Today feels like high time for a casual confessional update. That’s why you’re here, right? You want to know things about me. I get it. I hope you glean some sort of satisfaction or inspiration from some of the things I write. Here it goes:
I am writing a lot more than I have in the last few years. I’m writing in a targeted, relatively disciplined manner. I’m also digging through my old writings of all kinds (poetry, essays and short stories) in a concentrated to effort to have - and maintain - perspective. I miss my old Arrow typwriter, which I sold in a fit of financial need a year ago, but indeed, I’m typing a lot on my laptop and writing longhand in various journals. Songs are being written. Poems and essays and short stories are blossoming even as the heavy kind of snow finally falls on this part of the country and buries everything beneath its dead weight. I’m writing a lot. That’s a good thing.
My spiritually studious nature has risen up to lead my day-to-day life practices once more; Ayurveda and TCM occupy a large portion of my studies most days. Anyone who knows me well knows that this is a long-running vein of interest for me. Easily twenty years have passed since I first delved into considering food-as-medicine and the body-as-temple. Buddhist concepts helped me shovel myself out of some deep mental health shit back in the late-2000’s. Yoga became a crucial part of my ability to stay functional both physically and mentally back in 2013 after I had a miscarriage and a book that somebody had brought home from India and then dumped at a Salvation Army came into my possession serendipitously. Ayurveda entered my realm of consciousness around the same time, intensified by working with herbs at a natural food store, and is the “medical” side of yoga. Several of its core tenets guide my daily routines; one might even describe me as “obsessed.” Truthfully, though, I just like feeling healthy and doing what works. This stuff works. I feel like nine million bucks.
I keep a massive to-do list, 50-60 items long, on the notepad of my phone. I look at this list every day. I only complete about 10 items a day, many of which repeat every day, but it helps to have my one-off and long-term tasks and chores laid out in front of me like this. When I complete and check them off, I know I’ll just be doing more afterwards, and forever. There is no “There! I’m done.” level of completion to my to-do list; this works for me. If ever I want to say I’ve done it all, I simply can. Who cares? Only me. Autonomy is wonderful.
Part of my newfound level of organization has included poring over transactions and realizing that, as always, Cursed Arrows is in debt when it comes to band-related expenditures. We put out hundreds of dollars every year so that a few hundred people can hear our songs on various streaming platforms. Does it work? Yes, I think so. People listen. Is this frugal? No. Is it all about to change? Perhaps. I’m considering taking our music off of streaming platforms and doling it out more specifically without being under the guardianship of AI and big corporations, but I’m always considering that. I cherish the ability to reach people and quite literally, to be heard. But goddamn it, just know (if you didn’t already) that it costs cold hard dollar bills to have your music floating around all of these mainstream places, awaiting easy perusal.
I might share a short story here soon, even though I get the subtle impression that few of you enjoy reading my fiction and would prefer that I drop some juicy confessional thought melons in your inbox instead. I might be wrong. Either way, there is more of both types of writing yet to come.
I’ve been listening to loads of music. This may surprise you, but I actually have listened to very little music for very long stretches of my adult life. I tend to stay focused on my own songs or songs by other artists that I’m covering and therefore must listen to countless times to learn. Lately, however, I’ve been hopping around from old punk rock and my friends’ music to the Beatles to Billie Eillish to that lady who had a song in a movie that my son loved, to “remember that band Live?” to occasionally trying (and failing) to enjoy Lana Del Rey, to relishing PJ Harvey and The Kills back to the comfort food of Captain Beefheart, only to be interrupted by my son’s Five Nights At Freddy’s soundtrack fixation or Bob Dylan’s “Must Be Santa” on repeat - in January - or an Elliot Smith song that got stuck in my head at the gas station. It’s all very silly and profound at the same time. It is eternally inspiring to hear what other people create in earnest. I’m enjoying myself.
I’m currently recording a solo album that I started writing at least five years ago but only really hunkered down with beginning last October. Ryan and I have written several new songs - our first since 2020 - and are in the midst of recording them to the very best of our expert DIY abilities.
I am also deep in the process of editing together the first of three music videos, to help wrap up our last record “Crone,” visually and thematically. Before we move onto the visuals for new songs we’re writing, I’m hoping to release all three of these videos and with them, a bunch of proverbial butterflies that can hopefully affect positive change around the globe ever-so-subtly. Truthfully my intention is much more insular than that; I have visual ideas I’d like to pair with our songs to create a larger, more “finished” art piece. Though I know all too well that no song is ever finished; it morphs and moves and hibernates and develops and surprises as it is seen and heard by audiences and reinterpreted by us as the years flutter on by. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Another primary vein of interest of mine since the new year dawned has been Shirley Jackson. I’ve been devouring her writing like a happy, curiously hungry ghost after somehow failing to ever read her work before this year. Needless to say, I find both her subject matter and her particular way of looking at the world exorbitantly relatable; so much so that I have begun reading Ruth Franklin’s biography of her in tandem with starting to dig into her novels. Not only was Jackson an prolific crafter of unsettling and timeless tales of human discomfort, but she was also a sort of proto-mommy blogger (in the 1940’s, no less) who wrote hilariously and eloquently about her children. A writer after my own heart.
Twin Peaks. We are re-watching all of it, as we often do during album-writing cycles. We last viewed “The Return” early in 2020 before we wrote Crone; seeing it again now, I’m taking it in with an entirely new perspective. I’ve moved further away from identifying with the hysterical, abused women of Twin Peaks and am probably closer in character to a hybrid of Deputy Chief Hawk and The Log Lady at this point. Poking around the forest, listening to trees… that’s me. My favourite scenes in the final season are coming up, and I know I will feel emotional even as I analyze the camera work, lingering close-up reaction shots and minimally executed CGI. I’ve come a long way from passionately writing about Laura Palmer and her secret diary back in 2012. I don’t write many songs about tragic women anymore…
every time i close my eyes
i see her face
she’s blue in the face
white in her bones
she’s calling them over
she’s ready to go
she’s writing it all down
Not only are you an amazing writer.. you are an amazing person with such insight into the world around you. Your self care discipline is like no other. Proud of you! ❤️