Zöe and Malka’s Embrace. (Patreon)

Hi loves.

**edit, some of the photos went missing when I posted this. Weird. I’ve alerted Patreon**

I’ve got a calm heart, and soul-filled at the moment. It’s taken a second but things are calming down…slowly. They feel like they’re ramping up outside, but in here, I’m finding clarity.

I posted this photo Brendon took on the Vineyard. It’s my happy place, that motu.

It reminds me of New Zealand. I’m homesick.

Thank you to all of you who came to the webcast last minute this morning…

We got the grand idea to hold co-working hours for the $5+ tiers, so if you want in, sally up. We are gonna start Friday 11-2, I’ll send a link for the crowdcast tomorrow !!!

…..

I’m alive, I’m ticking, I’m swirling and nothing is catastrophic at the moment, and that’s kinda rare.

Zöe Keating stayed over at my house and played the Somerville Theater the other night and it was just…magical. Rachel Jayson joined in the partay and we had a grand old time.

The Somerville Theater needs a lot of work on the Dressing Room ceiling. Eek.

I’ve known both this string ladies for eons.

Zöe was my opener 25 years ago. I’ve been in awe of her ever since and we’ve collaborated a ton. Rachel - an old Boston scene and mom friend - and Zöe teamed up to play strings in the patron-funded “Mother” video many moons ago, when Ash was toddling and Rachel had a baby literally strapped to her back for the shoot.

Time. These kids are now school-age and it’s a small miracle when can sit with coffee and compare notes. We have all been through so much change and loss. As Zöe played, I sat with my friends and took a breath and closed my eyes and went far into the past and the future.

Music is a portal.

Music lifeboats and threads us together.

After her incredible set last night, Zöe did a Q&A, and one of the audience told her that he had rehabilitated his body - his ability to walk, then dance - to the sound of “Sun Will Set”.

(Zoe high fiving a young cellist.)

It became a path, the music, out of pain and into okayness. I now understand this more deeply that I ever imagined. The usefulness of music. As a balm. As a time-marker. As a cathartic glass bottle thrown to the sea, praying, hoping, knowing that release will come when the sonic gift hits the ears and hearts of the listener. Music and listenership can be a two-way survival love letter over time, a relationship so far beyond commercial exchange, charts, fame, money.

The morning.

Music is a magic we may never understand and I’m not sure, at this point, that we should. Ask me what God is, and I may say…

it’s music.

Listen to Zoe here on bandcamp.

Fuck Spotify for the moment.

https://zoekeating.bandcamp.com/music

I promise you won’t regret it.

…..

I’m recovering from tour and NYC and digging out and with the kid, but Malka shot over this photo in text and it inspired feelings. I have so many shots to post but this sort of sums it up.

I’ve known Malka since we were in our early twenties. She was at Harvard, I was working in the Square. We started a lifelong friendship. She just posted all of these photos to IG…my heart.

We both had babies and we kept comparing notes and trials. She moved to DC, I moved to NY, she moved to LA. We stayed connected. She always came backstage.

This is….

…me in Malka’s lap after the show in L.A.

I love my friends, and I always have, but this is all new. They have carried me out of hell. They are still carrying.

Sometimes I carry them. We trade.

Most of these little moments in our lives don’t get caught on camera. There have been thousands of moments like this in my life, especially in the wake of the divorce and the pandemic and the *waves hands at everything*, and I wish, sometimes, that I had a cosmic scrapbook of all of it, to remember every hug, late-night delivery of care, every sob, every shared meal, the baths run in the shaking, the car rides, the walks, you know. The miles of care and healing, done by the nurses of love.

The stuff of true life that just isn’t - and probably should not be - posted to the internet. I wonder.

I have to grapple constantly with the politics and acrobatics of personal validation, and the confusion of wondering if I’m performing my own life instead of just living it. But don’t we all, sort of?

Who knows? I try to make it as real as I can, and all I can do is try. And try again.

Sometimes I feel like my job is to be willing to cross the line from life into art but run back into life before the art police catch up to me, holding my wet and true watercolor of feelings.

We all feel that disorientation, sometimes, even if we don’t have social media. God, just going to the grocery store to get bread can feel like an Emmy-worthy performance on some days.

To the ones in the lap, and to the ones providing the lap: I love you all, hold steady, keep going.

The only way out is through.

Stay in community.

Don’t get bitter.

Don’t close your heart.

Don’t stop loving.

……

The photo-moments in LA captured by Pixie, who took a boatload of shots in LA in the Cemetery and at the show.

I’m going through those thousands of photos from tour this week…I’ll post most here to the Patreon, where I’m writing up a storm and also cracking my knuckles as I break ground on the new book. All this writing is helping me prime the pump.

Oh

This is Malka getting caught in my bobby pins.

🤘♥️📚

I love you all madly.

X

A