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January 2025 Newsletter: 2024 Review
🕑 Added 2025-01-06 17:51:49 +0000 UTCApologies for the slow start to 2025. Yesterday I looked at the date and said, “Oh yeah - I should probably write a newsletter, shouldn’t I?” While I leave this coming year a fresh page, undisturbed by any predictions of what it might bring, I’ll take a glance back at 2024 and see where I came from, and came to.
Last year saw me facing some truths about myself that I didn’t like, coming to terms with blind spots I had in how I was treating others. For years, working as a creative independent allowed me to escape continually into my own explorations, my own version of the truth. The best, and hardest, lesson I learned last year was that sometimes I have to take good advice to heart, even if it seems intolerable to my personal truth. I have to leave some room to believe that others might know something I don’t. After a lifetime clinging to my own intellect and brightness, it was a heavy comedown to learn this. But in taking the first steps to accept this wider narrative, I can see that I've already grown a lot.
Along the path of learning this, I had a pretty wide span of experiences and travels. I played with Jandek twice, once in Los Angeles, once in Portland. It’s always a spiritual experience to meet up with the “Coordinator” and his companion Sheila. At every show, they meet different musicians, and come up with a performance that is essentially completely improvised. Although we’ve only met three times, it’s easy to feel close to people you perform with in that way. Backstage, I heard stories of meditating with yogis in the 60s, recovering from post-Covid, and being stuck in the youth church choir as a kid (the Coordinator and I shared a distaste for singing in robes).
In LA, I also visited Wei Mountain Temple, to meditate and hear dharma from Master YongHua, whose Youtube streams I have come to watch regularly. From him, I got a new definition of “wisdom”: “when you’re doing something wrong, and somebody tells you to stop it, you stop it.” I learned a lot from him this year, and I’m grateful to have his streams as a part of my learning curve for letting go of my baggage. Back at home, I developed a new love for St. John of the Cross and his writings, going through ‘Ascent of Mount Carmel’ and ‘The Dark Night’. I’m currently working my way through his commentary on the ‘Spiritual Canticle,’ which is my favorite yet.
I also explored more in engaging with the furry fandom, creating a new fursona and attending several cons. I was very grateful for the kindness and enthusiasm I received from so many souls as I did, but by the end of the year, it seemed my path was detouring farther away from this sort of engagement. After finishing work on our album, I took a big step back from internet stuff in general, feeling suddenly that my next year would be a lot easier if I were able to do so. I stopped using my computer for much outside of work and some chatting with friends, allowing myself mostly to idle in the place where I was, not trying to escape into screen-world. I’ve felt a big improvement in my life in the months I’ve been able to do so, and look forward to continuing to cultivate my real-life space.
Working with the band to create and finish the album was a real bright, warm spot. Earlier in my life, I was obsessed with making good albums - albums that people would obsess over, that would win fame, that would outlast other albums. Now the good I want to work with is goodness of the heart, a deep goodness that is not competitive or flashy, a goodness that I know doesn’t come from me, but that can be conveyed and shared when one’s heart is right. This album came out of enjoyment and creativity between band members, a confidence and easy trust with our engineer, John, and a willingness to let patience reign and slowly gather the best ideas together in a way that worked. I hope that the album speaks of this goodness to others, but even if it doesn’t, it was a success for me in working in a way that felt joyous and sustainable. That’s all you can really ask for from life.
Comments
Luka Buchanan
ooooh, i just read the blurb for the Eagleton text - sounds fascinating! i’m very interested in christian philosophy of suffering; often it irks/frustrates/confuses me, but i think it’s because i’ve never read it in a framework that actually resonates with me… but i do find people’s unique relationships to suffering very very interesting and important. anyway, it sounds like Eagleton goes into it a bit. Practicing New Worlds also sounds excellent, reminds me a little of Le Guin, whose fiction i adore, and I know radical imagination was an idea she explored a lot in her fiction and non-fiction. i’m feeling very inspired, thanks again for the recommendations!
Luka Buchanan
oh wow thank you so much for sharing these recommendations, i’m really excited to dive in!! i’ve definitely been marinating on these ideas for months now haha so more reading is definitely welcome! thank you, much solidarity!
Ai Miller
(Sorry to hop in here, but wanted to say I love Angela Davis's writing! There's a great book if you're interested that's by Andrea Ritchie, another long time abolitionist and movement lawyer, that also takes up the problem of imagination. It's called Practicing New Worlds, published with AK Press, and takes up a process called "emergent strategy" first named and developed by adrienne maree brown. I like Practicing New Worlds because Ritchie discusses the difficulty of engaging with imagination when it challenges your frameworks or typical ways of being. (Also also for joining of the spiritual and political hands, reading Terry Eagleton's Radical Sacrifice was for me the call (back) to faith and practice that I needed a long time ago; exploring liberation theology might also be a point of use.))
Ai Miller
Thanks so much for these thoughts! It's always fascinating to hear another person reflect on growth and growing, as I'm doing so myself at a point that is no longer weighted with the concerns I had as a young person. I echo the clarity of the "good" work coming from the heart, and I think for me especially and most joyfully, good work done with others. I've been lucky enough to be in sustained relationship with people with whom I am doing "good work" (good in that I hope it does good (free people,) good in that it sustains me, good in that it tests and nurtures my values and helps me deepen in them) and it has made such a huge difference. Even when I am angry, I am angry with others and we are addressing it together. I look forward to sharing in the good work you and the band and your producer have made!
Luka Buchanan
‘left and right hands’ is a great way to think about it!
Car Seat
I also struggle with the balance between respecting the political and spiritual sides of life. Your phrase "at odds" makes me think of the left hand and the right hand - in some ways opposites, but both necessary for doing the work. And as you've found in the garden, inner stillness doesn't necessarily mean outer quietness. Thanks for your rambles!
Oliver W
I’m so excited for the new album and all its goodness
Enoch
Reading the things you write always leaves me so inspired. Sending the warmest of wishes over your way and I hope this new year treats you well ❤️
fruitybinch666
i look forward to these newsletters so much! they are my favouriteeee 🫂🌸🦢💗🤲🏻
oxroot
thank you
Luka Buchanan
good luck and godspeed, thank you very much for sharing!!! I love St John of TC and his many silences. it seems like everything wants to distract from the silence at times! but I also hope that silence emerges in unique and myriad ways, not always so literal… (a great article I found about St John of TC & his many silences: https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/st-john-of-the-cross-the-depth-height-and-edges-of-silence/) in the end, perhaps, it was in the garden, where I found deep contemplation of messy, noisy natural harmony - and I stopped fighting the inner noise so much, instead let it resonate with the desire for absorbing. I found the work of the Palestinian writer Raja Shehadeh, and spent many hours contemplating his writings. he writes a lot about hope; despite living through great suffering, he has powerful, imaginative hope - hope, a verb - work, movement, more than static feeling. the great American philosopher Angela Davis was another new one for me, and I was incredibly moved by her writing on imagination in the context of social change. in the beginning of Are Prisons Obsolete?, a text on abolitionism, she describes how people are often unable - or unwilling - to imagine a world without prisons, and the ways this affects activism. I don’t want to believe that politics and spiritual inner resonance are at odds with each other, but I’m still working out how to find a balance. I listened to a lot of American gospel and spirituals, particularly early field recordings of work songs and shouts (https://themcintoshcountyshouters.bandcamp.com/album/slave-shout-songs-from-the-coast-of-georgia); somewhere in here is a connection between political and spiritual freedom, but I’m still working it out… it’s difficult to learn of great suffering of others, and often I think the heart (or maybe just mine) seeks to deny or distract from it endlessly, but silence/God/divine renewal/wisdom/rapture/love is found there - hopefully. and certainly there is incredible spiritual resonance in improvisation, where intuition flows!!!!! Jandek sounds like an awesome project to deep-dive into researching! I genuinely am quite sorry for the many rambles haha, but I thank you all the same for sharing your writing through the year :-), I hope the rambles aren’t exasperating. again, good luck, and godspeed, I hope the lead-up to album release is exciting and joyful for you + the band. may ye walk in love in 2025!
Cooper
I think balancing enjoying creative activities and being "good" at them has been a big struggle in my life. I remember as a kid, I could bang on the drums and simply enjoy the making of sound; but now I feel I just stare at my writing until I find something wrong with it. I feel with every story I write, I must appease a tiny audience with it. I wish I could write stories the way I banged on those drums all those years ago.
Em
I’m a big fan of how you look at religion and spirituality. There’s a lot of substance to different religions and philosophies, all of which offer truths to take into the new year. I’ll have to give those streams a listen! Happy new year and thanks for another wonderful newsletter!
Gretta lil
So beautiful thank yoy
sylvie
I’ve heard Jake Ewald say similar things about the most recent Slaughter Beach, Dog record, Crying, Laughing, Waving, Smiling. Are you familiar with this record, and would you say there is a similarity between the creative feel/vibe of it and your record?
Jack
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts, much love to you!
Sarahbeth White
Coming out of such a tough 2024, i'm so ready for this new album in 2025- ready for several nights of cathartic listening
Caiden
been stressed about my own "pace" as a musician lately— it's nice to have a reminder that patience is worth it. happy new year!
