20/20 - Clear Water Flows From My Pen

A couple of weeks into a residency, I've been battling anxiety and trying to remember how to be an artist with the help of the following:

 

Zarelli ft. Leonard Nimoy - The Children's Hour

Always a starting point to get creatively enchanted again, this album gets to baptize every studio I settle into. A one-of-a-kind meeting of a brilliant chapter from Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, the sensitive, stately voice of Spock, and fantasy-igniting electronic soundscapes by a Welsh genre-hopper. Sitting down to doodle in my notebook while listening to this is my portal to another mindset.
 

 

Tierra Whack - Dora

Speaking of uncontained, nonconforming, childlike creativity, Tierra Whack continues to play a glorious game unbothered by others' rules.

 

 

 

Run The Jewels ft. 2 Chainz - out of sight

Gig of the year of no gigs. This performance would have been in a class of its own even in a normal concert year. Just another evidence that RTJ are the greatest rap group alive. Killer Mike's verse in walking in the snow and Mavis Staples belting in pulling the pin both made me tear up, but the hyper-inventive tongue-twisters in out of sight got me fired up.

 

 

Andrew Bird - Scythian Empires

Last weekend I took the most beautiful busride of my life, from Jokkmokk to Kvikkjokk. The sky was high and pink, the land was vast and white, and Andrew Bird sang of ephemeral civilizations in my earphones.

 

 

Bill Callahan - Writing

I think I'm getting there. I've started some drawings, I can feel the inklings of sculptural ideas take form in the winding backroom synapses in my head. It feels good to feel the fickle flame of inspiration again, as Bill knows.