Thank you for being here for the 23rd installment of this newsletter.
I’ve been really flattered by how many of you have set up paid subscriptions, purchased merch, and clicked that follow button on Spotify. I’m so grateful for your support.
‘Soft Season’ out tomorrow!
My song Soft Season, first shared in this newsletter back in May, will be out on streaming platforms tomorrow, Friday, 7/21.
Be sure to follow my artist page on your preferred streaming platform to listen when it comes out:
🎵 This month’s piece is in D-flat major.12
This is song no. 23, which means that after this piece there are only two installments left in this first set of what I’ve been calling “meditations” (Vol. I and Vol. II). By September, I will have written 24 songs in each of the 24 musical keys. I’m cooking up ideas of what Fog Chaser Vol. III will look like, so stay tuned for that.
This piece is a meditation on time, on letting things happen as they will. So often I feel like I’m in a rush, eager to see goals attained overnight. How many times do we have to watch the slow bloom of flowers across spring and summer to recognize ourselves in the unhurried blossom? That we have to let things happen in their own time?
As we go about our days, we rarely notice the incremental shifts around us, within us. All of a sudden there are flowers, and we feel like we earned this beauty, as though it were our due. But we miss the millions of moments between bud and leaf; we expect fruition without time, without patience. I thought of the phrase “slow bloom” when I started to notice the first apples appearing on the trees in our neighborhood, and how they just arrive in their own time, right when they’re meant to.
📷 This month’s photo is on film from a visit to The Butchart Gardens in British Columbia.3
I invite you to sit with this month’s 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.
Thank you again for being here.
The Daily Good
I’ve been fortunate to be featured by The Good Trade on a couple of occasions over the last year or so. For those of you who don’t know, The Daily Good is their short, 30-second newsletter delivered each weekday morning — where you’ll get soothing playlists, sustainable recipes, inspiring articles, and much more.
I’ve been reading the Daily Good for a couple of years now, and I always find it calming and meditative. Check it out and subscribe below:
A Poem
Let Evening Come
by Jane Kenyon4
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
Currently
Reading
Tinkers by Paul Harding (Powell’s)
Listening to
When My Time Comes by Dawes (Listen)
Note: I put all the songs shared in the newsletter into this Spotify playlist
Sharing
A new ambient piece I wrote for chapter 8 of Elle Griffin's novel, Oblivion:
Foggy merch — available now!
A few of my other Spotify playlists:
Slow Bloom in D-flat major / Written and produced by Fog Chaser / Recorded in Logic Pro
Theory notes: At a couple of spots in this piece, I use a “secondary dominant” (a dominant chord borrowed from a different key). The Fmin7 becomes an F7, a chord that comes from B-flat major (which is the VI of the song’s primary key of D-flat).
This is typically analyzed/written as the V7/VI (the V7 of VI). The F7 then wants to resolve to an B-flat chord, which it does, providing a different flavor before heading back to the I (D-flat).
Slow Bloom / 35mm film (Fujifilm Superia / ISO 400) / The Butchart Gardens, British Columbia, Canada / Order a print.
From Otherwise, Graywolf, 1996.
Meditation 023 | Slow Bloom