Endeavoring, as I said, little sweetheart, to do our work with greater vigor and energy and even as I work on both the book and our 9th album, another special project has come up.
For the second year in a row we’ve been invited to contribute a new work for the experimental radio event The Dark Outside in London.
It’s due mid month and Sylvia & I have just finished tracking it, your vocals very much leading the way. I’m working on the final mix now before sending it up to Boston for mastering and them on to London for the festival itself.
It’s called eleven:eleven - named for that special time of day when we are told our angels are often most close.
As ever, it’s all for you, my gorgeous girl. Soon and again I can say “listen, little sweetheart - you’re on the radio!”.
With all my love forever.
Saturday, February 29, 2020
Wednesday, February 26, 2020
Ash Wednesday 2020
It’s Ash Wednesday, little sweetheart. For a couple of reasons, it seems important that I observe it. I didn’t really, until a few years ago.
Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent which itself is the season of worship just prior to Holy Week concluding with Easter Sunday. The most striking thing in my own life about Ash Wednesday, of course, is that it came the morning after your accident that year.
After spending the whole night awake in the halls of the hospital waiting to see you, the shift changed in the morning and people began coming to work, many of them wearing the black ash mark of the cross on their foreheads. Eerie, surreal and unforgettable, it has stayed with me ever since that terrible terrible day.
It wasn’t until a year or two later when I discovered the little church on West End Avenue that I first attended an Ash Wednesday service (outside of happening into one in London when I visited St Paul’s). It was the first one I’d ever participated in, actually hearing the blessing and receiving the ashes myself. I’ve continued every year since.
Tonight there’s a service at West End but I’m gong instead to the one here at Sacred Heart, which is a bit closer and directly across the street from the rectory where I take cookies and things to Sister Catherine and the nuns. My prayers, as ever, are for you.
May God keep you safe in the Beautiful New Place and help me to hew the path of goodness and kindness and come to you when it is my time. With all my love forever.
Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent which itself is the season of worship just prior to Holy Week concluding with Easter Sunday. The most striking thing in my own life about Ash Wednesday, of course, is that it came the morning after your accident that year.
After spending the whole night awake in the halls of the hospital waiting to see you, the shift changed in the morning and people began coming to work, many of them wearing the black ash mark of the cross on their foreheads. Eerie, surreal and unforgettable, it has stayed with me ever since that terrible terrible day.
It wasn’t until a year or two later when I discovered the little church on West End Avenue that I first attended an Ash Wednesday service (outside of happening into one in London when I visited St Paul’s). It was the first one I’d ever participated in, actually hearing the blessing and receiving the ashes myself. I’ve continued every year since.
Tonight there’s a service at West End but I’m gong instead to the one here at Sacred Heart, which is a bit closer and directly across the street from the rectory where I take cookies and things to Sister Catherine and the nuns. My prayers, as ever, are for you.
May God keep you safe in the Beautiful New Place and help me to hew the path of goodness and kindness and come to you when it is my time. With all my love forever.
Saturday, February 22, 2020
Two Visions
Pausing work on the album, briefly, little sweetheart, to compose and record and special new work we’ve asked to contribute for WFMU’s annual fundraising “Marathon”.
Carol Crow, who’s featured us several times on her Sunday morning show, is putting together a special compilation album as a “premium” for pledging and asked us to contribute a new work. It’s meant to have a spoken word component (as does her show) with ambient or post-rock underscoring, so it’s very much up our alley.
I composed two poems for Sylvia to read in both English and French, then wrote and recorded the music, flying in your vocals over the top. It’s called Two Visions and very much, as ever, of, for and about you.
It’s always so wonderful literally bringing your voice to new works. Feeling very close to and grateful for you, today, my little sweetheart. With all my love forever.
Carol Crow, who’s featured us several times on her Sunday morning show, is putting together a special compilation album as a “premium” for pledging and asked us to contribute a new work. It’s meant to have a spoken word component (as does her show) with ambient or post-rock underscoring, so it’s very much up our alley.
I composed two poems for Sylvia to read in both English and French, then wrote and recorded the music, flying in your vocals over the top. It’s called Two Visions and very much, as ever, of, for and about you.
It’s always so wonderful literally bringing your voice to new works. Feeling very close to and grateful for you, today, my little sweetheart. With all my love forever.
Friday, February 14, 2020
An Anniversary...
Two years ago today, little sweetheart, we released “Better Girl”. It still strikes me so - its all for you! I think what I said in the liner notes is still so very resonant. I’m going to share it here again.
I love you so! Forever!
February 14, 2018
(Valentines Day)
Just six weeks ago, we released our seventh album, a 28-track double-album - SOMETIMES IN DREAMS. But, unable to restrain ourselves, today we release a new single on its very heels.
Released on Valentines Day, it’s a cover of Best Coast’s “Better Girl” and available via all the usual suspects/platforms - Apple Music/iTunes, Amazon, Bandcamp, CD Baby, Spotify, Deezer, et al.
Immeasurably indebted and unbelievable flattered to (occasionally) being likened to bands like Low, Slowdive, and The Velvet Underground, who we revere, we’d like to say something about Bethany Consentino and her group - we love them.
Long story short as possible - when we were wrapping up work on OF LOVE AND LOSS, still very much shattered by grief, our art director gave us a mix tape, something put together by the great Since ’78. Entitled Adios Los Angeles, it was all around the theme of leaving, of all that’s lost and all we might hope to one day once again find.
The final track was Best Coast’s “Up All Night”, the kind of pop song so filled with the ache of longing and distance that I nearly fell apart listening the first time. And again. And again. I’d never heard the band before, so I got myself the album “Up All Night” came from (and, indeed, closes) - “The Only Place”.
As our band has moved deeper and deeper into post-rock terrain, it may seem a bit of an anomaly to hear how felled I was by Ms. Consentino and her sunny, bittersweet anthems - long-suffering friends are far more likely to hear me enthusing or indeed insisting on one more spin of “Metal Machine Music” at full volume - but felled I was.
“The Only Place” was in heavy rotation here at The Shrine for the better part of the winter I first acquired it and this mid-album track with its refrain - “you gotta keep me away from what they say about me” and its soaring repeated ending chorus “I wanna be a better girl, a better girl, a better girl” stuck in my throat and heart and chest.
This album, this song, came to me at the darkest of times, opening the wound of loss and longing even yet a bit deeper all in the service of helping me remember and keep moving, however hurting.
Our shoegazey version of this song, released today, on Valentines Day, is meant as a tribute both in thanks to its author and to our fallen bandmate herself, my love and partner. my soulmate, true love and best friend, Summer.
If Ms. Consentino herself comes across this, I hope she doesn’t roll her eyes too much. Because, in the immortal words of John Lydon, “we mean it, man.”
With love and faith…
Michael Serafin-Wells
Bipolar Explorer
New York City
I love you so! Forever!
February 14, 2018
(Valentines Day)
Just six weeks ago, we released our seventh album, a 28-track double-album - SOMETIMES IN DREAMS. But, unable to restrain ourselves, today we release a new single on its very heels.
Released on Valentines Day, it’s a cover of Best Coast’s “Better Girl” and available via all the usual suspects/platforms - Apple Music/iTunes, Amazon, Bandcamp, CD Baby, Spotify, Deezer, et al.
Immeasurably indebted and unbelievable flattered to (occasionally) being likened to bands like Low, Slowdive, and The Velvet Underground, who we revere, we’d like to say something about Bethany Consentino and her group - we love them.
Long story short as possible - when we were wrapping up work on OF LOVE AND LOSS, still very much shattered by grief, our art director gave us a mix tape, something put together by the great Since ’78. Entitled Adios Los Angeles, it was all around the theme of leaving, of all that’s lost and all we might hope to one day once again find.
The final track was Best Coast’s “Up All Night”, the kind of pop song so filled with the ache of longing and distance that I nearly fell apart listening the first time. And again. And again. I’d never heard the band before, so I got myself the album “Up All Night” came from (and, indeed, closes) - “The Only Place”.
As our band has moved deeper and deeper into post-rock terrain, it may seem a bit of an anomaly to hear how felled I was by Ms. Consentino and her sunny, bittersweet anthems - long-suffering friends are far more likely to hear me enthusing or indeed insisting on one more spin of “Metal Machine Music” at full volume - but felled I was.
“The Only Place” was in heavy rotation here at The Shrine for the better part of the winter I first acquired it and this mid-album track with its refrain - “you gotta keep me away from what they say about me” and its soaring repeated ending chorus “I wanna be a better girl, a better girl, a better girl” stuck in my throat and heart and chest.
This album, this song, came to me at the darkest of times, opening the wound of loss and longing even yet a bit deeper all in the service of helping me remember and keep moving, however hurting.
Our shoegazey version of this song, released today, on Valentines Day, is meant as a tribute both in thanks to its author and to our fallen bandmate herself, my love and partner. my soulmate, true love and best friend, Summer.
If Ms. Consentino herself comes across this, I hope she doesn’t roll her eyes too much. Because, in the immortal words of John Lydon, “we mean it, man.”
With love and faith…
Michael Serafin-Wells
Bipolar Explorer
New York City
Something You Taught Me...
Before I get on with the day, little sweetheart, I’m frosting some cookies. I baked them last night. They’re heart-shaped sugar cookies and I’m frosting them with pink icing and giving them to the lovely nuns over at the rectory of Sacred Heart.
Sister Catherine is kind of in charge over there and so very kind. She always says a nice prayer for you whenever I see her and I try to drop by with a little treat for them whenever I can.
I think they came out okay.
Thinking of you, my little sweetheart. With love and prayers and a resolve to do my best, as you show and teach and reveal to me. With all my love forever.
Sister Catherine is kind of in charge over there and so very kind. She always says a nice prayer for you whenever I see her and I try to drop by with a little treat for them whenever I can.
I think they came out okay.
Thinking of you, my little sweetheart. With love and prayers and a resolve to do my best, as you show and teach and reveal to me. With all my love forever.
Valentines, Pt 2
Our second Valentines together was the very next year when your Dad very generously invited a large group of extended family and friends to share a big beautiful house in Lake Tahoe for Valentines Weekend - what we came to call the vacation when “we went to the snow”.
Everyone was coming from different places - your parents from Yuba City, your brother and his friends from Portland, Michelle and the kids from Roseville and us from San Francisco - and meeting there.
Everyone else got up there ahead of us because you had a class to teach downtown at ACT’s Young People’s Conservatory that afternoon. We’d been walking along down there on the way to one of your classes earlier that week when I saw something catch your eye in the window at Macy’s. So, I made a note of it and that afternoon - when I was meant to pick you up from class so we could begin the long drive straight from there to Lake Tahoe - I stopped in first and bought it for you. It was a pretty top and bottom set of pink polka dot lingerie set against a black background. You loved it! I gave it to you in the car.
We soon hit a lot of snow driving through the mountains, We were listening to the first Bon Ivor album over and over. We’d just got it the week before and we were singing along to one another. We stopped for gas and when we went in to pay, looked around for a snack or two. I was getting myself a coffee, when I saw a pair of Valentines sunglasses - pink and white with hearts on the frames. I bought them for you and embarrassed you a little when I said to the cashier, breathlessly, “isn’t she (you!) the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen!”
You are and always will be, my little sweetheart. My heart is so full this morning thinking of you.
Everyone was coming from different places - your parents from Yuba City, your brother and his friends from Portland, Michelle and the kids from Roseville and us from San Francisco - and meeting there.
Everyone else got up there ahead of us because you had a class to teach downtown at ACT’s Young People’s Conservatory that afternoon. We’d been walking along down there on the way to one of your classes earlier that week when I saw something catch your eye in the window at Macy’s. So, I made a note of it and that afternoon - when I was meant to pick you up from class so we could begin the long drive straight from there to Lake Tahoe - I stopped in first and bought it for you. It was a pretty top and bottom set of pink polka dot lingerie set against a black background. You loved it! I gave it to you in the car.
We soon hit a lot of snow driving through the mountains, We were listening to the first Bon Ivor album over and over. We’d just got it the week before and we were singing along to one another. We stopped for gas and when we went in to pay, looked around for a snack or two. I was getting myself a coffee, when I saw a pair of Valentines sunglasses - pink and white with hearts on the frames. I bought them for you and embarrassed you a little when I said to the cashier, breathlessly, “isn’t she (you!) the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen!”
You are and always will be, my little sweetheart. My heart is so full this morning thinking of you.
Valentines Morning
It’s early morning on Valentines Day, little sweetheart and your mom texted me to say that the flowers I sent for each of you arrived safely.
You are so very much in my heart, today, as ever. I remember our first two Valentines Days together especially being noteworthy.
The very first was during rehearsals for Tir na nOg. Edna wanted to take us all to dinner but when we got to the restaurant the lights were out and there was no power in the kitchen (or anywhere else for that matter). Instead of going somewhere else - and there was absolutely nobody else in the place, they would have closed for the night otherwise - the manager offered to have their sister restaurant cook dinner for us and drive it over in somebody’s car. We each had a choice between Irish Stew or a burger. You got the burger and I got the stew as they went around the table taking everyone’s order and offering free drinks while we waited, the place lit by candles.
We weren’t officially a “thing” yet, little sweetheart. That was still about 4 weeks away but I had such an enormous feeling of affection and protection for you. I think we would have been a “thing” far earlier had I not been so oblivious to the fact that that is exactly what you wanted (as you famously demonstrated one night a month later).
Anyway, you had made a point of sitting next to me and I was glad you had. You told me I could have some of your fries (ha!) and the two of us sat together very close, the only two not drinking, as it happened. To pass the time, Edna suggested that each of us either tell a story or sing a song. When it was my turn, I sang an old Roberta Flack song, a cappella, “Let Them Talk”.
It was an uncannily prescient choice, I couldn’t know how much at the time with its lyric about how…
“They’ll try to break up this romance.
Darling they don’t stand as chance.
We’ve got the kind of love that’s so strong
We’re going to be together from now on.
I don’t care what comes from the devil’s workshop.
True love is going to make it stop.
I want the whole wide world to know that I…
I love you so.
They’re envious of everything that we do.
But its so wonderful
When you love someone.
And that someone …
Loves…
You.!
Needless to say, the whole thing was very emotional. And seemingly out of place. Everyone seemed a bit embarrassed and keen to move on. Except, of course… of course, you, little sweetheart. You squeezed my hand and said, “I want you to sing that to me again, sometime when we’re alone. Just for me.”
You are so very much in my heart, today, as ever. I remember our first two Valentines Days together especially being noteworthy.
The very first was during rehearsals for Tir na nOg. Edna wanted to take us all to dinner but when we got to the restaurant the lights were out and there was no power in the kitchen (or anywhere else for that matter). Instead of going somewhere else - and there was absolutely nobody else in the place, they would have closed for the night otherwise - the manager offered to have their sister restaurant cook dinner for us and drive it over in somebody’s car. We each had a choice between Irish Stew or a burger. You got the burger and I got the stew as they went around the table taking everyone’s order and offering free drinks while we waited, the place lit by candles.
We weren’t officially a “thing” yet, little sweetheart. That was still about 4 weeks away but I had such an enormous feeling of affection and protection for you. I think we would have been a “thing” far earlier had I not been so oblivious to the fact that that is exactly what you wanted (as you famously demonstrated one night a month later).
Anyway, you had made a point of sitting next to me and I was glad you had. You told me I could have some of your fries (ha!) and the two of us sat together very close, the only two not drinking, as it happened. To pass the time, Edna suggested that each of us either tell a story or sing a song. When it was my turn, I sang an old Roberta Flack song, a cappella, “Let Them Talk”.
It was an uncannily prescient choice, I couldn’t know how much at the time with its lyric about how…
“They’ll try to break up this romance.
Darling they don’t stand as chance.
We’ve got the kind of love that’s so strong
We’re going to be together from now on.
I don’t care what comes from the devil’s workshop.
True love is going to make it stop.
I want the whole wide world to know that I…
I love you so.
They’re envious of everything that we do.
But its so wonderful
When you love someone.
And that someone …
Loves…
You.!
Needless to say, the whole thing was very emotional. And seemingly out of place. Everyone seemed a bit embarrassed and keen to move on. Except, of course… of course, you, little sweetheart. You squeezed my hand and said, “I want you to sing that to me again, sometime when we’re alone. Just for me.”
Tuesday, February 11, 2020
In Sadness
I came across this tonight, little sweetheart. Radiohead wasn't the main band in our shared life but it they definitely had resonance.
"In Rainbows" came out in the months that we first first met and fell in love. Because Big Famous Rock Bands (c.) only release albums every three years, their next one, "The King of Limbs" didn't come out until early 2011. I was on their email list and got an alert. You could purchase/download the entire album a month before the CD came out. I read the email on my laptop sitting on the couch in your apartment in the Inner Sunset. You were down in Santa Cruz in rehearsals for "On The Waterfront" but heading home in your famously battered to hell blue Prius. I texted you from the couch as I waited for the download and ran out to get you dinner from Crepevine, so we could eat together when you arrived. You were so excited. We listened together that night and I think three more times.
This track, "Codex" was our initial favorite I think, mostly for its sound. We hadn't had enough of a chance to fully digest the album and its lyrical content. I'm not sure what day it was. I came out on Feb 12 because the screening of our short film based on my play "Two From the Line" was the next day, Valentines was the day after and I was there to see your opening in "Waterfront". We were supposed to return to NYC before my birthday to see Low in Philly and to record your vocals for the Flag Day EP in Brooklyn and to do a workshop of my play My Before & After at EST with you in the lead.
We never got to do any of that. Tragically.
Instead, on my birthday, was your memorial. It was a Monday, so that may be have been why the theatre was free.
At one point I found myself outside and saw your dad in his car. I knocked on the passenger side door and he let me in. He had the stereo on. He said he was listening to the saddest song he could think of. I gave him this one on my phone, little sweetheart and we listened together, he and I. I had been listening to this album everyday. It was killing me but there it was. I'd been in the car with our friend Chris Smith in the days after when I had nowhere else to go. And he, knowing, had out put it on another time. This night I played it for your dad and he said "Yeah, this is sadder".
Sometimes I look at this world thinking how unfair everything is, how lawless, how untrue. I ache for you and always will. It's so fucking unfair. But I know how near you are. And that is something, more than something. It's the only thing. Love you forever.
"In Rainbows" came out in the months that we first first met and fell in love. Because Big Famous Rock Bands (c.) only release albums every three years, their next one, "The King of Limbs" didn't come out until early 2011. I was on their email list and got an alert. You could purchase/download the entire album a month before the CD came out. I read the email on my laptop sitting on the couch in your apartment in the Inner Sunset. You were down in Santa Cruz in rehearsals for "On The Waterfront" but heading home in your famously battered to hell blue Prius. I texted you from the couch as I waited for the download and ran out to get you dinner from Crepevine, so we could eat together when you arrived. You were so excited. We listened together that night and I think three more times.
This track, "Codex" was our initial favorite I think, mostly for its sound. We hadn't had enough of a chance to fully digest the album and its lyrical content. I'm not sure what day it was. I came out on Feb 12 because the screening of our short film based on my play "Two From the Line" was the next day, Valentines was the day after and I was there to see your opening in "Waterfront". We were supposed to return to NYC before my birthday to see Low in Philly and to record your vocals for the Flag Day EP in Brooklyn and to do a workshop of my play My Before & After at EST with you in the lead.
We never got to do any of that. Tragically.
Instead, on my birthday, was your memorial. It was a Monday, so that may be have been why the theatre was free.
At one point I found myself outside and saw your dad in his car. I knocked on the passenger side door and he let me in. He had the stereo on. He said he was listening to the saddest song he could think of. I gave him this one on my phone, little sweetheart and we listened together, he and I. I had been listening to this album everyday. It was killing me but there it was. I'd been in the car with our friend Chris Smith in the days after when I had nowhere else to go. And he, knowing, had out put it on another time. This night I played it for your dad and he said "Yeah, this is sadder".
Sometimes I look at this world thinking how unfair everything is, how lawless, how untrue. I ache for you and always will. It's so fucking unfair. But I know how near you are. And that is something, more than something. It's the only thing. Love you forever.
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