perform many takes as a way to weave myself into the music more fully, to diminish the space between myself and the music. It can take a while and many listens to get there. I can became quite transfixed and monomaniacal. And so, I listened to the initial recording many many times, on loop, performing with it, breathing with it.
Typically my phone is a barrier between me and them, it creates distance between us, but hearing their sounds repeatedly- the contented humming, the tired sigh, the soft thumps, made me feel the space between us shrink. We all lived within our own created worlds at the same time, together. Each time I listened back I was delighted and surprised, discovering new subtleties and infinite togetherness.
When playing the piece back for the tech support group I was moved again at the way these sounds affected others, bringing them into close connection not only with me, Ruby and Arthur, but maybe also with their own children, if they have them, or maybe closer with their child self, or the innocence and fumbling of creative practice. It seemed that tenderness washed over all of us.
