evidence of movement moves me
SCENE:
Dear you,
Hi, I’ve missed you. I’ve missed this part of me. Let’s begin now and see where we wind up, shall we? Listening to Jazmine Sullivan which might be too lyrically busy for my brain, but also feels decisive and full of conviction, which I love. And since I have a small window to write, I’m going to channel her approach. A direct wander, not an aimless one. Is that a thing? Let’s try. (update..I’m finishing this one 8 days after I started it. Tonight I’m also wearing the lavender mohair shorts, I reference below. Always looking for the thread, the narrative through-line. We’re going back but we’ll wind up now. Stick with me)
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Right now it’s 12:26 pm on Sunday, May 29th. I’m wearing lavender mohair shorts which I might never wear out of my house, my garden, the dirt road to my mailbox, but at least now I’ve been brave enough to wear them in your imagination.
R and E are planting peppers, weeding tomatillos, and cutting volunteer cilantro that’s starting to bolt. My hands smell like a mixture of the sunscreen I slathered on E’s pale legs, arms and neck. And popcorn with nutritional yeast and garlic and salted butter. I smell vaguely of sweat, but it’s subtle. I prefer a little human smell, even if it’s funky, to a sterile nothing smell. It’s sort of like how I prefer a slightly cluttered homey room to a hyper clean and spare room.
Evidence of movement moves me.
I’m looking at a to do and an I want list on the back of an envelope that probably came with a bill that I pay online but still get the hard copy of for some reason. So many boxes to click or un-click, so little time. I like lists and I like reusing things, so I’m trying not to be hard on myself for not doing the thing that shuts that airmail valve off, that saves trees, that saves a stamp, that saves space in my recycling bin. My son wants to save everything and sometimes I think this has to do with knowing that his older sister didn’t survive, that we couldn’t save her. Sometimes I think that’s too much of a stretch, and sometimes it feels like the most authentic explanation.
It’s been one month since I’ve written to you, which means that today, as I approached my window to write, everything that hinted at becoming an obstacle to my writing got the death stare, got the agitated, itchy, edgy, ragey, grump. The agitated itchy ragey grump who, once she admits that’s what’s going on to her loved ones, turns everything and everyone… soft. But, right before I name what it is, right before I start to write, the room changes color. I become an overfilled balloon. I am chaos under the illusion of control. I am paint ready to splatter. SPLATTER. BURST.
YOU:
Where is your head in this moment? Where are your toes in this moment? (wiggle them) Where is your heart and are your shoulders pushing so far forward that your heart in your chest is tucked, protected, scared, cavernous, left behind? If you push your heart forward and let your shoulders inch backwards, do you feel like an alignment show- off, a pompous pretentious asshole? Why does holding ourselves hunched feel safer, more humble? Why do we collapse before we expand?
When do you know that it’s time to go to bed, like do you get ahead of the exhausted feeling with a bedtime or a routine for unwinding? Or, do you wait to get into bed when you literally can’t stay awake any longer? What does the bed represent to your body? What does it represent to your mind? Is sleep about sprawling, dreaming, escape, terror, relief, restoration, obligation?
Do you have things that you postpone until they torment you? Until you torment others with the residue or your own torment? How do you soften? How do you make space for your hungry heart to feast? How do you make time and space to pay attention to this? Thank you for doing so. It means the world to me and that’s not just a figure of speech.
Recommendations:
Not Lost: I’m not sure if I’ve ever listened to a travel podcast before, and not sure if the genre would pull me in on its own. On paper, I guess it should! I mean audio enables you to transport better than any other medium, so travel + podcast seems like the ideal marriage. I guess it’s sort of like how I don’t tend to like Reality TV travel shows, but Anthony Bourdain made the genre sing. Maybe because he not only took me somewhere, but he was also taken somewhere personally, and welcomed me in. Sort of like presentational theater versus representational theater. There was a relationship between Anthony and the places he went, one that transcended the role of guide. Brendan Newnam is Anthony in this scenario and he’s converted me to the form, or his version of the form, anyways.
Projects with stellar creators behind them and ones with taste that I value, always warrant a listen. Brendan Newnam, Danielle Henderson, Cristal Duhaime, Mira Burt-Wintonick and Tally Abecassis, are all collaborators on this show. Damn, we are lucky listeners.
Not Lost is so unabashedly what it is, which is something that makes me feel all the more tender. It’s got a chat show vibe, but instead of eavesdropping on friends sitting in a room, they take us places and introduce us to people and big ideas and questions and new parts of themselves. Danielle and Brendan’s dynamic reminds me a little of Hrishikesh Hirway and Samin Nosrat in Home Cooking, mostly the laughter and the Brendan being schooled by Danielle bit. Start with the Montreal episode and keep going
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This Irma Thomas song, something in the drums just hits, especially after she sings “picking up the pieces (drum drum drum) of my broken heart”
Before getting in bed, close all drawers and closets completely. Make sure all the little bits of fabric or poking out cords, are put back in place until the new day begins
Record a voice memo for yourself without any intention to share it. Let it sprawl, let it be clunky, let it be an exercise in honing in on your voice without a witness
Make time for the things that slow down time
I love this one and will read what Ocean recommends
When you learn the name of a flower, write it down with a little description
Make time for cord untangling, dust bunny plucking, flossing( even the awkward backiest of back teeth)
I’m thinking about this quote from Rachel Cusk and maybe you’d like to think about it too: What your reader doesn’t know that they know but they recognize it when they see it. That is the highest element in the reading experience, precisely that feeling of recognition, of something that unconsciously you know, but it isn’t something that you could see, the writer enables you to see it
Talk to your friends about hard stuff even if you don’t think you know how to
Craft:
Music making versus meaning making. Landing a beat versus landing an idea. Ideas are important, but evoking a feeling is paramount. For me. Thinking about teaching audio in a Journalism department versus teaching it in an Art department or an English department or a Drama department. Thinking about how each space has unique potential to inform the medium, excite the medium, organize the medium, in interesting ways. How does the space that you learn about audio, that you teach an audio class, change the shape of the practice, enable you to lean into it as practice in new ways? What obstacles arise or dissipate when you find the right home not only for the pieces or podcasts you make, but for the institutions where you teach? Which departments make you feel expansive, make you feel the most of service, buoy your voice and style, help you buoy the voice and styles of others?
14 things:
Realizing what Bessie Smith does to my solar plexus
Stopped in the middle of the road on the way back from driving E to preschool to photograph the fog rolling over the hills
Noticing R and E out the window in their pajamas picking me little bundles of wildflowers, herbs and grasses for Mother’s Day
Eating homemade peanut butter miso cookie ice cream sandwiches in R’s studio and then having a dance party. E being up too late, but we were moving fast and loose, and we were moved by all the movement, and wtf is life if we don’t let ourselves get carried away
First fireflies of the season: One blinking above the blueberry bush, one blinking by the birdhouse, below the swooping bats
Taking my mother out for her birthday with my sister and smushing into a photo booth and eating sushi and drinking cortados and finding things that made my mom feel good about herself and her body and how moving that is
How weeding and planting in the garden for R is writing and editing this newsletter for me. He will pickle more peppers than we can eat and he will give them away and that will make him feel good. I will process my thoughts and grow these letters and share them with you and you will feel full, I hope, and I will too
The relief I felt when E called me to his bed in the middle of the night to snuggle, on the day of the shooting. The way that I stared at him, hard, in the dark. The way I cuddled him in a clutch not a loose gather. The way he eventually wanted to turn over and be done cuddling and it made me feel how real the holding and the letting go is
The way Evan gave me his play by play reflections as he listened to an audio piece I had just finished. How astute of a listener I realized he was and how seen/heard/known I felt by the specificity of his listening. How he recognizes that details are my creative power animal’s fuel. It’s also hard to respond when someone articulates a deep knowing about what they hear, about what they hear of you in the thing
Watching the jellyfish move in their tanks and realizing that’s what I want out of an aquarium: a room full of throbbing glowing, undulating transparent animals, showing off in the dark. I know there’s a lot to learn and sometimes I read the signs or listen to the awkward teenagers with ball caps and crocs and ill fitting polo shirts with their lav microphones talking enthusiastically about the differences between seals and sea lions over a terribly blown out speaker, but as per usual, I’m more attracted to how they’re communicating than what they’re trying to teach me.
The way the body feels when the weather shifts to too warm and you haven’t taken the flannel sheets of the bed: itchy, agitated, butterfly ready to burst out of its chrysalis. Like even though it’s uncomfortable, somewhere during that terribly restless night sleep, you smile knowing inside of you that spring has arrived
A purple flower bloomed on my 6 year old rose geranium. It’s never bloomed before and it might be the only one and it’s probably gone by now, but I’ll check again tomorrow and look for the fallen bloom behind the couch and put it on the windowsill
Eating Enfrijoladas and looking out the window to see Ocean Vuong walking in the rain under a massive white and blue paneled umbrella
Hiking to the top of a mountain and eating an orange slice with a thick layer of pith that sturdily held the juice in place. Pith as integral to the joy of the experience not as a stringy dry pleasure detractor
P.S. It’s been so long I forget what you look like and I don’t what you’ve been thinking about or making and I want to. Maybe you’ll send me a photo of yourself when you’re done reading this? Or a photo of whatever you look up at when you’re done reading this? Add a little or long caption and maybe a wisp of something that resonated in you from this letter. I’ll share it in the next one, which will be soon-ish.
(Update: finishing this at 12:48 am on Tuesday June 7th.)
Wherever this finds you, may you feel safe and held and loved in whatever you’re going through. May you listen to more stories, to more people, to the deep wild within yourself.
xx,
Sara