Hi, buddies,
I’ve been putting off sending a November newsletter because the world feels hard to face, or talk about, and it feels bizarre or even wrong to write a little missive about my professional life in the midst of so much news of death and genocide in Palestine.
I’m also on tour, currently sitting in a hotel room looking out a wondrously big window, grateful to make music with new and old friends, to see the world. To be, at turns, slightly tired and hungry and grumpy and then generously fed and sheltered by various kind strangers, my soul nurtured by the deep pleasure of improvising.
We are very small, and it’s actually impossible to hold it all at once. However it does feel essential to say, before any other personal news bits: the genocide in Gaza is very very awful, killing and injuring and displacing so many innocent people. I’m not a foreign policy expert, but I do know that killing 10,000+ people doesn’t bring about any kind of peace or justice. It’s also being funded by U.S. tax dollars, so I think we have a special responsibility to try to make our voices heard. Jewish Voice For Peace has some good resources for calling or writing your representatives to call for a ceasefire, and Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund and Médecins Sans Frontières are providing aid (when they’re allowed to).
(forgive me if all of that is commonly held, repetitive, etc.. I’m signaling no virtue, only information if it is helpful)
Now, some smaller things.
I’m on the second to last day of a European tour! It’s been wonderful, challenging and beautiful. The last leg has been a recording session and tour with Christof Kurzmann, Ken Vandermark, Dave Rempis, Katinka Kleijn, and Lily Finnegan, playing music that Christof wrote in response to the poetry of Alejandra Pizarnik — heavy words and beautiful arrangements. There will be a record, eventually.
I’m also ready to come home — see you in the next weeks, maybe, for
some shows:
11.16 Blank Box: water%holding by Ro Lundberg, with Nina Vroemen, Jasmine Mendoza, Jeff Kimmel, Sam Scranton, Zachary Nicol and me: Constellation Chicago, 8pm
11.17 solo, Peace Has No Home: Posters for Ukraine closing reception: Public Works Gallery, Chicago, 8pm
11.18 duo with Katinka Kleijn, Augmented Geology performance: Design Museum Chicago, 4pm
11.29 duo with Whitney Johnson: Judson and Moore, Chicago 8pm
Other professional tidbits:
Augmented Geology is an exhibition of two works by Katinka Kleijn and I, on view all month at the Design Museum. So, if you can’t make it to the show, stop by to see the videos and sculptures — it’s right across the street from the Cultural Center.
My latest mix for Beloved Radio — music for taking an afternoon bath includes some Feldman, Colleen, Emily Sprague.
I am finishing up my fellowship at Wave Farm at the end of this month, leading a workshop called The Radio As Collaborator, and broadcasting a new piece (stay tuned, literally, for that).
Tiny recommendations, some of them travel-related:
Bring an umbrella. If you lose your umbrella, buy a new one. This is not a metaphor.
If you’re in Paris, the Sophie Calle show at the Musee Picasso is superb, and I also had a great time wandering around the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature — what a fun and strange collection. There’s a room made of owls!
Was happy to revive my love of Einspänner — espresso with a big dollop of unsweetened whipped cream — in Vienna. Try it!
I was so grateful to experience JJJJJerome Ellis’ reading of their most recent book of poetry, Aster of Ceremonies at the Poetry Foundation. Honoring and transmuting their experience of having a stutter, Ellis’ performance transformed my experience of time in a way that I hope to remember always.
I’m sorely missing my own kitchen and cooking with N, so I have no recent recipes for you. But in anticipation of Gratefulness Holiday, here’s our favorite Cranberry Pie (we make it without the meringue, but sometimes add whipped cream).
Speaking of cooking, our Italian host in Villach made us rigatoni with razor-thin eggplant — cut with a mandolin, I think, and cooked in red wine. It was so delicious, I’m excited to try it.
I am looking forward to seeing Courtney Mackedanz’ Almost Like a Pasture at Roman Susan.
Brooke Barker’s newsletter, Never Not Nervous, makes me happy.
and a poem, by Danusha Laméris (thanks, Elizabeth):
Small Kindnesses
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”
that’s all, for now.
Lia