impression

 

Dear Recent History,

You know how a lot of artists and makers really buried the needle during the pandemic?  Churning out all kinds of daily delights?  People made dozens of pairs of socks, they repainted, they made beautiful and poignant music and youTube videos, they planted flowers, they expressed their anxiety in all kinds of wonderful ways.  I did not.  I had none of that kind of energy.  To me, it felt like I was waiting in line at the scary roller coaster, moving very slowly towards my turn in the terrifying little cart; not a time to focus on creative pursuits at all.  My mind was frantic in its existential crisis.

I know somewhere out there, there must be one other person, maybe even five or ten, who felt like I did; too sad to make much of anything.  I didn't really know before that huge global event (the event, I expect, of my lifetime, even though no one even talks about it anymore) that my impulse to make art comes from something like joy.  I wasn't feeling any joy, or even any neutral sort of okayness.  I know some of you are out there; I hope you know that our way of getting through was fine too; it's possible we may have felt some guilt about 'wasting all that free time.'  We might still feel that we ought to feel that, but, with the power vested in me as a human who did not feel like being productive during that planet-wide tragedy, I officially absolve you (& myself) from all that crap.  We did the right thing, which was no-thing at all.  Doing nothing is fine, even best in many cases.

Still, I know you were marking time in some way; I made one of these little marks at the end of each day, in this cherry wood plank that a printmaker gave me.  I didn't start right away, I had to back fill about 38 marks or so; and sometime after the second year, after the vaccines didn't evaporate the virus, I thought, oooh, this is maybe not going to end in any kind of definitive way....

I kept making marks until May of last year; when I caught the dratted crud Covid finally.  After days of illness and finally testing negative, I was so debilitatingly tired that I got disgusted with the project; I was never going to be done making marks.  My Father caught Covid for the third time, this May.  It is printed now, and 'finished' in a sense.  There could be other endings for this board, too: cutting it up, burning it, using the back- saving it until time demands to be counted in that way again.

Baking, July.

 

Dear July,

I am trying to pace myself in your heat wave- this is day 4; there are 6 to 10 more!  There is no ice cream; we ate it in the pre-heat heat wave of a week ago.  We had cake instead.  Cake is brought to me today through the great and glorious technology of Modern Conveniences.  A little after the last big record shattering (and mentally scarring) heat wave of  the First Covid Year of 2020, we got a spiffing heat exchange air conditioner.  And last year, I was given a hand me down very Fancy Toaster Oven.  

This toaster oven is not at all like Old Bess, our beloved stove which runs on great gobs of propane; the emissions of which fill our well sealed straw bale house, especially when you don't want to open the door or window to let in the triple digit heat.  This Little Bess, a Bessie, really, is electric and using it does not make the red light flash on the Units of Death* meter we have in the kitchen.  It heats up in an absurdly short time, and can cook some fairly large things, like this cake!

It's adapted from a recipe from the wonderful people at Hayden Flour Mills.  Here is the original, and this is what I made today, with just a bowl and a spoon; no mixer required.

1/2 cup light olive oil (one that doesn't taste of olives)

1 cup sour cream 

3/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla paste

1 egg

      Mix all the above in a bowl, until it isn't lumpy.  Add:

1/2 cup tortilla flour (masa harina, for instance, or use more A. P. flour, or go crazy, and add cornmeal or buckwheat flour)

1 cup all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt.

     Mix all this until it isn't lumpy and pour it into a 8 inch, greased, round pan.  Bake it in Little Bessie, or Old Bess, or whatever you have for an oven, for about 30 minutes at 325 degrees.

Now, you can eat it as it is, or you can make a simple glaze:  In this instance, 2 tablespoons of melted butter, 3/4 cup of powdered sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla, and heavy cream until it is the right viscosity (trust yourself!).  But, this cake would be great with ice cream or whipped cream, or even whipped up ricotta!  It's what Marion Cunningham would call a "plain cake" and plain here means it is like a tee shirt, it goes with everything!

* AKA carbon dioxide monitor.

PS I almost forgot your song, July!  I know, I know; the drinking, the driving, the objectification of women, but, oh!  The euphemisms, the longing, the story; and anyway, I have not been known as the saint of San Joaquin!

learn the words, you might sing this

 

ufo

Dear Duckies,

Here is your song for today!  And, remember, don't, don't, Don't Believe the Hype.  

Ground Plane XVIII

 

Where the hell have you two been?

 

Freedom soundsystem.

Dear Unknown to Me,

Hey!  I love your voices- I can't believe I never knew you before now!  My DJ just played Norma Fraser's version, and it got me to thinking about who else has recorded this song, which is how I found P. P. Arnold.  Here they both are, and sounding so beautiful, on Radio Dodo, your Friday Dance Party tracks for the second Friday of summer!

The First Cut.

The Second First Cut.

Oh, it's so good; let's have some more!

The Third.

The Fourth.  (Oh!  Such a White Orchestral intro!  Amazing!  It gets so deeply maudlin, hymnal, Country & Western, doesn't it?)

The Fifth.

The Sixth.

keeping it together & the emotional labor blues

 

Guy Debord

Dear Workers,

You come to a time, and that time could be now, when you find yourself deep in a task that you thought you'd seen the last of.  You unbend from your load, straight up into an Awareness that you have been here before.  

You have been holding things together for 9 hours straight, and this is the 4th day of such straight-i-tude, and you have NOT barked at anyone, nor have you burst into tears at the total futility of it all; no, you have patiently suffered all the minor slings and arrows, all the grim facts (such as: no one even noticed that I got the food!  No one said thank you when I washed all those dishes!  I told that story to keep the ball rolling and people said I was stupid for not 'correcting' the hapless person in the story!), and you notice that you have done this easily 1,000 times.  Ah, no, not easily, but uncomplainingly, is my point.  You have held it together for your friends, your family, your work colleagues, all without a single error, and also without a single notice.  

The thing here, that I am trying to tell you, is that the thanks wouldn't even cover it at this point, and the real terrible thing, as you straighten up into that aforementioned Awareness, is that what you really want is to be able to avoid these Kind of Situations where you step into the Keep It All Together person role, where you are lifting everyone's emotional baggage up, up, up again!  

As for my own complicity in this, I know, that just like my father has often said, when asked what he might need (vis-à-vis: tools) while undertaking some harebrained repair job, "I need to have my head examined!"

PS  Your song for today is Career Opportunities!  And, this one, too.

a June tune

 

Courtesy of Hyperfine.

Dear Listener,

Here is your song for today; indeed, your tune for June!  It's a lovely, fugue-y spiral of a song- may you love it as much as I!  Happy Solstice!

PS More ways to see what the sun is up to.