birdspotting
birdspotting, the final single from this project, is out today
i’ll be real: we probably could have promoted this more. we didn’t get any hits on the press and i’m tired of scrolling to figure out what any next moves are. it’s unbelievably exhausting to shout into a void where sound spirals into what’s trending and yours collapses into nothingness. but maybe that’s only fitting for this one.
i wrote the first lyric for birdspotting in the parking lot at a covid testing center on old york rd - right across from the wine and spirits/trader joe’s (real MontCo ones know). the sun was setting. it felt absurd - this beauty in a shopping mall parking lot, getting tested for a deadly virus. the song is about resolving contradictions between promises and reality. it is the thesis of the record.
the rest of that year and through 2021, most of the song came together. i got really into birds, with the help of my dearest friend CG. there wasn’t much to do because of the pandemic pre-vaccine so we went birdwatching in central park. i became obsessed with the hawks that lived there. they’d come and sit on our roof sometimes too. i thought i had a picture of the red tailed hawk who used to visit my roof but i can’t find it. i guess you’ll just have to believe me.
anyway, my conversations with CG: three specific examples of many conversations - yes watching hawks fly over central park’s north meadow while we were looking for the snowy owl residing there, or in american government architecture class where cg wrote their final paper on shopping malls as the public meeting spaces of rural america very beautifully inspiring the ‘shopping mall lyric), or on facetime watching jan 6 happen, discussing the implications of streaming such an event - directly inspired this song. it reminds me how much of these works are directly owed to the unique brilliance of my friends and for this i must publicly thank them.
the ending came later.
i was 23. i was having coffee with the man i had been seeing for about 10 months (who did not know my last name). he had told me earlier that month i was not a real woman because i was an artist (crediting, unsurprisingly, camile paglia). this year, he said, would be the year he was going to read all of freud’s work. he had just gotten to the part in freud’s work where freud was “in conversation” with marx. he said that freud was playing with the idea that dreams were another way of thinking of commodities. and then he patted me on the back and left. i never saw him again. two weeks later he texted me he had a gf.
and so: i pose the questions
are you a voyeur? or are you in love? are you selfish or are you dumb? am i dream? a commodity? am i genius or a motherfucking absurdity? what’s the shelf life of a pretty little thing? what’s the shelf life of a pretty little thing? what’s the fuck life of a pretty little thing? what’s the shelf life of a pretty little thing?
i swear, i swear, i swear, i’ll do fucking anything.
julia graciously biked over to his apartment to pick up all my books that i had left there where a street photographer posed her with an ice cream cone and took her picture because she looked so beautiful. autumn and jaucqir came over after julia returned and we played music and drank a lot of beer. and so: now i know, that’s the answer.
see you at the shows <3
le poisson rouge - 8.16 (tomorrow!)
radio bean (burlington vt) - 8.23
night club 101 (ep ii release) - 9.27
birdspotting credits
Lead Vocals, Rhythm Guitar, Wurlitzer, Piano, Organ: Pagona Kytzidis
Lead Guitar: Francesca Pastore
Drums, Percussion: Jonathan Ashley
Violin, Backing Vocals: Claire Lin Jenkins
Bass: Andrew Jordan
Alto Saxophone, Bass Clarinet, Piano: David Mirarchi
Backing Vocals: Lotus Rogers
Backing Vocals: Jaucqir Lafond