seasoning

OR: An Odd 2025/26 Season Announcement

I enter into this season announcement thinking about cycles.

It’s probably a common theme- cycles- among artists laying out the year before them, taking stock of the opportunities ahead, the repeat repertoire, the fluff and the snuff. And all of that stuff.

For instance, I haven’t been in an opera all year because ensemble singing has re-entered my life. Y’all are no strangers to the re-emergence of band lyfe 4 lyfe in my practice. The cyclical urge to chill/create with like-minded hooligans has thriven (throve?) with (ab)scheid and To Be Named, Thing. There’s the cycle of producing yearly recitals with poem|music, podcast episodes (however sporadic) with Is This Music?!?!, and monthly shows with B-Sides. Yes, yes, yes.

But, let me unfold my mind to you.

If you’re reading this, it’ll come as no surprise to you that I have a fledgling, wildly flawed zen practice. In that I read cyclical texts and dedicate to sitting silently on a pillow a few days a week. It will also come as no surprise that I am writing this newsletter with my notepad precariously balanced on my cat, Percy, who has graced my lap with his loafing.

What both sitting on a pillow and my cat sitting on me reminds me of is the importance of pondering. Unfolding. Not digging, but keeping the “thing” askance, in the periphery, so it centers itself willingly. Wow, Percy is warm.

Anywho.

See, there’s a koan kicking around my head. An obscure truth disguised as a riddle:

“What is the sound of one hand on top of…”

We’re accustomed to the phrase “what is the sound of one hand clapping?,” but that’s no mystery: it’s a clap. The pondering is in the sound of the hand, not of the action of the hand. Can we hear the effect of our hand in this high place? How does it vibrate? Hum? Shimmer? What discordance does it bring? Does it distort? Oscillate? Reverberate?

And once that knowledge is gained, how does the sound of one hand on the top of compare to its sound on the top of anything else?

To center the koan, the student is supposed to insert the name of the closest, highest point around them. For me, that’s Tower Hill Park. So, I ask myself:

“What is the sound of one hand on the top of Tower Hill Park?”

…and a barrage of sounds from the myriad scores touched by my hand, the guitar neck, the plectrum, laryngeal vibrations thrum in my ear. A cycle of send and return, input/output absorbed by my hands and repurposed. Melodious, dense and panic-stricken reeds of sinew resounding, reflecting and absorbing, thriving in narrow recesses; a sound like any other, departing and never arriving. A warm, cavernous undertone bound like straw, rich, arduous, full of weightlessly heavy yearning; pure and subtle, unwavering in it’s chaotic distortions, a painful call to gather that promises bliss and balm.

What does this mean?

Indeed.

See you at a show.