April Newsletter: In-Depth Article on Forest Listening Rooms

This newsletter features a new article about Forest Listening Rooms by Robert Sember. I also contributed a playlist to Aaron Greenwald's "Songs for Listening." You can now read two new essays I recently wrote on on a video installation about Merce Cunningham; and on photographs and the loss of memory. Finally, stay tuned for the release of Shawnee, Ohio on April 26!

"Stay, Listen, Organize" : Robert Sember writes on "Forest Listening Rooms" and more

I am happy to share Robert Sember's thoughtful and thorough article on Forest Listening Rooms and other projects spanning the past two decades. Written for the A Blade of Grass Magazine, Sember goes deep into the material and its contexts, and his knowledge on sound and Appalachian Ohio are especially appreciated. Read more below.

"Songs for Listening" Project

I had the pleasure of making a short playlist for "Songs for Listening," a website and project of Aaron Greenwald. Greenwald, former director of Duke Performances, has been asking musicians, artists, curators, and thinkers to contribute daily lists of music they are passionate about and listen closely to. I built this list around my love for untrained voices and field recordings, and these examples have all influenced my own tastes. The songs here are often simply recorded, or are low-fi, and contain other sounds and imperfections that are often cut out of commercial recordings. These recordings make me feel that music can encompass the entire spectrum of emotion and thought, and can be open to anyone.

Recent Essays: "On Cunningham and 'Stillness'" and "Memory, Loss, and the Family Photo"

This past February, I had the opportunity to speak at two different events, Netta Yerushalmy's dance work "Paramodernities" at the Wexner Center for the Arts, and the "New Old Image Exchange" at Ohio University. I ended up sharing these essays, which both deal broadly with mortality. I explore Cunningham's radical act of "sitting" near the end of his life; and the loss of my sister to frontotemporal dementia. Follow the links to read each essay in full.