Practicing Presence
I made this playlist for us and decided to free-research/write it across many emotions and geographies. I hope you enjoy.
MAGICIAN (SUTURE) - MILO
“My transmissions began”
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“The important part is you leave home”
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“The orchestral nature of chaos”
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“God bless the soul of whoever you thought you was”
SLOW DOWN - ART FEYNMAN
The sensuality of slowness. I find myself wanting everything to slow down, from processes to savoring the taste of something. Finding new layers of experience in the infinity of time and space. You can taste a cup of chai over the course of a century if you really let yourself go there. Being with the slowness is hacking at presence. When it’s just you and me, right here in this moment, feeling two bodies/souls dissolve into one.
ONEbody —> NOEbody —> EONbody
Slowmosexual: One who is romantically or sexually attracted to a distortion of time. The spaces in between our current system of intervals become infinite in nature and allow for movements and motions which may stoke ecstatic somatics. Either way, or all the ways, but most importantly…slow.
WINDOW SHADES - U.S. GIRLS
Roller rink disco-synth pop. Acting like I know what it feels like to be heartbroken before it ever actually happens. A teenager harnessing the bliss of ignorance under the performance of maturity, I reach my shoulders side-to-side as I glide past another fantasy lover at the rink. I wanted a tough heart for a tough world.
DO YOU REALIZE?? - THE FLAMING LIPS
I wondered while looking at myself in the mirror the other day if I’ve ever really looked into my own eyes lovingly. Could that tell me something about how much I love myself? Has anyone ever tried that? I looked into my eyes and opened my heart. I cracked a slight smile, softened my chest like how I do when I think of a crush and moved back and forth between each iris, sometimes resting my gaze in between my eyebrows to try and take both of them in at once. It wasn’t easy. I felt scared that I would disappear, that my reflection [/ego? /soul?] would go “boo!” I will keep trying. Let me know if you try it too.
THE SUBURBS - ARCADE FIRE
The suburbs in Sacramento are pretty cookie cutter, though the magic can be found if you know how to tap into it. I have family here but no friends. There’s a difference. Not in a bad way.
I crave to be known. I day-dream like a teenager. Of a distant lover who knows me better than I know myself, a career that gives me space to do my thing, a wardrobe full of handmade clothing, a writing and craft sanctuary in all of my favorite cities, a resolute community. In my bed watching tv, I think about the trajectory of the fashion industry across the first season of ~Project Runway~ and the latest season of ~Making the Cut~. There was a time I want(ed) to be like the lesbian fashion editor in Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion.
You think I was bullied in Sac. “No, I was bullied in Virginia. Being different in Sacramento is a good thing, mama jaan.”
Thrift Town was our secret before the film Ladybird. You helped me look for skirts there two days ago. I read a lot of David Sedaris in this room. My livejournal was emo as hell and I had a strange courtship with someone on AIM I barely acknowledged in person— I found these embraces when you couldn’t hold me. I forgive you. I didn’t show my anger or frustration back then, so I’m stumbling across energetic pockets of unresolved disputes across every square foot. It isn’t perfect but you forgive me.
HEAVEN SCENT - SOULWAX, CHLOE SEVIGNY
Tend the call: Wake up the oracles!
The approach: Recite. Recite. A loving coax, a thoughtful gift, an enlivening frequency of light.
The response: Is an answer to a prayer
W.I.G.T.S. - S.MARHABA
Syruppy sleep sap rubbed under my nose. A lullahey instead of a lullabye to greet the etheric worlds where my channels are most open. I’ve started to lucid dream for the first time since I was a kid. In one dream I surfed soft sand that looked like tiger’s eye stone. Reality is a tendon I stretch and snap, trusting that it won’t break. Dream yoda.
FAITH IN STRANGERS - ANDY STOTT
I have fallen in love on dancefloors with so many strangers. I have felt the impermanence of life on the dancefloor. I have observed the ecstatic nature of spirit leaving the body on dancefloors. A ceremony of collective processing. Come with your woes, leave with a ringing in your ear. A hollow echo to signal the excavation is complete.
llaló - CHANCHA VIA CIRCUITO, MATEO KING
In this life, I would like to be remembered as either an aromatic wind or the first moonrise that made your heart melt.
SONDELA - TRESOR, MSAKI
Timing is everything and also nothing because we will merge again. Our love carved into archival totems. A reference point for how we made each other laugh. How I subdued you and how you provoked me. I promise I’ll read that book you gave me and tell you what I think about it one day.
ALBERTO BALSALM - APHEX TWIN
I’m on the Amtrak train as I write this on a 3 hour journey. I have been enjoying the landscape of California pass me by, a comfort to know that my nomadic spirit has found home here the past 5 months. Vastness is a reminder, a level check, knowing my smallness each time I take this journey. There was a quiet stretch of trees and dried tree dander on the ground just outside my window right now. I saw a hijabi woman wrapped in sun faded cotton patterns crouched over a similarly patterned child under a tree. I shed some tears remembering the first time I saw widows begging on the streets of Kabul. How did she get here, so close to the tracks?
THIEVERY - ARCA
I would like to press charges against imperialists for thievery. Who will build the court, who will conduct the trial, who will present the evidence in such a case? I would like to see imperialists prove their innocence. I could use a good laugh.
There are lil deaths and then there are big deaths. Like paradigms and constructs big. Grieving and praying for an end to these violent constructs is a full-time job. Performing system upgrades without systemic support.
“The Tibetan term bardo, or “intermediate state,” is not just a reference to the afterlife. It also refers more generally to these moments when gaps appear, interrupting the continuity that we otherwise project onto our lives. In American culture, we sometimes refer to this as having the rug pulled out from under us, or feeling ungrounded. These interruptions in our normal sense of certainty are what is being referred to by the term bardo. But to be precise, bardo refers to that state in which we have lost our old reality and it is no longer available to us.
Anyone who has experienced this kind of loss knows what it means to be disrupted, to be entombed between death and rebirth. We often label that a state of shock. In those moments, we lose our grip on the old reality and yet have no sense what a new one might be like. There is no ground, no certainty, and no reference point—there is, in a sense, no rest. This has always been the entry point in our lives for religion, because in that radical state of unreality we need profound reasoning—not just logic, but something beyond logic, something that speaks to us in a timeless, nonconceptual way. Milarepa referred to this disruption as a great marvel, singing from his cave, ‘The precious pot containing my riches becomes my teacher in the very moment it breaks.’” Lionsroar, 2017
Rupture ~~~~~~~~~~> Rapture
MO LIGHT - 47 SOUL
I gathered digitally with a cohort of diasporic Afghans the other night and we spoke about our feelings knowing what is happening in Afghanistan. Somewhere between survivor’s guilt and the desire to put our bodies on the line, we look for solutions within our means. In moments of deep shadow and overwhelm, I find this song a siren of mobilization.
"Despite spending more on Afghanistan than on rebuilding Europe after World War II, little progress has been made. It would not be surprising if the Taliban controlled all of Afghanistan within a decade.” Akhilesh Pillalamarri wrote this for The Diplomat in 2017. And here we are 4 years later. I’m angry.
I lose steam knowing a delegation of *T* leaders are on tour throughout Iran, Russia and China to gain legitimacy should their takeover of the country succeed. In this PR move, China has come around to consider formally recognizing the terrorist group, and likely ensure that the region doesn’t become a safe haven for Uyghurs.
“Afghans were horrified when Zalmay Khalilzad, the United States (US) Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation, signed the Doha agreement with the Taliban in February 2020. The US kept the elected government of Afghanistan out of this deal. It also treated the Taliban as a parallel government. Soon, the Taliban appeared as “honourable guests” in Moscow, Tehran, and Beijing. Our biggest disappointment is not the departure of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces from Afghanistan; it is the treatment of the Taliban by the international community as a legitimate force, equating it with Afghanistan’s elected government.”1 Is this what a “war on terrorism” looks like?
As soon as they announced U.S. troop withdrawal, my family started counting down the days. They’ve passed horrendous news articles, videos and testimony from people on the ground back and forth. They pray together on the phone. They watch it happen again. They trade game theory to guess the fate of our land.
If your knowledge about Afghanistan is limited, I implore you to read and share with your networks. This is a live link that will be updated as much as possible with information regarding aid that a group of Afghan diasporans are working on.
ALL MELODY - NILS FRAHM
Presence on my mind. Thinking in bursts. Unable to fully articulate because this experiential language exists in the dreamspace. English doesn’t have the words, nor is it an inherited language for me. I try to explain, but I end up sighing more than making sense. Maybe Dari. Maybe a dance. Maybe a playlist.
DREAMS - KELSEY LU
Sometimes my gaze is a camera angle above my left shoulder, sometimes on the right. The first me is an observer, the second me is a body. Sometimes I flit between the cameras. Sometimes there is a 3rd in the room, but it’s not me-me. Another character, maybe another part of myself. Maybe it’s you.
NICOLAS JAAR - GARDEN
They like “my brain,” but I wish they knew it was my heart that works here not my mind. The greatest sieve for truth seekers.
An open heart.
What labor it is to open again and again and again and again and again and again. A six figure chokehold.
ANOUSHKA SHANKAR - REMAIN THE SEA
A Gen Z asks me if I’ve struggled with perfection.
“Pain is what we carry upon our backs. Love is being silent about the weight.”
I respond quickly that I was conditioned with perfection but expressing anger helped me snap out of it. How?
Perfection is usually always for someone or something else and it felt time to stop giving that precision, focus and devotion away. I realized I could replace the anger I had toward myself with accountability for my own choice as soon as I became aware of it.
We both talk about how, when we write, we often cut sentences from the end and put them earlier because we write backwards. I wonder if its linguistic or cultural for us to begin at the end in order to find the best starting point. Or maybe it is more of an invitation than a starting point.
CHANT TO MOTHER EARTH - BLO
Birch trees are very chatty and sociable, “enjoy take it easy! let’s have a beveragino!” Redwoods are highly skilled engineers, big daddy Saturn energy, dad jokes too. Ferns are quite coy. Giant rocks, if you spend time with them, will charge you like a gently vibrating electric massage.
In my culture, we visit family and greet every single person in the room. When I come to the woods, I take time to greet every tree and being within my sight. I don’t know how long during my lifetime they will be here, so I air kiss them 3 times and put my heart on their bark.
“My communion with what we call nature is an experience long scoffed at by city folk. Rather than see any value in it, they poke fun at it: ‘He talks to trees, he’s a tree-hugger; he talks to rivers, he contemplates the mountains.’ But that’s my experience of life. I don’t see anything out there that is not nature. Everything is nature. The cosmos is nature. Everything I can think of is nature.” -Alton Krenak, Ideas to Postpone the End of the World
SOUTHERN DUB - CLAP! CLAP!, DOMENICO CANELLORI
Certain smells are strangely hypnotic to me. Gasoline and smoke are a couple of them. When I smell the smoke in the air from “fire season” on my morning walks here in Sacramento, I don’t flinch or flee like I’m told to on the morning news. You can feel the holiness of the land, the stewards, the beings, particulate into the air, a smoke veil that burns plant medicine and messages into the lungs. The grief organ, my old friend from the thousand deaths I’ve died this lifetime. Walk through the fire, listen. I make offerings at a tree in the park nearby, grateful to be a recipient of even an iota of peace on this land.
There are so many things I bury in that park. A tomb of gratitude.
KOKORO (LALOU REMIX) - FATOUMATA DIAWARA, LAOLU
Ribs bounce up, crack open like hands that have no guilt to hide. Rave like you’re at the top of the building in the 1996 flick Independence Day and the aliens decide to take you home instead. They decide to take all the placeless, weary children somewhere that feels like a missing piece to the puzzle of absolute safety, unconditional rest and communion.
ACID RAINDROPS - PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS
This song is a mantra, a mythodology, a prayer if you choose to honor the lift off.
“Let the problems in my mind become ancient artifacts”
ANDY STOTT - REPETITIVE STRAIN
I want to come out of the closet and officially say that I was raised Muslim, stopped believing in God and then found my way back again. We exist. That is a valid timeline. Mark Zuck is on that timeline after coming back to his creator recently. He met with the Vatican last summer, foreshadowing a dip into the “church of the metaverse.” It seems they are productizing faith, unveiling new tools for religious leaders at a summit in June of this year according to Reuters. The Catholic Church2 p.s., a capitalism early adopter and biggest land owner in the world3, has partnered with a council on “Inclusive Capitalism.” I’m hopeful for something more benevolent than “get your God in while supplies last” or channelling prayer energy as a brand growth strategy. I can’t stop saying it, but these are wild times.
I have lots more to say about that last paragraph, but for now I have a minute left to tell you I’ve strangely found Andy Stott’s work take me to the mystical places my mother’s zhikr learning sessions did when I was a kid. Repeat in song formation, again, and again, and again until I fall asleep. A gentle rhythm, unstrained by the formality of religion.
My mother told me once, “It’s okay to question everything, even god.”
SAQI DAASAY MASTI GHWARAM - NASHENAS
Pashto, my father tongue, maybe a better language to understand dreamspace in? While I understand the language fairly well, I speak it very little. Just like my dreams. This song sung in my father tongue reminds me of dada jaan swaying joyously at 132 beats per minute. He loved Nashenas. I’m curious what people think this language sounds like? What it evokes? Have they ever heard it before this song?
TRUE - SHEILA CHANDRA
True Discourse on Power by Peter Gizzi
FIRST DISTANCE - LES HALLES
Flotation station, rest here.
HEALING SONG 1 - VERDELL PRIMEEAUX, JOHNNY MIKE, ROBERT ATTSON
I paused after the last song to go sit and chat with mom for a bit. I’m leaving tomorrow again and I want to be present with her. She wants to understand my relationship to doubt. We talk about how far I’ve come despite the clashing of cultures, society and personal expectations. She holds space for me, recounts stories of when teachers sang my praises growing up, she gives non-judgemental advice about my personal affairs and brings a bowl of strawberries and blueberries to my desk because she, like so many of the mother figures in my life, know I forget my body sometimes (often).
INFINITE UNIVERSE - BEAUTIFUL CHORUS
COULD HEAVEN EVER BE LIKE THIS - IDRIS MUHAMMAD
Home, the absence of time
The method of travel, presence
The destination, eventual
A labor, perpetual
A frequency of form
Residual sound wave
Of the first sign
The first breath
“HA”
A funny wind
A perfect parabola
Pinnacle miracle
All in divine order.
THE AFTERSONG
Baitullah Hameedi, Hindustan Times
no dis, no lie
“With more than 1 billion adherents, the Catholic Church is one of the largest, if not the largest, nongovernmental landowners in the world. One estimate puts the church’s holdings close to 177 million acres, or 277,000 square miles. If those properties were grouped together and placed on a list of the world’s countries by land area, it would fall within the top 50, higher than both France and Spain … No one knows exactly how much land the church owns because while the institution is centralized in terms of its doctrine, legally, it is quite diffuse.” Curbed, 2017