Greetings!

It’s that time of year in San Francisco where there can be a 20 degree temperature difference from day to day. The unknowingness of it all fits the mood of the land.

Below I have some new writing, some pretty swell upcoming events, some recent performance videos, and a missive on Mediterranean Migration. Just enough that is felt like time to send an email to share some of it.

I don’t take for granted the opportunity to communicate with so many rad people through this medium. As always, I’d love to hear back from you anytime with what you have going on, anything that strikes your interest here, or just how you are doing.

M.

Recent Writing

“Nostalgia fantasies are dangerous.   

Being online so often while also longing to be in a different world means we don't, won't, or can't deal with the world we actually live in day to day. It makes it hard if not impossible to change anything.   

An overly idealized past is also also how fascism takes hold.   

It is easier to see the nostalgia fantasies when they are directly politicized and calling for a time that was pre-feminism, lgbtqia+ rights, or civil rights, but they can also happen in other cultural spaces. I see it regularly in, or at least on the fringes of, my own communities. We need to be careful, and I have some work-in-progress ideas how we can do that…”
Keep Reading

Upcoming Events

Il giorno dei morti @ Dia de los muertos
Sunday, November 2
San Francisco, California
Solidarity Passeggieta

Duo Pizzicato & Friends
Saturday, November 8
Vino Rosso, San Francisco, California
5 - 7 PM
Italian music

Aswat Ensemble
Saturday, November 15
Cañada College, Redwood City, California
7 - 9 PM
Aswat’s fall concert will feature songs of liberation.

Erotic Resistance
Friday, November 28
El Rio, San Francisco, California
7 - 9 PM
A benefit show for Bay2Gaza Mutual Aid Collective featuring performance, drag, and SWANA dance.

Kathy Sherak Memorial
Saturday, December 6
Koret Theater, San Francisco Public Library, California
2PM
Duo Pizzicato will do a set at the Aurora Mandolin Holiday Concert honoring musician and friend Kathy Sherak.
You can read my tribute to Kathy here.

Howard Zinn Book Fair
Sunday, December 7
10am - 6pm
San Francisco, California
Panels and workshops and books galore. I help out behind the scenes coordinating this annual-ish event. Come out!

Reading/Watching/Thinking - Mediterranean Migrations

“Forgive me, I'm leaving for Italy. Pray for us. I have no other solution than the sea.” - Chamseddine Marzoug, Tunisian migrant right activist

For the past few years I have focused my studies on migration on the Mediterranean, overfishing in the Mediterranean, and the thousands and thousands of lives that are taken by the Mediterranean due to a sometimes indifferent but more often overtly cruel politics and set of policies by the many governments of the lands that line the Sea.

It is not a new phenomenon, and there are people way smarter than me thinking and talking and writing about it. As an area of study it has been sobering, illuminating, and depressing, but also? The people that help each other out are amazing and inspiring.

So many of the songs I have learned to sing and the dances I have learned to do come from those lands that line the Mediterranean and her sister seas, and express previous generations’ pain, loss, loves, joy, humor, and hope. To ignore what is going on today in those areas, among the people who find themselves at sea or who have to consider entering it, would be easy from afar, especially as someone who doesn’t have to get on a boat to find a way to survive or eat or work, and as someone who can enter the sea to pleasure not from fear. To ignore it, though, would negate everything I hold dear and value in the art I am a part of.

I was going to share some of the resources and articles and books and documentaries and voices here, but I think it will become it’s own piece, so stay tuned. In the meantime, and especially given the season we are in, think of the people who have died trying to cross the Sea, and think of the fishermen of Zarzis who tend to the dead who wash up on their shore, and see this documentary in the image above if you can.

Lately

Performance at Gilded Raqs Dance Festival, San Jose, September 2025

I broke my set into two parts to share. Click the images to be taken to the videos.
Part 1: Interpretive Italiano

Part 2: Baladi with sagat

Protect your neighbors

Grazie if you made it this far. I doubt I’ll write you again until 2026, so happy all the winter things. In the meantime, I keep my website pretty updated with goings ons and what I’m thinking about, update my blog regularly (which is a separate subscription), and am pretty active on ye olde instagramz.

Ciao/مع السلامة/Adios/Byeeee