23. Into the Scribe’s Office
You follow a black-robed figure down a long, sunlit walkway.
To your right runs a mid-torso-height wall of wood carvings, and a courtyard that opens up to the sky — from where light pours in.
It’s difficult to look outside, beyond the cloister overhang: the sun’s reflections off the lotus pond are brighter than white. Their blazing sparkles make it hard for your eyes to adjust back to the walkway’s shadows.
You don’t see your guide anymore.
When did she turn?
Corridors branch off to the left every 10 paces. Everyone’s wearing the same outfit and moving swiftly. You scan each hallway for the signature swish of her black robes: easy as spotting the right shopping cart from a Patagonian expanse of supermarket aisles by the odd wiggle of its wheels.
You don’t know where to go.
[ Wait, there’s music wafting over from somewhere ] —
You wander towards the song, honing in on its source by auditioning different turns.
Through trial and error you’re able to get closer. By some acoustical trick, the music always sounds as if it’s coming from the water even though it can’t be, based on the fact that when you walk back towards the courtyard it grows quieter.
You stumble into an empty room with no other exits.
Not quite empty: a lone monk sits on the ground, oversized banana leaf attached to her back, in front of two stacks of parchment.
She motions to you with a calligraphy brush, inviting you to come closer.
// Side B //
Thank you for tuning in! You were listening to an improvisation from March 14, recording #1: 10 minutes excerpted from 60. The photo was taken at the Cloisters, Manhattan — the first neighborhood in NYC I lived in, once upon a scorching summer. Trees and hills perched above the Hudson River. Kids playing in the streets, pushcarts offering Jarritos in every color. We lounged around the house naked, sweating without even moving.
After sunset the evenings would cool somewhat and I’d ride the “A” train, straphanging into various jazz jams around town: usually spots in the Village, with a stop at Cleopatra’s Needle or Smoke on the way back up those vampire-bebop hours ’round about 3:30am.
I never understood what really I was doing — as in, where is this whole jazz “thing” going, anyway? I just knew I loved the music and wanted to keep playing and learning more on the bandstand. It took many years and tours before I realized I was walking a path that was not my own.
The curious sense of looking around and not finding any recognizable goals . . . grew curiouser.
Musicians whom I idolized for their personalities, wise perspectives, infinite imagination — did not inspire me with their actual lives. Even when they were successful and rich and (apparently) happy and free. But I couldn’t see why I wasn’t inspired except by the music itself; I couldn’t even see that there was a disconnect.
Then came Travel Poems.
After a springtime of playing gospel service every Sunday at Mt. Carmel Baptist Church in Brooklyn, I split for the summer on a whim, and ended up showing recordings of some original compositions to dear friends Brian Trahan and Virgil Segal in Berlin, Germany. They proposed we begin recording them — and then we just . . . did.
That never happened in New York. Suddenly, I was also confronted with questions I never considered.
What kind of album would I want to make, if I could make anything? Don’t mind if I do! I’ll take:
songs as vignettes — even short, koan-like . . . poems?
different pianos all over the city + world to record on
a different sonic world for each song, through production and narrative soundscapes
some way to corral these weird 100 minutes of music into — I guess a trilogy album makes the most sense?
Then: what kind of show do I want to create, if it could be anything? Let’s try one featuring not just those soundscapes but also immersive, second-person storytelling (the precursor to Campfire Sparks). Then . . .
. . . like that meme of dominoes about to collapse into ever-larger ones, every question inexorably presented ever-deeper ones. Where are the audiences for this stuff? Who am I as an artist? Am I actually sure I prefer this path to a more tried-and-true route, for instance playing jazz standards or minimal modern classical music?
On Saturday, “View from a Llama” dropped 🦙
“View from a Llama” (buy or stream anywhere) heralds the upcoming Travel Poems . Chapter 3 . There is no path back — it’s the one of the more single-y tracks from the trilogy: not so poem-y, no quirky out-of-tune pianos, soundscapes only at the end. In a month, the whole album releases and, along with it, a 5-day music festival and multi-sensory group exhibition called The Air Is Made Of Music — in the most coup-like move so far, we even scored taimom.com 🎇.
Where is this whole jazz “thing” going, anyway?
To bring this story full-circle: now that the third + final chapter is releasing, we have finally printed CDs of the whole trilogy. Watch the music of Travel Poems enter the 3D world in my first-ever unboxing video1:
This is a limited edition of 200: 3-CD boxset, gorgeous cover paintings, treasure map track listings, 30-page liner-notes booklet2 with a postcard written for each track — priced at $40 for each trilogy set.
Subscribers to Campfire Sparks can order a trilogy for $20 — use coupon code “flint” for 50% off everything in the store, including any other albums.
Paid subscribers can order a trilogy for $8 — use the coupon code in the secret section of this issue — and 80% off everything 🧨
The Season of Collaborations
Colin Aherne and Camille Jackson have added their immense talents to the upcoming exhibition in October. Here’s one of Colin’s photo projects:
And a sampling of Camille’s dance performances:
By next issue, we’ll have finalized the music lineup too. Can’t wait to reveal and get everyone together for a proper extravaganza in a jiff3!
Any photographers in the house who have made or are thinking of making a photo book? Would love to hear your experiences and process since I am going through this now, quite literally dipping my toes in:
Proof of Play, Those Rails a’Hummin
In a spoonful of serendipity, this issue’s first recap entry references working on “Take the ‘A’ Train”:
“We are humans, but if you want we’ll be dancers :)” reads the graffiti on Day 229’s music video, “the woolly mammoth unthaws” (3 hours of logged studio time) —
Day 233, “a prelude to bewitchery” (2.75-hour log) —
Day 235, “where the water bubbles up” (¼-hour log) —
Day 239, “why yes in fact I do work here” (4.5-hour log) —
Everything Must Go
It was not long ago that I decided that it was imperative that I release music, faster, to make room for more ideas to arrive, to keep the imagination-cycle flowing, to rid myself of pesky “perfectionism” and just generally to have more fun.
And I’d still like it to continue.
Not only as an accelerant to a life lived more fully, but also broadened: to give more presents to dear real-world friends and internet acquaintances alike, to share more of what I know, to imbue as many things as I can with The Gift — that tangible, yet-you-can’t-really-hold-it, feeling that accompanies a gesture or object offered to you.
This week, Campfire Sparks welcomed its first Founding Subscription, a level of support that I am floored by.
And this week, all paid and Founding subscribers can order the CD trilogy essentially at-cost, plus shipping (also at-cost).
Plus another secret glimpse into the music of the upcoming Tributary album: