When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life.

But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn't imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter. This is Phil Connors.

Hi.

We got snowed on! It’s 18 degrees F and no school. I want to watch both Groundhog Day and Dersu Uzala. I think I will.

Dare me to write this newsletter without mentioning the insane and terrifying things happening politically in the very bad country where I live? Dare me to just write about my little music project, my band that is playing some shows soon, my little merch updates? Dare me to not even attempt some wisdoms about finding transcendence and kindness as a way through the hurricane of greedy annihilation that bleeds from our screens?

What if there’s a way that going on with our lives is the transcendence? Maybe if we at least start by doing real face to face kindness at every moment of every day, even while sleeping, maybe we build on that? And maybe I can still tell you about my little band’s little shows and the little doodads that we’ll be selling at the souvenir stand, and maybe we make a moment of eye contact there and that can be something? Some brief antidote to the seeming erosion of the big fragile web of tenderness.

(But yeah, on my own time I have been consuming a lot of the bad news. Oof. It sure does suck to be witnessing this nation-business coming to its logical conclusion, founded in psychotic individuality and delusional exceptionalism and finally fruiting as a shriveled rotten orange in a klan robe, alienated from earth and one another, reeking and hollow. I’m glad you and I have each other at least.)

from when they re-tarred the road here

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10 year Sauna

I happened to just notice that my album Sauna came out 10 years ago today!

It came out a week after Fleuve by Ô Paon, and two weeks after our baby was born. It was a good trilogy of releases, a productive time. After that life changed permanently, like it always does and keeps on doing. It honestly feels more like 10 lifetimes ago, not years.

What’s Sauna about? It’s in the same group as the Glow pt. 2 and Night Palace: long breathing explorations of the subtler parts of being born a person, walking around and looking at stuff. Sounds thrilling right? I think so.

Here’s a video of when a Belgian TV crew came to my house like a week or so after it came out, March 2015. A time capsule of my little world then:

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I’m not him anymore, I’m me. I have some 2025 things to say:

February 2025 tour with Ragana

These shows are coming up really soon. We leave next week. Vancouver and Portland are sold out and some of the other ones are getting low. Get a ticket and come see us. We’re playing Night Palace.

Thurs. Feb. 13th, 2025 - Vancouver, B.C. - Rickshaw Theatre (with Ragana) SOLD OUT

Fri. Feb. 14th, 2025 - Seattle, Wash. - Neptune Theatre (with Ragana)

Sat. Feb. 15th, 2025 - Portland, Ore. - Aladdin Theater (with Ragana) SOLD OUT

Mon. Feb. 17th, 2025 - San Francisco, Cal. - Great American Music Hall (with Ragana) LOW TICKETS!

Tues. Feb. 18th, 2025 - Ojai, Cal. - Ojai Valley Women's Club (with Ragana)

Weds. Feb. 19th, 2025 - San Diego, Cal. - Music Box (with Ragana)

Thurs. Feb. 20th, 2025 - Tucson, Ariz. - 191 Toole (with Ragana)

Fri. Feb. 21st, 2025 - Santa Fe, N.M. - Meow Wolf (with Ragana)

Sat. Feb. 22nd, 2025 - Boulder, Colo. - Fox Theatre (with Ragana)

Sun. Feb. 23rd, 2025 - Salt Lake City, UT - Soundwell (with Ragana)

Mon. Feb. 24th, 2025 - Boise, Ida. - Shrine Social Club (with Ragana)

special items you’ll find at the merch table:

• Night Palace, coffee version is in the works, a collaboration with Camber, and will be available, as whole bean or as brewed coffee at the merch table. Bring a cup!

• I made a zine version of the huge Night Palace poster. Easier to flip through.

• Ragana/Mount Eerie combined tour shirt, printed by Granular

• Microphones Box Sets will be sold at a tour-only SALE PRICE!

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from like last week before it snowed and I was doing my day job of “woods sweeper”

I finished reading Mood Machine by Liz Pelly. It was so good, so crucial. I don’t know what we can do, those of us who care about music and art and human consciousness, but I feel invigorated and informed. I highly recommend it, for everyone.

There’s a wide pool of words that has been fermenting in me for a long time. It’s not ready yet, nothing’s been written, but I predict at some point I will articulate these big overlapping thoughts and send it out here in this newsletter. I want to give a piece of my mind on all these delicate topics where I accidentally frequently hurt peoples’ feelings with my blunt blurtings. I want to go off, eloquently, about patronizing thieving music streaming services, about asking other humans for their autograph, about private property, about young men and their skewed senses of entitlement, about these difficult and tender parts of our interactions that clumsily keep bumping against what seems right and good to me. I’m not there yet, it’s still just a blob, but I just wanted you to know I’ve got a bun in the oven, so to speak.

I don’t want to be on twitter or instagram or any of those anymore. Do I have to? I tried a bit when Night Palace came out because I really wanted to push it and sell some records, but it just feels so bad. The corrupt fascist abusers that run those companies, yeah, but also just the addictive extractive experience of being in those holes. I don’t want to give people even a small reason to go there, I don’t want scatter hard drugs around at the playground. I might log back on from time to time to post an advertisement because yeah, I’m still doing this weird contradictory art project in the shape of a capitalist business hustle, but I’ll probably just keep doing this minimal and clunky newsletter, OK?

thanks for tuning in. Peace!
Phil

from right now