fill the bellows of your belly with their mechanical wings

good morning ~

(click the link / painted ceiling to listen)

My Big Breakfill the bellows of your belly with their mechanical wings

today's track is one of my favorites I have ever made for this project - I sang over these chords at Tubby's last week

sorry for missing last Thursday's email - I ran out of time trying to get to France

I've been a Fashion Week hanger on for the last week in Paris and will definitely have more to say about our time here soon (in the meantime, you can read some French coverage of my partner's project here and here)

we'll be home this weekend, a more familiar wilderness

Couldn't help it, I just kept inviting people over for breakfast. I guess the show filled me with an expansive spirit - that isn't always the case. The touring band, partners, buddies, neighbors, the club owners, plus our friends up from the city who would be in attendance by default, almost anyone we knew sleeping on this side of the river, plus two dogs. Could you pick up some vegan cream cheese? And yes definitely bring potato salad.

Down the road from our place there's a farm store so the five of us that slept at our house piled in to go raid their freezers for bacon and breakfast sausage, some of the best I've ever had. People started arriving before we got back but they just let themselves in - this feels good to me, for whatever reason.

Almost immediately - like, within five minutes of coming upstairs - our friends' toddler found her way into the part of the stash we forgot to put away. We have a couple of these zippered fruit pouches that look like a mango and a lime that we keep on the coffee table and long ago we once tucked a few of these caffeinated weed pills I like inside the lime. We somehow missed her rummaging around in there among the wax paper. What are these? she asked, proffering one of them toward a group of us with an open palm. GL didn't miss a beat: ah, those are seeds! Let's stick that here in the dirt of this potted plant, maybe it'll grow.

The food was good and nourishing - bagels all the way from New Jersey, so exotic, the fluffiest and most Dutch of Boys, the salade de pommes de terre earthy in brilliant, turmeric yellow, even the burned bacon felt exquisite. Nowhere near enough places to sit and eat but no one seemed to mind standing. I made coffee constantly for two straight hours lacking anything more efficient than a chemex. Records on the turntable remarked upon and bopped to, the lineup of the bands examined amid pleasant morning chatter. The two dogs running wild up and down the wet, sloping hill behind our house, everyone agreed that this was a particularly good episode of Dog TV.

We wished the touring band well as they departed for Providence (were it that we could join!) and immediately began taking naps. Exhausted from the exuberance of hosting and full in the belly we slumbered profoundly while the echoes of breakfast party rang out in the walls - when we woke up the house still smelled like bacon.

The funny thing was that our whole plan that weekend was to go to a fancy dinner that our buddy was throwing, so we had to start getting ready for dinner right when we woke back up. We showered, dressed, and piled in our friends' hybrid vehicle for the long drive over to dinner in Massachusetts.

These dinners go really hard. The freshest, most thoughtfully prepared vegetarian meals you could ever hope to enjoy, and this particular edition took place in a very lovingly appointed old house with wooden ceilings. We were greeted by a buddy of ours behind the bar with espresso martinis - my signature bar order of late - and as we turned a corner into the dining area live jazz guitar filled the antechamber hallway. People dressed out and we chatted with strangers and met up with other friends and got back in line for the bathroom and the bar. Once seated there was a parade of fresh pasta, pink radicchio, melted butter, and crispy arancini. I always eat well when our friend is serving dinner, often I eat too well and am down for the count, but this evening we got it just right. We were already happy customers, content to roll on back to Climax, but then our friend the host cryptically mentioned goodie bags - make sure to grab one. Wow, she tracked down a cannabis sponsor and everyone got a bunch of free weed! Evening plans sorted: an eleven dollar pre-roll shared among friends and Purple Rain projected on a blank wall of the studio. In the morning I play the chords to the eponymous song on my piano as we drink our morning beverages, it is a nice moment among us.

After a walk in the hills behind our house we once again find ourselves eating well, this time at the not-as-thoughtful breakfast buffet at the historic seafood restaurant off the highway. The food can't compare to anything else we've eaten, but the novelty of hitting the heat lamp carving station amuses us plenty. And then our friends have to go.

One week later we attend Sunday mass at the Church of Saint Sulpice. I wanted to hear its famous pipe organ, an impressive instrument that retains its mechanical bellows - many of the other cathedral organs of Europe have gone electric, Judas. The chords ring out magnificently in the unbelievably huge cavern of the building, totally dwarfing the tiny voices of the congregation. I want to hang forever in the resolution of its chords: this, I suddenly realize, is the origin of much of my music. The service is in French but I recognize the weary rhythms of mass and more or less understand it, still can't figure out when you're supposed to kneel and when you're supposed to stand. Afterwards there happens to be a tour in English so we enthusiastically join. In one of the chapels the guide directs our gaze upward to the carved insects subtly buzzing about the ceiling: bees and locusts, an illusion to John the Baptist's weird keto diet. We all live in a wilderness. The question is: are you hungry enough to crack open the carapace? Are you brave enough to scoop out the honey, to let it run down the length of your arm? From among you do you draw your nourishment. Eat well and fill the bellows of your belly with their mechanical wings.

But what about you? Who are you eating breakfast with? Are you mechanical or electric? Are you planting seeds in the flower pots?