Writer | Number Cruncher | Yoga Teacher | Community Citizen | Nature Lover | Asker of Questions (etc)
It’s been over 4 years since Scott (AKA DJ Blue Soul) has shared his mixing genius with anyone other than me.
Until now!
Listen! Listen! Hear us now!
I’m willing to consider other perspectives but as far as I am concerned, the section that starts at 49:00 is the best. Gets me dancing around the house pretending I have a penny whistle every time ❤ ❤ ❤
My God that record is just unbelievable, maybe even tune of the week… just amazing.
Tom Ravenscroft (BBC Radio 6 Music) re Blue Soul’s On the Angel of History
We’ve been excited to watch Scott’s latest Blue Soul EP making the rounds since its release just two weeks ago. Gotta love seing those Bandcamp, iTunes, and Spotify lines going up and to the right!
You can listen to BBC Radio 6 wonder Tom Ravenscroft raving about the whole album at 1:11:11 (how satisfying!) in this recent playlist. It’s only available online for another couple of weeks, so if you missed it… he gushed so hard I got teary-eyed, gah!
Or check out this playlist from another BBC Radio 6 DJ, Don Letts; he introduces another of Scott’s songs starting at 52:37 during his 6 Music Festival Special broadcast. ” That one’s available for three more weeks so you’ve got a bit more time if you want to listen to the “bass-heavy set he’d like to have done” had there been a Radio 6 Music Festival this year.
Better yet, head on over to Bandcamp and show Scott some support! If we’re friends and you want a free download, you know how to find me…
Go Scott Go! I couldn’t be more proud of you, and am so glad I’m not the only one who gets to benefit from your musical genius ❤
Spring in West Marin — and the Pacific Northwest in general — always meant the return of Swainson’s Thrush singing their hearts out:
One of the things about moving a significant distance from the plants and animals I’m so familiar with is that I am also a long way from the kind knowing that is only possible when one has lived somewhere for a long time. Like any reunion with rarely-seen old friends, I was both thrilled to hear these boisterous birds in both British Columbia and Washington State during our trip in July, and a bit sad to recognize just how much I miss them.
Given the record number of rain days in Auckland this Spring, I haven’t been outside to get amongst the few seasonal markers I do remember: new lambs at nearby Cornwall Park, the magnolias at the Auckland Botanical Garden. So it’s been a joy to hear one from the relative comfort of our living room! And one that reminds me so much of the Swainson’s Thrush:
We started hearing them a few weeks ago and assumed it was the fantails (pīwakawaka in te reo Māori) we started seeing at the same time, but turns out it’s the grey warbler… which has so many names in te reo I’m not sure which to commit to memory.
Perhaps one day these birds too will be known to me as old friends.
Two years ago today, Scott and I had been in Auckland barely a month. We were still living in this weird residential apartment in the CBD (Central Business District), directly next door to the record store where Scott now works.
We came out of a movie and I checked my phone, as one does. Amanda, a close friend of Scott’s and one of only three people Scott and I had in common before we met, had just posted a photo of Johnny, another close friend of Scott’s; he’s also a music producer and DJ. Before we left San Francisco, Scott and Johnny had spent weeks hanging out together at Green Apple Books as Scott trained Johnny to take over the music side of things there.
As I switched over to my Facebook feed, I started to piece together what was happening that night in Oakland. In a bizarre and modern version of “real time,” we witnessed our other friends’ collective scramble as news of the Ghost Ship fire spread through an endless stream of Facebook comments.
Despite everyone’s efforts, there was no news about Amanda and Johnny until the next day. We eventually learned that they had both died in the fire that night, along with so many more.
Everyone had something to say in the days that followed. So many posts and articles and replies and clueless reporters and only a few that, at the time, I believed came close to appropriately capturing the complexity of what was going on (thank you so much Gabe Meline!).
Here is what I wrote a week after the fire, mostly for myself, as I struggled to process it all. Looking at these words now I am struck by my desire to do something despite a deep sense of helplessness. The relief / guilt. The felt sense of being oh-so-far away. How hard it is to comfort those who need comforting when our own holes feel so large. It still feels important to hold space open for Amanda and Johnny. For Scott and Shanna and Andy and everyone else who remains, and for everyone who loves anyone.
***
Oh shit fire at Ghost Ship
Nothing in the news
Maybe Twitter will have more info?
Oh jeez look at this video
We would have been there Continue reading “Ghost Ship memories”
Here are three offerings that really drove home the whole “the medium is the message” message for me this week. I’ll share more of my own thoughts in separate posts; here, I’ll let the artists speak for themselves.
One: Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette [this is just the trailer, you can read more of my thoughts on it here]:
Two: This video essay from Lindsay Ellis [more of my thoughts on this video here]:
…and Three: something my friend Ethan wrote in the description of the Kickstarter campaign for his latest art book, The Evening Pink. [Please give him your support! And I’ve written up more thoughts about slow, thoughtful engagement, etc, here:
I am concerned about the distribution and reach of independent cultural production in 2018. The last time I pre-ordered an edition, in 2012, the cultural landscape was quite different. We used blogs! Artists are now producing more content for less pay, on channels that ask for shorter encounters with artworks. This is discouraging when you make books, and want to facilitate a slow, thoughtful engagement.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1383040354/the-evening-pink-pre-order-the-first-edition
I met photographer Dean Fidelman while living in Yosemite National Park in 1999, and for years I invested everything I had—physically, energetically, spiritually, and financially—into his StoneNudes project. This attempt to build a something that would financially support a complete immersion into art, nature, community collaboration, social activism, and a life well-lived sparked a sense of purpose I’ve been both refining and expanding ever since. Though I ultimately chose to distance myself from the always-fraught business side of StoneNudes, Dean and I have remained very close friends and artistic collaborators.
Climbing podcast Enormocast recently published not one but two entire episodes’ worth of an interview with Dean (here’s Part 1 and here’s Part 2), and they’re fantastic. As someone who came of age listening to climbers’ yarns around Yosemite campfires, and who regularly groans at the media’s lazy sensationalization of Dean’s work, I have to say that it is a rare treat to hear the man himself explain, at length and very eloquently, why he does the work he does.
All other accounts leave out what I believe are the most important elements of his story: his deep appreciation for his mentors, his community (including those who have left us), the places that inspire his work, his commitment to giving back, and the reality of what it’s like to walk in his shoes… the mismatched shoes of our deceased friend Sean, as the case happens be.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/deanfidelman/stone-nudes-2019-20th-anniversary-calendar-final-e
This year marks the 20th and final edition of the StoneNudes Calendar, and I’m thrilled that Dean’s Kickstarter campaign is doing so well! Continue reading “Dean Fidelman finally getting the kind of attention he deserves (and not only for StoneNudes)”
It’s hard to deny that there’s a lot of shit going down in the world right now. As the daughter of two immigrants (into the US) and an immigrant (into NZ) myself, what’s happening at the US border hits me in a particular way, and there are so many other examples we might point to around the world.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what it takes to stay open to and present with this sort of unpleasantness, for a couple reasons. First, I believe it is important to actually SEE and GRIEVE these atrocities, rather than pretending they don’t exist or that they don’t hurt. And more importantly, I believe we must be present to what is going on if we might hope to effectively address any issues that are not in alignment with our own values.
And so I have been super inspired by a few things that my friends have shared this week. They remind me that there are so many ways to contribute to upending the status quo, and so many ways to take care of ourselves as we do that work. Continue reading “Self care and art as acts of resistance”
The paradoxical thing about monogamy, for me at least, is that it took someone who doesn’t insist upon it to inspire me to live it so willingly.
Read on for two poems (one that speaks to the inevitably-ephemeral nature of relationships, and one that speaks to the phenomenon I described above), the story about how Scott and I came to find ourselves in a relationship the second time around, and a bit of Wendell Berry’s ever-inspiring wisdom.
Sonnet of Fidelity
by Vinicius de MoraesAbove all, to my love I’ll be attentive
First and always, with care and so much
That even when facing the greatest enchantment
By love be more enchanted my thoughts.I want to live it through in each vain moment
And in its honor I’ll spread my song
And laugh my laughter and cry my tears
When you are sad or when you are content.And thus, when later comes looking for me
Who knows, the death, anxiety of the living,
Who knows, the loneliness, end of all loversI’ll be able to say to myself of the love (I had):
Be not immortal, since it is flame
But be infinite while it lasts.
I discovered this next one in the book Loving and Leaving the Good Life, by Helen Nearing; she had sent it to her husband, Scott Nearing, in response to a poem he sent her while they were separated by an ocean:
The Wind Bloweth Where It Listeth
by Countee Cullen“Live like the wind,” he said, “unfettered,
And love me while you can;
And when you will, and can be bettered,
Go to the better man.“For you’ll grow weary, maybe, sleeping
So long a time with me;
Like this there’ll be no cause for weeping;
The wind is always free.“Go when you please,” he would be saying,
His mouth hard on her own;
That’s why she stayed and loved the staying,
Contented to the bone.
***
Because Scott and I didn’t see each other for two and a half years following our first date (except for one unacknowledged, wordless encounter in the doorway of Green Apple Books), I count our second date as our anniversary.
Except that I can’t really call it a date because it wasn’t really meant to be a date. We’d been hanging out platonically for several weeks, going to shows and having philosophical discussions, and had even gone on a double date. Which is why it hadn’t occurred to me that it might be awkward to invite Peter, a friend from work, to join us at The Independent on the evening of the Summer Solstice, 2016… Continue reading “The Solstice is Our Anniversary”
For years I told myself I wasn’t cut out for a 9-5 job. When I ditched that story, I found a job that ultimately inspired me to move across an ocean. As of last week, this has officially been my longest stretch of employment ever (not counting the years I worked for myself) and I’m not planning on leaving any time soon!
I mentioned Rachel Meyer’s piece, You Are Not Your Story, for Down Under Yoga. I just adore Rachel’s writing; check it all out (and sign up for her e-newsletter!) on her website!
Elizabeth Ü 