Hi Friends.
Happy 2022 ♡ It’s been just over two weeks and so far I feel like I’ve ping-ponged from “giving up all expectations” and trying to embrace the idea that I have no control over my life whatsoever to swinging in the exact opposite direction, where with Pollyanna-like gusto I re-embrace everything that I long for, hope for, dream of, and sweetly believe that it will all somehow come to pass. And then I swing back again. Ping-pong. Ping-pong. Ping-pong. Hello 2022, I see you, you wild oscillation of back and forth. And I can’t help but wonder who else is peeling out into the new year with kind of energy around them, and what it all means.
How is the new year shaping up for you all? Is it what you expected so far? What you hoped for? What you imagined? Have you given up expectations at this point or are you laser focused on the next point of brilliance in your lives? Are you white-knuckling it or dancing on starlight not giving any more Fs, your heads thrown back and cackling at the moon?
As much as I long for a solid middle way, a comfortable middle path that the more wizened of you may already be walking, I have a sneaking suspicion that sometimes it’s the vantage point from the edges that mean the most when we’re in a process of realizing our most potent selves. That said, whatever your vibe might be, this month I’m sending you all a reminder to unabashedly accept your own process of moving through it all, and permission to accept that process with softness and compassion. We all need to be told sometimes that “it’s okay” to feel what we feel, to process how we process. We’re all going to get where we’re going, some way or another. Go easy on yourselves ♡♡♡
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In the spirit of process and processing, this month’s offerings speak to the need we all have for time and space to just be, as well as the meditative moments we all need in order to slow down and reflect in order to gather ourselves and move forth. Below you'll find some music, some opportunities for artists, and two music videos from my album Following the Light that speak to the glimmer of selves we've left behind, as well as the ones that draw us forward.
Concocted for the collective goal of emotional commiseration, this playlist works like a spell to help you scan the horizon while you stamp your feet – to take stock of where you are right now in order to more clearly see where you're going. Crying is cathartic. So is dancing. Do with that what you will.
Open Call for applications to the CA+MP Residency Program at the Upper Jay Art Center in upstate NY is open through Jan 31. These residencies provide time and space for artists and writers of all stripes to live, dream, create, and share their work for 1-2 weeks.
Is all that glitters, gold? First video release of the song "Golden Curtain," off my 2021 album Following the Light, is out now. This video was created as part of a film project, GLIMMER, by The Space We Make in 2017 – a collaboration between myself and Simon Thomas-Train, Jessie Young, Lea Fulton, and John Mosloskie. Enjoy the peek beyond the fringe. And if you haven't already listened to the full album, you can check it out here.
Conjuring the primal energy source we all harbor in the centers of our bodies, I present the mythical Golden Pelvis: a delight, a movement through, a sense of one's own worth, a place of complete solidarity and deep knowing. A second release in the ongoing music video series from Following the Light, "Golden Pelvis" is another fragment from GLIMMER and of another time altogether, finding its way into the future of now ♡ ♡ ♡
Sending you all solidarity and love,
Caitlin