the Spring Feeling

and Paris! Warsaw! Denmark!

IN THIS ISSUE:

• Mount Eerie shows update

• Huspoet in Denmark

• songwriting class second chance

• the Spring Feeling

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Mount Eerie shows

In a couple days we’ll head to the Northeast of the United States for some shows, Mount Eerie as a duo. There might still be tickets available for these:

Fri. May 5th, 2023 - Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church Sanctuary (with Karl Blau and Country Gravel)

Sat. May 6th, 2023 - Brooklyn, N.Y. - Pioneer Works (part of the Long Play Festival, put together by Bang On A Can)

Sun. May 7th, 2023 - Round Top, N.Y. - Glen Falls House

Tues. May 9th, 2023 - Chicago, Ill. - Old Town School of Folk Music (as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival: "an evening of song and conversation", playing some and talking with Hrishikesh Hirway)

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and then we’re going to Europe for a whole month, Mount Eerie as just me:

Sun. May 28th, 2023 - Brussels, Belgium - l'Ancienne Belgique (participating in a talk and some film screenings with Bret Lunsford and Rani Singh, to celebrate the 100th birthday of Harry Smith)

Mon. May 29th, 2023 - Brussels, Belgium - l'Ancienne Belgique (a Mount Eerie concert, with "the Golden Glows")

NEWLY ANNOUNCED: Tues. May 30th, 2023 - Paris, France - Église St-Eustache (Spriritus Sancti series)

Weds. May 31st, 2023 - Genk, Belgium - Sint-Albertus

Thurs. June 1st, 2023 - Cologne, Germany - Urania Theatre

Sat. June 10th, 2023 - Cork, Ireland - Seanie Buttons SOLD OUT

Sun. June 11th, 2023 - Dublin, Ireland - Whelan’s (with Goodtime John)

Mon. June 12th, 2023 - London, UK - Grand Junction (2nd show added)

Tues. June 13th, 2023 - London, UK - Grand Junction SOLD OUT

Thurs. June 15th, 2023 - Helsinki, Finland - Temppeliaukio Church

NEWLY ANNOUNCED: Sat. June 17th, 2023 - Warsaw, Poland - Ephemera Festival at Studio Koncertowe Polskiego Radia S1

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Huspoet in Denmark

And then this cool thing: I got invited to be the Huspoet (house poet) at Poesiens Hus (poetry house) in Denmark for late June! I’ll live there for a couple weeks and go around the country in a special electric poetry van doing shows, and who knows what else. Amazing and fun honor. Here is an article about it kinda.

I’m open to suggestions for a couple more little show spots in Denmark for during this time. Please comment on this post or email me here if you have something to propose. The shows set up so far are:

Weds. June 21st, 2023 - Aarhus, Denmark - Voxhall

Thurs. June 22nd, 2023 - Copenhagen, Denmark - Poesiens Hus

Here are some nice people on a small boat in Denmark from the last visit.

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songwriting class

Last November I taught an in-depth songwriting workshop at School of Song. It was a smash success and cracked my brain all the way open. I’ve heard from many attendees that it was very useful to them too.

Well, it turns out that even if you missed it, the whole course is available to experience in its archived form. Here you can find it.

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the Spring Feeling

Does seasonal affective disorder exist for when winter ends and spring starts blasting? Is it an insult to all the people who struggle with legitimate winter depression for me to get all gripey about a too bright of sun glaring in my eyes or too fresh of a spring wind disorienting my clothing choices? OK, it’s not official S.A.D. that I’m talking about. It’s some less debilitating seasonal discomfort, my annual prickliness.

Not that you asked, but yeah, spring is my roughest season. But in a weird subliminal way that I’m only really finding words for now in my 44th year. It’s sneaky, this spring feeling. Cold bones, squinting eyes, short breaths, twitching glances around, tickled skin, a mind racing with the clutter of too many little tasks. If I say “the irritation of too many little flower petals”, do I sound like a performative goblin? I swear this feeling is real.

The sun shines, a cold wind blows. I don’t light a fire in the morning anymore because it’s “sunny”. Some seasonal phantom pulls my body’s core temperature down to unwarmable lows while I sit at the computer lost in a cyber trance. Blood flow slows to a trickle. Meanwhile everyone else on earth just woke up from winter and decided it’s time to email Phil with something that is actually interesting and important and complicated, not ignorable. The inbox blings fuller and fuller. Replies beget replies.

I’m pretty sure I know better than to get swept up in a mood like this. By now I can see through it. I’ve been here before, pretty much every year. I remember the dizzy bodily tumult from an easter when I was like 9. Too much sick marshmallow and bad chocolate, too tight of shorts, lying in new long grass that seemed like it should be an enveloping green cloud but was actually full of tiny ice cold slugs. This is the season of brisk sunlight headaches and sugar hangover nausea, when nature becomes a bully with its toxic positivity.

Spring is when the world screams back to life. It’s cool that it does, I like getting to be on this cycle with the living world, growing, dying, birthing. But for me, yes, it does actually scream back to life. I flinch in its loudness. I crunch up. I am never quite ready to leave the womb of hibernation where I’ve been incubating tender ideas and tending little fires for the long dark months. Spring blows the door down with a shriek and I’m never ready. Six more months of winter would maybe be fine with me.

In town everyone is celebrating. “Finally!” They grab me by the throat and yell in my face “oooooohhhh enjoying that vitamin D! yes! ah, we needed a day like this!” like they’re vikings emerging from their cold turf huts ready to pillage all summer. Can I politely disagree? Sometimes I try to talk about all this “cold bones, sun nausea” stuff, but it gets weird. “Yes I agree, it’s lovely” is a much easier response.

Then I zoom out again and everything’s fine. Stand up from the life draining computer, find a patch of direct sunlight out of the wind, acknowledge the need for a sweater, recognize the low stakes of all of these little email tasks in the big picture, make some coffee. It’s spring and life on earth persists, still. We get to be in it, again. I huff the dust out of my nose and rub my eyes and get into a pillaging mood.

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That’s all for now. Thanks for reading. See you later.
Phil