Seemingly Impossible & Objectively Insane
alpacas, art, gigs
Every day on tour you wake up in a new place, open your eyes to a new room, wash your face at a new sink, take in new sounds, new smells. Every day you know you’ll reconvene with the same five people who have gone from strangers to constant companions in the course of a week. Every day you’ll drive, and that action - that forward motion - lends comfort. You’re all moving with a shared purpose towards a shared goal, a kind of insane practice: one that involves hauling several tons of gear in service of seventy five minutes of music only to break it all down, load it into the van, and do it all again tomorrow. But the ritual of it all and the effort collectively mustered and executed gives the music a reverent place to live, even in the grimy walls of a blackbox dive with its punched out greenroom bathroom door, its LED wall that costs extra, and its belching macho staff. You’re all moving with the sun in view, the reason clear, and a strange but steadfast semblance of routine. You know what you’ll be doing tomorrow and who you’ll be doing it with and you’ll continue building this tower together despite completely new surroundings, smells, and sounds. Dysregulation becomes your regulation and when you finally get home and wake up to your room it takes a few minutes to recognize where you are. A wash of sadness and anxiety pours through your bleary and stationary waking. The sense of singular purpose splinters into a log poorly axed with frayed pieces of wood flying, each one a responsibility or loose end you left behind when you joined the circus. But you know you must turn your attention from the road to the wood and begin sculpting. You know each splintered shard will eventually become smooth with your touch and your care. You know this because you’ve seen how attention and reverence can insulate and uplift the seemingly impossible and the objectively insane.
For the next month I’ll be back home whittling the log until heading to the west coast for part two!
A few upcoming gigs:
5/20 duo with Isaac Grossman on pedal steel at Bridge & Tunnel Brewing
5/21 full band songs (with Stephen Becker, Adam Brisbin, and Jon Starks) at Threes Brewing
6/6 Christina Galisatus band at Close Up
6/20 quartet with Simon Hanes, Fred Frith, and Ches Smith at The Stone
6/21 Simon Hanes’ Hurricane Salad at Lifeworld
6/22 trio with Simon Hanes & Fred Frith at Lava Club
Some tour highlights and recs:
Rosie Mae’s Alpaca Farm in North Georgia near Chattanooga, TN. If I ever go missing chances are I moved south and opened an alpaca farm. Extremely necessary tour stop.
Montrose Bird Sanctuary in Chicago - another much needed dose of animals and nature.
Txa Txa Club in Chicago - one of the most refreshing and interesting meals I’ve had in a while! I highly recommend going right after visiting Garfield Conservatory. It felt like eating the fern room but like, in a good way.
Carroll Dunham exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago
Random super nice and deserted rest stop somewhere near Pelham, SC with great bird and tree sounds, a little waterfall, and a perfectly sloped grassy hill to lie on and stretch the back out.
Intuit Art Museum in Chicago!!!
Post-tour sauna (gonna make this a regular ritual I think) - great way to reintegrate and relax the body. I went to this one under the train tracks in Chicago called Lost Language.
What I’ve been listening to:
Solex - Pick Up
Maggie Roche - Where Do I Come From
This Is Lorelei - Box for Buddy, Box for Star
Stephen Becker - Gravity Blanket
Goat (JP) - Joy In Fear
caroline - caroline 2
Good Sad Happy Bad - Shades
Stina Nordestam - And She Closed Her Eyes
What I’ve been reading:
Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles
On The Calculation of Volume III by Solvej Balle
Abundance by Annie Dillard
Keep your ears open for an announcement from the nora songs universe coming in two weeks!!
See you lovelies soon I hope,
N