burrow out a vestigial badger

good morning ~

(click the link / broken playground to listen)

My Big Breakburrow out a vestigial badger

today’s track is a version of the angel sampler choir I played in the basement over the weekend, feels like pouring cold honey from a jar

extremely cool and *funded* opportunity for upper Hudson Valley folks (and technically western Mass, too!) - local audio org Wave Farm and beloved venue Avalon Lounge are teaming up for a pretty unique mentorship program in 2025 where Avalon co-founder Liam and I will be showing two folks all of the ropes on how to throw shows: running sound, house management, band payouts, flyer design, lighting, etc! there is a stipend for participating and plus you will by the end of it possess my sacred knowledge - you can read more and apply here.

speaking of Avalon - - the beloved New Year’s Eve Eve party returns for the third year in a row. to be clear, this is a party the night BEFORE new year’s, meaning december 30 - - I’m going to do some kind of opening invocation, Photay’s gonna DJ, Davon’s gonna DJ, Max is gonna DJ, I might DJ some, too, plus the party’s free - you do not have anything better to do in your life than come to this:

Here I am scratching at it, digging in the couch cushions like a dachshund trying to burrow out a vestigial badger, a pig on a leash snorting at the faintest whiff of truffle. I'm sniffing for it. I'm sending out of pocket emails. Might have to start knocking on doors. I'm taking informational meetings and job interviews. I'm doing the song and dance for hours at a time and wondering later on why my knees hurt. Tooting my own horn often - in this way the process has been good for me - the sound of my own horn being tooted is so beautiful - but I'm also pretty tapped out. Too many possible futures, not enough cash in hand. I feel like an impossibly high rocket of a ball, up in the air and arcing gracefully, but will I clear the fence, fireworks? Or will I plop into the soft, worn leather of the fielder's mitt? At this point I'd be happy with a couple of bounces in the grass and a runner at second.

I don't think I've ever been introduced by a wizard before, it really did give the set a charged quality that I had not anticipated. He's amazing to watch - the robe and the hat and his infectious energy is indeed a powerfully visible kind of magic. I realize pretty quickly that he and I are swimming some of the same channels - as MC he drew focus in, made people believe that what they were about to see was something rarefied, got them to pay attention without them realizing. I was already in place behind my synth when something called the "compliment conga" began upstairs but basically my understanding is that he got people to line up and say nice things about each other, a spell of ice breaking. This felt eerily similar to the "turn to your left" greetings of megachurch services - we really are just out here yearning for communion and fraternity, we're really out here praying to the new gods in misshapen poetry, ain't we? A surprising number of people paid rapt attention to me coaxing a digital mirror choir of my own voice from the sampler, our song of praise.

Making beautiful sounds in basements will not be the immediate fix to my current dilemma. I am very grateful for the door money and the merch sales that covered my commuter train fare and gas, but I don't foresee any world in which the various performances, wedding gigs, commissions, etc. cover the mortgage. These opportunities do pay out on an even greater debt though, one of cosmic proportions with an incalculable interest rate - they are the locus of meaning, the pinhead on which the angels dance. Unfurling my chords in service of the listeners made me feel more actual than embodied than I have in weeks - the opposite of never hearing back on a cold email job application.

I did not realize we were going to someone's home - I thought we were going to a workshop but no problem at all, the family is ridiculously adorable and the children affectionately pat us on the shoulder as they tell us about pokemon cards or the DIY slime they are about to make. This cold email wish is one that came true - the man who makes the fancy speakers is already a fan of Cicada Waves and now we get to listen to music and the sounds of a rainforest on his floating, colorful, eco-foam cutout speakers. I learned recently that on the John Martyn song "Small Hours" - which has gotta be one of the greatest ever - they piped in the live, actual sound of a nearby pond captured on fancy microphones. Here, in what feels like a former schoolhouse in the East Village, the geese leapt from the speakers - you could follow their honks from right to left. We were encouraged to listen to my friend's music, too, with her sitting right there, and again I struggled to identify precisely which piece of drone I contributed to her album - it's in there somewhere! Talk of the speakers capabilities led us to hearing "Everything is Romantic" by Charli XCX and by god, yes, the (midi?) string arrangements really are gorgeous. Her kick drum nearly rattled them off the walls, though.

In what way, exactly, could this become a job? That remains unclear - such is the way when you are inventing opportunities for yourself to be useful. But if every informational meeting involved swapping LPs and identifying particular phenomenon on a live stream field recording I would look for employment forever, or at least until the money runs out.

And now I'm just keeping my head down, planting as many possible seeds as I can, manically sending out resumes and letters of interest before the end of the year email drought prevents people from offering me a response. I'm doing zoom calls, I'm lining up meetings, I'm following up. I'm doing extremely scary unemployment paperwork and switching my medical coverage. I'm hounding people to pay me on the outstanding invoices. So many people are telling me "oh this person wants to talk to you about a cool opportunity" but then I never actually hear anything. I'm going through every single one of the - how many, 200? - My Big Break tracks and seeing it they're suitable for licensing. I've been hounding Mood Music (formerly Muzak) about any royalties I might be owed - they licensed "Holding Up the Sun" to play at Starbucks (!) last year and I never saw a dime of the, like, eighteen dollars I'm probably owed. I'm doing under the table freelance work when it comes in - by the way, I would have to write 300 album bios a year to equal my last salary, maybe that's possible? I'm wondering how I can make more. And in the midst of all this, we had to buy a new refrigerator. I am, as they say, putting it out there. But what "it" and "there" are remains to be seen.

But what about you? What are you frantically scrambling to accomplish in the last few days of the year? Do you find yourself an accidental wizard on occasion? What color is your slime?