April 11, 2024

This one was called "Ice, Whole" (Clever!), an instrumental I made with my old friend Matt Wainwright under the name Gamma Male. This sound here - this slow downward glide with the pitch wheel on the Juno 6 - always evokes the tundra for me, I think because of Mark Isham's music in Never Cry Wolf - a hugely influential movie for me.

For most of my life I've been coveting the freedom of moving back-to-nature without ever fully committing to it. I've settled for the gentle masochism of a stoic life in modern city life. Instead of a ride home, I might opt for the 3 hour hike across town from Capitol Hill to Ballard, just to prove I can do it. Long bike commutes. Fasting. If I indeed had to survive off the land I'd have a hell of a time getting food, but everything else I'd embrace, even if I'd learn by trial and error. Dick Proenneke's Alone in the Wilderness is another touchstone.

The older I get and the more BS I shave from my life, the closer I get to that state, where maybe by the time I'm 70 I'll be recording and writing without need for on-grid power, in a shack lit solely by flame at night like the end of a tunnel. But would a marriage survive that? Nah - probably best to scratch this itch as I have been - in the folds between the rhythms of my daily life.