The Slow Season; some wandering thoughts. (Patreon)

Hello loves.

Greetings from pre-dawn, where my thoughts are escaping in wispy clouds, Ash still sleeps, and I am dawdling over to you to say something larger and wandering.

At the risk of staying the obvious, and in relative terms:

This is a slow season for me. But, I am also finding, for many. I am not alone.

There’s a massive amount of pile-up and reckoning.

I have been on patreon for almost 8 years now - the anniversary is coming up in March - and I am still baffled and delighted and confused on a daily basis by my own ability to dance and improvise through my workday in a way that most artists do not. I am still making this shit up as I go along. It’s an honor to be able to do that.

The last three years of my life have been, on many unseen and unshared levels, an unprecedented (there’s that word) struggle.

I’ve witnessed an epic amount of unbelievable darkness and I am only just starting to piece it all together.

The pandemic threw us all into different fires. Mine burned with a heat I’d never quite had to handle; as most of what I was experiencing could not be shared. Sharing is my superpower. I was cut off at the voicebox. It created a resilience I could never have imagined.

It’s also lonely.

Like many of us stumbling though the pandemic, my own life story wound up adjacent to the collapse, breakdown and suffering of so many others; and I’ve been wondering what to do with all of it.

I have spoken with many people who work in various kinds of mental health care, or have partners with severe mental health issues, and this is a good time to remind us all.

It is it’s own strain of trauma: being on the other of the phone for the suicide threats, being the one who catches the meltdowns and calls 911, being the witness, bearing the meds, hiding the meds, calling the rest of the family, avoiding the rest of the family, wondering if you are helping, wondering if you can help, wondering if you should help.

In the wake of all of this: learning to move more slowly.

I am learning to - literally and figuratively - release less. I am a release expert. Less release at the moment, more breathing and waiting.

Ash’s story is bound up in mine. Like all the children of the present day, his story is also bound up in the pandemic. What he lost, what he gained? We built one community in New Zealand and are struggling to find our footing back at home with the pieces of our old one. The tatters are wide over here in America. People are so tired and fragile.

A friend who just had a baby was giving me a emotional report a few days ago, and it resonated.

She spoke to the loneliness within the greater exhaustion. She said a lot of people were offering to help - to cook, to babysit the older kiddo, etc - and then backing out, feeling too overwhelmed to follow through.

She’s getting texts along the lines of “I know I said I was going to cook for you but I just am so busy... I’m so sorry”. She then has to calm and reassure them that it’s okay, and assuage their guilt. She told me people had big, bursting desires be part of a supportive community …. with no emotional/economic/time resource to follow through.

Oh, this hit me to my core. I know that whiplash from both sides.

I feel this all around me in America, and I also felt it to a certain sense in New Zealand, even on the best of days. Covid opened and shut the doors in ways that made no sense in the olden days.

My old way of functioning - to race from town to town creating a party, whipping up a circus tent, connecting with endless people - still feels like a core, innate ability. A power; like a well that just flows and never dries. It feel like those days will come again, by necessity. World needs bread and circus.

But right now it feels like the moment to hold this this child very still, introducing him to the important players in his life ever so slowly as we emerge from the wreckage of the last few years, and set aside my personal desire for release … for a while.

It is always hard to tell what is poetry and what is coincidence and all that. But not off topic, I am meeting and having deep discussions with more and more survivors of sexual assault, domestic abuse, and childhood sexual abuse. Quietly, in safe spaces, we share our stories. And these stories I am hearing - and the tales of how these survivors manage to navigate life having seen and experienced the unspeakable - are part of the threads I am braiding together for the rope I’m tossing out my own tower window.

The bravery of these survivors. My god. The sheer bravery in the face of what horrors they have lived. To go on. To speak the truth. To abide. To not seek violent vengeance. To hold the story without letting it eat you alive. Biggest; To not permit the cycle of abuse to continue. To say Enough. To live Enough.

And also. Too many stories that feel they cannot be told, they are too taxing, too damaging, too frightening, too exhausting, too expensive.

So many women I met on tour in 2019 - and I know the pile is growing - just carry a freight of seemingly untellable secrets through the landscape of their lives. Baggage so heavy you can feel it buzzing in their very skin when you hug them.

Yes:

It’s going to stay a slow season.

….until we find our footing.

The entire world is exhausted. The glaciers are melting.

My job - what is my job? What is any artist’s job right now?

I am watching, waiting, slowing, listening. Becoming my own glacier. BYOG.

Listening for what notes and songs to birth into the world. This seems to be my calling for the moment. Just listening for the notes.

The glaciers have a song, a frequency. Quiet. They’re singing. We translate. The artists are also exhausted. We all need a nap.

Meanwhile ….

I listened to you all (thank you again for your comments on that post about what’s needed at the moment) and I think so have found the perfect release for the month.

It’s beautiful, and simple, and strange, and it warms my heart, and I think you will love it.

It was a light worklift for the team and it’ll come out tomorrow/Monday, followed by the Althing, in a classic “Oh Shit It’s The End of the Month” release squish.

But I’m happy. This slowing and stilling is what I know I need.

I’m finding my footing, and I’m doing it barefoot, which is how I like it right now.

Before you hoist the circus tent, you need to level the field on which it’s staked.

Love to you, my safety net patrons of wonder. Trapeze training begins at 6:30 am today.

If it is - or needs to be - a slow season for you, my darling …. oh, you are not alone.

You are not alone.

(I’m reading and responding to comments right now, til Ash wakes up. I’ll read the rest later tonight. Write to me.)

x

AFP