June respite
Mexico City, Tennessee, Birthday recap, music soon!
Friends!
I’ve got so much to catch up on this newsletter but the quick version is, this is the month I have been needing!! On my birthday I got to read my novel in a big chunk for so many friends and family and people LIKED IT (and last week I finished the third draft and I think I’ve finally landed on the right structure! As the writers say for complete drafts it has a beginning middle and end!), I did indeed go on a trip to Mexico City with Alex, and I saw my friend Ashton get married in Nashville. I’ve made two cakes this month, so I’m back to the business I cultivated in 7th grade, yes 7th grade when I was obsessed with Cake Boss, I got to play PhilaMOCA which was such a fun show and I was reminded that shows don’t always have to be extremely stressful!
In fact we’ve got another show June 28th at Ortlieb’s with my bandmate Daniel Sohn and my label sibling Leilani Patao. They’ve just changed the time to doors 1pm show 2pm, which depending on when you click the link, may or may not reflect that. Because it’s a Sunday matinee I am told there will be brunch cocktails and brunch hot dogs :)
Being back in Tennessee this past weekend was reminding me of that spark music gave me when I lived there. Seeing my friends who really truly feel like family and who wrote More Meat with me and toured that first crazy summer with me. It was bittersweet to be reminded how impossible it was to leave and try and release the album in a new city. It makes me sad but also is validating being back with everybody, these people I went through this lightning in a bottle experience with, and am like yes that was amazing, it WAS so hard to leave, and hearing them reflect on the impact of that tour and summer recording. I think each of us in our own ways felt a big loss when it was over. I’ve had to sort of reform my relationship with music afterwards. I want to find (and in going back this time felt I was starting to find) the bridge between Tennessee Sara Mae and Philly Sara Mae. How can both inform my path forward in music, how can I bring all my friends into the big picture of my artistic process? We were listening to records at Josh and Dani’s new place with the big mimosa tree in the backyard and not to be dramatic but I was feeling like I could listen a little better being back where music really felt like it started for me. I had this heat and ambition when we were making the first record and it was helpful to be reminded of that part of me. Maybe that’s this month’s hotness studies for you! Feverish excitement to write, to play music, to pitch crazy ideas, to dream without any hesitation! Before I knew how stressful it would be lol !!!
I feel lit up looking ahead to July—I’ve booked a bunch of time in the studio in Philly and am going to go see Danny at his studio in NYC, and me and Sam are doing an artist retreat weekend to construct an actual show, something with a proper overall narrative. Maybe above all in Tennessee, I was reminded I can be hopeful, I actually want to articulate bigger dreams. I was fighting for sustainability for a long time, and steadiness for the band. But I think it’s good to sprinkle in some unfettered excitement in there. And I think I need to get down south more to see my friends. I feel like I was remembering a big part of myself. Seeing Ashton get married, literally glowing in Tennessee sunlight, filled me up with such bursting joy. Josh officiated and his and the couples’ joint meditations on what marriage means had me weeping. There were so many gay people and I ate so much cake. This weekend I also got to spend time with my cousins and aunt and uncle, who I haven’t seen in years and years. It was good to laugh so much. My uncle said my haircut makes me look like Gram. I watched Gabriel catch fireflies with his daughter. Me and Alex stayed up until 2:30 catching up with Josh one night and hearing about his new house, work, his music. We swam in the quarry and I lost my sunglasses. We went back to our favorite vintage spots and I bought loud, colorful things that feel more like me from 5 years ago and it was like I was restoring something to its rightful place. We went to diners where everyone talked like they already knew each other. We sat in the 90 degree heat waiting for our friends and smiling stupidly. We watched Josh and Dani’s new favorite scary tv show (Widow’s Bay) and I didn’t sleep at all.
I also want to tell you a bit about Mexico City, which somehow happened this month. We weren’t expecting to be able to go this year but it worked out as a last minute five day whirlwind. We saw an entire exhibition dedicated to Remedios Varo (one of my favorite Surrealist artists) with iterative sketches of her masterpieces as well as paintings I’ve never seen from her commercial work that got her through to the era when she could focus on her artistry on her own terms. I was surprised how moved I was by Frida Kahlo’s work—I cried at the painting (attached below) of her thinking of Diego—and how moved I was by the house they shared: the bridge that connected their separate living spaces, the paints he had mixed from natural dyes, the denim curtains, the trees Frida must have looked at from her kitchen window. I’ve been thinking about interviewing my friends who are artists about their studio, what they fill their space with, what their daily practice looks like, since being on this trip. There’s the way people talk about artists in their moments of greatness and height of their careers, but then there’s the lived reality, the real quiet pleasure of tinkering each morning, out of the eyes of others. It felt so sweet to get to understand some of these artists’ quiet moments even a little bit better.
There was also so much good food. A few highlights for me were green clam soup at a fancy restaurant that took pity on us and seated us despite having the wrong reservation, al pastor tacos we ate at a place in Centro while the entire restaurant yelled watching a finals match between two Mexico City soccer teams, the still warm anise roll from El Cardenal in San Ángel, and cafe olla at a breakfast spot our last morning, which was insanely good, despite both me and Alex having a very American stomach bug our last morning. We took siestas in the afternoons with the windows open, perfectly timed with the rain. We sat in the park, sometimes crashed the salsa lessons happening, Alex painted, I read Borges. Our Spanish got better as we went (we both kept speaking in Italian and confusing ourselves) and I left energized to keep learning, to prepare better next time we travel, hopefully with a bit more time. We saw Lucha libre and the ballet and shopped at the big market in Coyoacán and were too tired to fully appreciate the anthropological museum but still freaked out when we stumbled on a Leonora Carrington painting there (another Surrealist painter I love) and kept slowing down by the textiles on the second floor. I took pictures of so many altars I saw in the city, and recordings of so many of the organilleros. We went down into a crypt and I thought about how beautiful it is to be housed in a sacred building for eternity, how safe, but then as we were coming back up the stairs I felt like I needed to be in sunlight so badly, and I thought about how short our lives are, how grateful I am to be in mine, how lucky, and watched a bee orbit a rose in the church courtyard and had a good cry. I bought a couple rosaries and talked to God through the plants and the light. I felt brought back to my aliveness in a big way! I felt lucky to be there. And how small the world is—one of the books Alex designed was on display at a mezcal bar, and the sweetheart owner was so excited she gave us a bunch of drinks on the house, and she and Alex asked each other for a photo together at the same time.
This is all to say: this month has helped me get out of my funk! It really does feel like a new season! Dare I say summer! Walking around at South Street Pride with my friends and taking it slow for once, getting pasta to round out the day. My birthday weekend it was also Italian market festival and that Saturday as vendors were closing up and the heat broke, I got corn ice cream and churros and walked around with Daniel, AJ, and Alex looking up at the light in the trees, going from park to park, asking questions in my head about where I’m headed in this life, and hearing children playing in the rose bushes answering each one. I’ve been taking the plant nursery a day at a time (I’m writing more on the job as part of the work, spending longer just getting to know the plants) and trying to work on my artistic projects each day, the novel, my poetry, and rather than pay for another music class, play guitar over a song and learn it by ear. My coworker Marcelino said this thing about how each of us are walking around with a God-shaped hole in our hearts, and it can only be filled by something bigger than ourselves, and that shape looks different for each of us. Sometimes we’re searching so much that we’re missing it entirely. So I’m trying to search a little less, take stock a little more. And what do you know, Zenaida’s wisdom for my next new moon cycle:
Gemini New moon (June 14-july 14) two of wands reversed: You may be getting ahead of yourself, are you obsessing over the details of the future that you cannot plan away? It might be helpful to make a list of things in your life that you can control and a separate mirroring list of the things you can’t control and do WHATEVER YOU CAN to RELEASE the list that you can’t control. Tear it, burn it and focus on the parts of your life where you do have influence. Worrying or over planning a future that hasn’t come yet steals you from the present. Notice patterns of obsession and try to redirect yourself when it comes up.
Thanks for sticking with me through this beast of a newsletter, but I’m glad for so many happy moments this month!!!
Music I’m enjoying recently:
Fine But Dying the whole album by Liza Anne
EVERYONE GOES TO HEAVEN by Porches
Gentle Love by Greg Mendez
Cradle by feeble little horse
Hiriku by Diles que no me maten
The whole album Arriba Huentitán by Vicente Fernández
Under Your Spell by Desire
Revisiting Only God Was Above Us and Vampire Weekend’s discography in general
Carrie & Lowell which I would argue is not actually so sad and Josh and Dani said yeah it’s sort of upbeat and wistful!!!
Sending a lot of love !! and HAPPY PRIDE TO ALL MY LGBTQs OUT THERE!!!!
<3 Sara Mae