Album out May 24th! Two singles out now!
+ some May reflections
Hi all,
I’m going to lead with my big news. The first two singles from The Secret Ingredient is More Meat, Ballerino and Backlit can be streamed now, and you can watch the paper mache mask music video for Ballerino and the Catholic drama music video for Backlit (which hit 3k views this morning!!!) on YouTube now.
I feel relieved, flustered, thrilled, exhausted, alive! About the music starting to come out. Please comment below what you think of the songs! The videos! The lyrics! The art! I’m so excited I’m starting to hand things over to the world.
Here are some behind the scenes shots from Backlit (My favorite being the one of me in the kind of Vegas dress with slicked back hair talking to someone off-camera. I saw that picture and thought, have I ever felt more beautiful?) Makeup and hair by angel Julia Kempner!
And if you’re looking to celebrate with me coming up…
Philadelphia album release show May 24th!!!! All graphic design by Alex Bruce, and photography by Uv Lucas.
New York show May 25th!
Baltimore show May 26th!
And then the tour posters for the whole summer!
I hope to see you in your local butcher shop soon. If you want all this info in one place, check out my website.
<3 <3 <3 <3
Honestly, groundedly, humanly speaking, it’s the beginning of May and I’m looking for a change. We’re in Taurus season, my favorite season, and I’ve just left a job that was really emotionally difficult. It’s getting warm, like two days ago I was in Annapolis visiting my parents, and my mom and I just walked around downtown with no agenda, and I was wearing this funny gingham dress with spaghetti straps and I felt so comfortable. It was a little foggy and I sat in the garden of my favorite bookstore there, had crab for two meals in a row. I have been so stagnant at the beginning of 2024—a lot of logistics and a lot of turmoil, and I am so excited that my birthday is next week, that I can start a new chapter in my working life, that the songs are starting to come out. I played my first show of the release cycle in Knoxville a week ago, and it was just a complete dream. Old and new friends played with me, my cousin came, people from my MFA came. It was for a festival, Dogwood, that used to be my very favorite every spring. Alex and I went and sat at the quarry on our last morning and talked about not wanting to leave Knox. I’m so grateful for that place.
My friend Piero did a sort of spell for me a few weeks back when Alex and I visited New York, one that was meant to cleanse. I got a new job the next day. And now I have all these feelings revealing themselves to me. I’m so bad at putting things down, at not fixating, but I’m wondering how I can compost all the judgments, sadnesses, low self-esteem of the past few months and grow something else in its place. I always think about what Zenaida says, about moving feelings through the body. I’m trying to move some things. I always rely on lemons and vinegary things in the spring, to eat, to clean, to do spells with, and I’ll just say that here so that maybe it’ll bring me back to myself.
Today I am thinking about Isr**l’s invasion of Rafah, the student encampment in solidarity with Palestine at Penn and all the art about a liberated Palestine hung up on clotheslines there, the org APN I found out about this week, that is starting to replant crops in Northern Gaza. I think I have been feeling a lot of dissonance in my own life and around me, and I keep hearing this sentiment, and reminding myself of it, that the more capacity I have to be present with this rage and sadness, the more I will be able to find joy in liberation, and the harder I will fight for it. Have you imagined what Palestinian liberation could look like? What food sovereignty looks like? What freedom means to you? Some writing prompts if you’re looking for them, which remind me of some Ariana Brown writing prompts from a few months ago if you want to dig in more. Also if you’re looking for a place to send money, a friend of a friend evacuated Gaza, and is trying to establish stability in his new life. You can join a Patreon to support Waseem and his family here.
I don’t think any of this is inextricable from what I’ve been talking about. I want to be able to turn towards the hardest, biggest feelings, rather than ignoring them. It is completely horrifying and devastating and infuriating seeing the videos this week, and for the last 214 days. From the river to the sea.
Hanif Abdurraqib has been writing a lot about his life on this current book tour, with an honesty and attention that has made me think about what traveling and playing music means to me, what I want from it. He writes about the big loneliness that comes with traveling, how he strategizes ahead of time to call friends each night who live on the other coast, or to make time for ice cream, or to really cherish the details he is grateful for, to write them down. In Knoxville:
three blue herons on the drive down
Nyleen’s pep talk about staying true to myself
Joey’s dances while playing bass
Joel’s drums shaking the stage during “Backlit”
Jebby’s jokes
my cousin Laura saying Gram would’ve cried seeing me play piano
hugging Kelsi
cookies at Emily Jalloul’s house
the quarry on a cool morning
big laughter with Clay
a long afternoon with Alex and Gabriel at the German place we love with vegan curry wurst over fries
a big drive
a comfy bed
getting to play and hear new version of Morricone live with a full band
the feeling of returning
I hope spring is giving you the chance to thaw a little, to really feel things and breathe in the warm air.
With a lot of love,
Sara Mae