When we drafted this newsletter, we hoped it would snow. As the flakes fell yesterday in New York with the approaching full moon, we were delighted by this spark of magic. We hope magic is sprinkling in your new year too.
Quietude
I am longing for a storm with howling wind, heavy snow, and a reboot for the system. It blows away gloominess, covers up establishment, and buries old stories. I am longing for snow brought by storm, still quiet, serene, pretty — yet ruthless, ruthless with all my words, frozen and dropped into the snow drift without forming an opinion. The snow eats up sounds to feed its holiness.
I am longing for fluffy sounds hushed by hibernating grounds. Space between each footstep grows quieter with every accumulation. Space between each thought blooms into new rooms of the mind, as snow silences in kind. Snow sounds like imaginations and associations of time. That sudden stoppage, where the world steps back and lets the individual come to life. The purity and essence of the falling landscape simplifies thoughts out of knots. The imprint of a fallen branch now removed as memories of a previous life. Its absence a presence in the heart. Like the mind expanding over untouched snow, consciousness flakes into silence. The body warm and padded in layers and such, the whole world soft and light to the touch. Sitting here still, dropping in deeper, pausing at the end of exhale, I remember snow angles at dawn, and the sun as my teacher.
These rituals of snowdrops, snowcones, and snowballs coalesced for this time of mirth, this season for the seeds of rebirth. I miss the sound of snow, as we sit on the edge of what is reaped from the sowed. These warm winter nights reminding of future frights. May we move with snow’s grace, returning our consciousness and nature to space. Like snowing, falling quietude, surrendering to the melt and being felt.
With Friends
Here is the latest release from our friend Ambiensce - a plaintive meditation on the sacraments of solitude and stillness.
From the artist:
I summoned you to The Wood
where we stood among its wonders
and where we could be together
in our heads
Instead of love in tactile form,
I wore my sweater-coat outside
and adorned myself in my own golden time
The monuments of our design
stood nowhere all around me in disguise,
their red oak costumes bent toward the sky
This leafy canopy is a cathedral ceiling
ribbed with boughs, eliciting bows,
positioning my ear to here end now
From Our Oracles
Exercising intelligence in the act of patience. Active waiting seeds deep roots for later fruits, while passive waiting traps us in the slow quicksand of analysis paralysis. Assured in the knowledge that, with regular internal practice, transformation blooms in season. Pausing pursuits in the material realm, and redirecting energy internally, recognizing therein a profound activeness, engagement with inner truth, and prudence with tone of our internal voice.
Some Links
If you are curious about different toning systems, here is an essay from Iraqi-British musician Khyam Allami (oud player and electronic composer) on his research on Microtonality
A NYT article about electronic music artist Maryanne Amacher. Also, a new documentary on unsung heroines like her called Sisters with Transistors.
Classic sega game, Ecco the Dolphin Soundtrack is solid. 🐬
Some Words
Sun and moon
Sound and tune
Text and rune
In between baroque and broken
Shattered and spoken
These words of ours
Through the mountains and over the trees
We missed the forest of fiction
Those beautiful real dreams
Etching names into wood
Like romantic delinquents
On bathroom stalls
We stalled
Let’s stop
Step back
Beyond the lost delirium of collectivity
And its limbic mimicry
Into our hearts and their counterparts
Returning to radiance
Playing this game with a smile
It just may last a while