Summer is here, a time of abundance. Light and life, green and growth. If we are lucky, it is a season that affords us slow, golden days for savoring sweetness, such as a strawberry might provide.
It is also a time of intensity. Temperatures rise, forests burn, anger boils and spills into the streets. All of which is to be expected in our era; this year, it’s compounded by a global plague.
Yikes. I have some thoughts. As usual, I’ll share them at the end of this post. First: some news and updates from the musical realm.
1) A New Band is Born / Livestream Wednesday July 1st at 6:30 PDT!
When my housemate and longtime collaborator Robby Seager and I put together our first Beatles sing-along livestream, we thought it was a one-off. But friends asked for a second one. Then, several people wanted to hire us for private Zoom gigs. We've even played some physically-distanced backyard shows!
With summer upon us and things slowly opening up, we thought we'd respond to the moment by creating a band that caters to such outdoor gatherings. Thus, Lord Ladybug was born. We are offering our live, outdoor, safely distanced musical services to any in the Seattle area who are interested—with rates on a sliding scale.
And we are sticking with our original format as well. Our third Beatles sing-along livestream is happening tomorrow, July 1st, at 6:30 p.m. We have a bunch of new tunes prepared that we think you will love. As usual, we'll provide a link to a lyrics document so you can follow along.
Here’s the link. I hope you will join us!
Lastly, here’s a little preview of what you can expect, from one of our Zoom concerts:
2) Mondays at Canlis Continue... For Now...
My weekly livestreams from the Canlis piano have been a true blessing during this time of lean work. Professionally, it’s been a boon, more than doubling my YouTube subscriber count, and representing my main source of income these days, in the form of tips sent by viewers.
As Canlis continues to adapt their business to the times, they need to use the upstairs space we've been streaming from for other purposes. But, I've learned that they are hoping to move the livestream downstairs to the lounge, where the Steinway lives. Management has been delighted by the success of the streams (as indicated in this NYT article from May), so I am hopeful that they will continue for the foreseeable future.
Subscribe to my YouTube channel for notifications about future livestreams and video uploads. I hope you'll tune in one of these Mondays and make a request!
Here’s a video from a recent set—my rendition of Dr. John's "Dorothy":
3) A Bit of Collaborative Sweetness
A couple weeks ago, my partner Erin led our house in entering KCRW’s 24-hour Radio Race. We got the prompt, “time warp,” at 10 a.m., and sprang into action conceiving of a story, taping interviews, writing and recording music, editing, editing, editing—Erin was up till 5 am, and we were back at it by 8 am. We finally submitted our piece, “Robby’s Quest,” featuring Lord Ladybug’s own Robby Seager, with less than ten minutes to spare. Give it a listen! It's only four minutes long and I think it will make you smile.
Feeling the Heat, Heeding the Call
I know of no better initiation into summer than eating a ripe, organic, locally-grown strawberry (ideally from your own or your neighbor’s garden). The shock of sweetness, the juice staining your fingers and your lips, the flavor of sunlight itself. It makes me wonder what the hell those things they sell at the supermarket in December for $4 a pound are, and how they get away with calling them strawberries. It also makes me feel lucky to be alive.
A ripe piece of fruit is timeless. It is a bridge between us and our ancestors, who knew the same summer joy. Some of the darker aspects of this summer season are timeless too. Many of our ancestors knew the horror of plagues. The police violence and subsequent rage that we are seeing is also far too familiar.
That said, our moment is most certainly unique. When residents of Verkhoyansk, in the Siberian Arctic, felt the temperature rise to 100º Fahrenheit a couple weeks ago, they were experiencing something their forebears could not have related to. Climate derangement is more out of hand than ever, though it is hardly at the front of most people’s minds, given the pandemic and the ongoing demonstrations against police violence.
Perhaps we can say that the magnitude and distribution of the various crises we face are on a scale without precedent. I think it's also safe to say that it is a time of paradox. Our moment is pregnant with both hope and fear. It is equally bleak and inspiring. Never has so much been in danger of collapse; never has so much been possible.
Here in Seattle, activists created the Capitol Hill Organized Protest. The CHOP is a profound statement of hope and resilience in the face of a violently racist system; it is also a messy chaos of competing perspectives and voices, visited far too often by violence. The marches that have shown remarkable endurance around the country and the world reflect just how tired of cruelty people have become; they also feel like a breakthrough with a real shot at making lasting change.
Donald Trump, tortured soul, is flailing—to the point that some have speculated that he is purposely sabotaging his re-election chances. It does seem like he is trying to drag us all down with him. But he is also proving to be a catalyst for urgent moral movements of unprecedented strength, the need for which predates his tenure.
Covid-19 is a terrible illness, claiming unfathomable numbers of our brothers and sisters in vastly unequal distribution. It is also an opportunity for us, as a global people and as individuals, to pause our frenzied forward motion, assess where we are and where we are headed, and try to work together to change course. That the U.S. government has so utterly failed to mount an effective response, so that one-quarter of the world’s Covid deaths have been here, is an embarrassment; the resulting disillusionment about American exceptionalism is a necessary step toward our maturation as a country.
Perhaps you disagree with me. Perhaps in your view it is the Democrats who are threatening democracy, not Trump, to whom the news media has been egregiously unfair. Perhaps you think the whole coronavirus freak-out is overblown, inflated by media hysterics. Perhaps you believe that the police are not the problem, or that the responsible majority of cops overshadow the actions of a few violent ones.
Very well. I have no intention of calling you out and trying to prove you wrong. In fact, I am quite sure you could provide ample evidence to support your claims. We are all selective with the facts we choose to make our stories.
Whatever your reading of the moment, whatever you see as the problem du jour, I hope we can agree that healing is what is needed, that healing requires understanding, and that understanding requires humility. None of us knows how to fix our problems once and for all. The intelligence that will bring us forward must be a collective one, the coalescence of countless individuals playing small parts based on what and who we know, where we are, and what gifts we have to share.
All of us are needed if we are truly to make change. Our pandemic response certainly requires global coordination—but this goes far beyond rushing to develop a vaccine. It also requires conservationists defending wilderness, the destruction of which has accelerated interspecies transmission of disease. It requires naturopaths and holistic healers who understand that bodies are ecosystems, and that when they are healthy they are not so vulnerable to pathogens. It requires a transition away from a global economy of unwieldy supply chains, bloated by derivatives markets, towards localized economies based in useful, well-made goods and specific knowledge.
As Naomi Klein famously put it, speaking of climate change, "this changes everything." That goes for or other problems too, because climate change, pandemics, and state violence do not exist in isolation from one another.
There's a corollary. Like our problems, we don't exist in isolation either. We are a human family, and we depend on each other. Anything that changes everything requires everyone to change.
This is our great challenge and our great hope. If we want to change policing, we will need everyone—including the police—involved. Imagine a world in which there was no reason to call the police in the first place. That seems like a fantasy, of course. But the thought experiment of asking what it would take to get there is useful: it reveals how diffuse and pervasive this issue is, and thus that anyone anywhere is qualified to address some aspect of it.
I am taking a stand for radical inclusivity. If we want to avert climate disaster, let us recruit the oil executives to our cause. If we want to change global finance, let us challenge the idea that accumulating wealth is a worthy goal; let us share what we have. If we want to rebuke Trump and condemn what he represents, let us appeal to the humanity of his supporters. Let us invite them into a better way.
Let us offer people an alternative that they might actually want! Making enemies of others only entrenches warfare. It is what assures that today's successful revolutionaries become tomorrow's oppressors. When others make us into the enemy, let us refuse to play that role.
The inspiration I find these days (and there is much to be found) comes from those who are rising to the challenge of bringing love and creative energy to a moment that sorely needs both.
Our problems are overwhelming; it is likely that many of us feel called into action, but that we don’t know what form that action should take, or how to undertake it safely and effectively.
Remember that action is not always loud or dramatic. Yes, some of us are called into the streets by the sickening footage of another black life extinguished by a cold-hearted state agent. Yes, some of us are called to climb old-growth trees and live in their canopies, refusing to let another ancient being be converted into digits in a faraway bank account. Others of us are called simply to be at home, to stay healthy, slow down, revisit old projects, write poems or songs, or to meditate, read, observe, and try to understand. Others of us must go to work; are keeping people alive by showing up to our jobs in hospitals, grocery stores, at public utilities; are holding our families together with the income these jobs provide. Others of us are taking care of sick family members, children with disabilities, small patches of urban wilderness, or community gardens. Still others of us are beckoned into the depths of anxiety or depression, dark places which can feel hopeless, but which nonetheless can, in time, deliver us to great insights. Let’s not dismiss all the invisible work that, alongside the visible, holds our world together.
It is likely that we are called in more than one direction. We might even feel pulled in ways that seem opposite. Our task is to sort this out. Whatever it is for you, I hope you are listening for your callings. I hope you are trusting that voice which comes from your wisest and innermost place, even when it seems contradictory.
Maybe you hear questions and don’t have answers yet; that is fine. It is much better to wait for an answer you know is right than to rush to answer before you are ready. But maybe you do have an answer, one that you’ve been afraid to acknowledge. If you have a feeling that you aren’t where you need to be, can you locate and listen to the voice that is describing the place where you will feel whole? Can you take one small step in that direction?
These days, I’m mostly staying home. I feel called to learn Beatles songs, and to perform them for people. I feel called to collaborate on art projects that spread joy. I feel called to write. (I’m working on a novel.) I feel called to disentangle myself, to some extent anyway, from the global food system, and instead to support local farmers, eat seasonally, learn to garden, fish, forage, ferment, can. I feel called to develop some basic skills in carpentry and bicycle mechanics. I feel called to attend to important relationships. I feel called to try to understand people, and to advocate for love in all its forms.
I am learning to trust that all of these callings are meaningful, even if it is hard to point to any direct result achieved by any one of them. I am learning to trust that, when each of us listens to and follows our callings, the world we yearn for begins creating itself.
This is something many of our ancestors likely knew without having to think about it. In a pre-globalized world, without a corporate news media churning out information by the minute, without social media platforms demanding that everyone fire off daily provocations, they wouldn't have tasked themselves with solving the world's problems. They couldn't have. Yes, they knew profound disagreement. They knew illness and violence. They knew life under empire. They had big, unanswerable questions too. But most of them, most of the time, were focused on life in their communities, on the turning of the seasons, on tending the garden, on raising children, on mending and fixing and upkeep, on participating in ceremonies and rituals.
When summer arrived, they ate strawberries. I recommend you do the same.