silver in the night, singing

Niet alleen verschillende vormen van arbeid worden anders gewaardeerd, ook dezelfde arbeid krijgt een andere betekenis afhankelijk van wie het uitvoert en waar. Een van de Etsy-verkopers die ik sprak, koopt blanco T-shirts, past ze aan en verkoopt ze door. Haar arbeid – het aanpassen en borduren van de T-shirts – wordt zichtbaar gemaakt en geprezen als authentiek en persoonlijk. Het staat symbool voor verzet tegen fast fashion.

Maar de arbeid van de vrouwen in het Globale Zuiden die het oorspronkelijke T-shirt naaiden – want ja, bijna al onze kleding wordt nog steeds met de hand gemaakt – blijft onzichtbaar. Hun werk wordt gereduceerd tot uitvoerende arbeid: vervangbaar, goedkoop en onpersoonlijk.

often i feel like a deer to be hunted craving gentle hands and vulnerability but i flee from the slightest sounds i yearn for the day that i can step into the openness and feel at ease

self portrait, march 2025

why did you say what you said when the hummingbird vanished from sight? a sudden, swelling heat in the dark october night. you laughed and your eyes were alive, and i knew that the moment had finally arrived. and i reached out and held for your hand and held on tight. you said the right thing. you fixed everything as the stars formed a canopy over spirit lake. you said what you said. the stars grew softer overhead.

Fort Lauderdale, Florida

I have noted before that the term “folk music” is a little overburdened by all the different things it is expected to mean. When I search for folk music on my preferred streaming platform, I get results ranging from Woody Guthrie (correct) and Brandi Carlile (I’m tilting my hand back and forth in the air) to Hozier (I guess I see what they mean) and Post Malone (oh, bullshit). No one has a clear idea of it anymore, or at least no one organizes music metadata in a way that reflects my understanding, which is of course the correct one. To begin discussing folk music, we must share a mental model. With that in mind, I have invented a simple test called the Folk Understanding, Comprehension, Knowledge, and Practice Indicator Test. If you read the phrase “whack-fol-the-daddy-o” and think “I know that song” and not “the author is having a stroke,” you have some minimal knowledge of what I would call folk music. It’s that thing people did a lot in the ‘60s—or perhaps I should say, the thing they did with acoustic guitars and earnest leftism. They did another thing around that time with special bits of blotter paper, but that’s not where my interest lies.