Studio Delays, Rest Days, Scene Change, and Unity

Hey beautiful face,

I hope you’re able to take some time today to rest and soak up this much needed sunshine that our Northeast region has been lately deprived of.

Let’s focus on what we like. I like having homemade chicken salad for lunch most days when it’s warm out. I like petting my cat especially after she’s been sitting in a sunbeam and her fur is all warm and silky. I like seeing tree branches rustle in the wind, and believing their little leaf hands are waving at me. I like waving back. What do you like?

A friend gave me a sticker of a fox in mid-pounce. I put it on the cover of my journal. I like that sticker. I like journaling. I like gentle days to rest and recharge.

It’s hard to stay gentle when I know how much our planet is hurting, reeling, arguing, fighting, warring, killing, dying. I tried to save a bumblebee who was boots-up on my porch. I put it in the grass and said a prayer, but I don’t know if it lived. I don’t know how to save bumblebees, just like I don’t know how to save this whole world.

I feel it though. I feel the discord, the division. Like a virus, it seems this brutal wave of hatred needs to run it’s course. The molten lava of our rage needs to erupt - is erupting - and burn everything in it’s path.

On this Memorial Day, I wonder if America will ever look back on our history and be honest about who and what we’ve harmed, and apologize by taking action to restore and repair and like just stop the fucking churn and burn of capitalism and war and industry. I also wonder if the big religions of our day can do the same. A lot of people and a lot of the planet has been severely harmed in the last 2000 years. It feels like its high time for a scene change and a shift in ideology, a return to the earth, a return to the sacred feminine, a return of land to indigenous peoples and cultures, a focus on action-oriented reparations to black families who were stolen from their homes and dehumanized, the list goes on.

It’s a lot to type and likely a lot to take in as a reader, but this is what Truth is.

Truth is hard. It’s easy to spend money and barbeque and drink to forget in the name of patriotism. It’s hard to confront the truth and think, ‘Well shit, now what?’

This Old Grave, the title of the album I’m working on, scratches the surface of making an attempt to do the hard thing, and look.

These songs look at death. These songs look at strife. These songs look at the very human quality of occasionally being wrong and having to admit it! These songs look at love and community, at our innate need for nature and creatures and each other, and at being enough even when you’re broke.

Compost is only good if you turn it over. Otherwise it’s a smoldering pile of rot. Turning the compost requires strength and the knowing you’ll get hit with some stink. But when you work it, it becomes fertile gold to grow with. These songs are a call to turn over your own ‘grave’ and that of our collective. What’s rotting that needs to be exposed to some air and light? It’s ok to get gothic and morbid with it. We can handle it. We can handle you. We can handle your morbid. We love goth.

Can you imagine if America united in the act of amending and repairing how many graves it has made? We can’t restore Turtle Island (one of the original names of this North American land mass) to the way it was before it was colonized, but we can start to look and we can start to amend. The only way to heal is by turning our collective compost. Otherwise it’s rot, and rot kills.

The studio work continues to be on pause as Matt is still on tour which is f*cking awesome. He’s getting in much needed stage time so let’s be pumped for him.

This EP delay is also good as I’m working through my own inner composting. The Spirits apparently think I’m ready to take on the task of amending parts of my past, as well as forgiving some deep wounds that have shaped the course of my adulthood. The soil of my soul is turning and I am growing and crying and angry and the molten lava of my psyche is erupting and I am trusting that this is all clearing me out into a lighter and freer version of myself. I know it will because I’ve heard many similar stories of amending and forgiving, and freedom is always the result.

Like I always say, I need you. This post highlights a lot of what I’ve been ruminating on lately, and a lot of what has come up for me each time I look at the news or any type of social media. The outlets are saturated with no clear solution.

My solution is to turn it over.