Meditation | 010

Thank you for being here for the tenth installment of this newsletter.

🎵 This month’s song is in C-sharp minor.

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As I’ve mentioned before, these songs are places of exploration for me, so, I appreciate you going along for the ride as I experiment with (new-to-me) production techniques and concepts in music theory.

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📷 I took this month’s photo on film in Yosemite National Park.

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This was taken along Tioga Road, possibly at Olmsted Point, and I believe that small sliver of blue left-center is the beautiful Tenaya Lake.

The film camera I use was a gift from my stepdad, Rich. He’s given me a lot of gifts over the years — books, camping gear, adventures, life advice, and, most importantly, his friendship. The camera has been a constant companion of mine since he gave it to me 12+ years ago, and, fittingly, this photo is from a trip to Yosemite we took together.

I invite you to sit with this song, photo, and poem and make them a small part of your day, whether that’s your morning ritual, afternoon break, or your evening wind-down.

As always, if you feel like it, let me know what you think in the comments. I’d love to hear from you. And if you can think of one friend who might like this newsletter, feel free to send this their way.

🎧 Special note: My song Florescence is out now

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Thank you again for being here.

A Poem

From Blossoms

by Li-Young Lee

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From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward   
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into   
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

Currently

Listening to

Chinese Satellite by Phoebe Bridgers (Listen)

• Reminder: I’m putting all the songs shared in the newsletter into this Spotify playlist

Reading

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Powell’s)

“The Carnivore’s Dilemma: Wyatt Williams On The Moral Conundrum Of Killing And Eating Animals” by Finn Cohen, with Wyatt Williams (The Sun)

1. Resolve in C-sharp minor / Recorded in Logic Pro / Written, recorded, and produced by Fog Chaser

2. Theory note: Around the 1:50 mark, you’ll hear a slight shift — this is a “secondary dominant” (a dominant chord borrowed from a different key). In this case, an Emaj7 becomes an E7, a chord that comes from A major (which is the VI of the song’s primary key).

This is typically analyzed/written as the V7/VI (the V7 of VI). To tee this up, I also borrowed the II chord from the key of A (a B minor) to create a little II/V magic. The E7 then wants to resolve to an A major chord, which it does, providing a different flavor as the song moves into the outro.

3. 35mm film (Fujifilm Superia / ISO 400) / Yosemite National Park, California, USA / Available as a print

4. Like all of my releases, this song was first shared here via this newsletter.

5. “From Blossoms” from Rose, 1986