Meditation 025 | Beneath the Woodbine

This installment marks the end of Volume II, and the last of the 24-piece meditations series, a two-volume project where, as of this post, I have written and shared instrumental songs in every musical key over the last two years. I am so grateful for your time and attention.

Volume III will be announced soon.

Thank you for being here for the 25th installment of this newsletter, and the final piece of Volume II.

Next month I’ll send out a recap post that will include every song I’ve released across Volume I and Volume II in one convenient place. In the meantime, feel free to explore the archive.

🎵 This month’s piece is in E-flat minor.¹

This is such a special post. In addition to this being the final song of the two-year project I mentioned above, I wrote it for the new

One Word

documentary, Woodbine, out today from the exceedingly talented

Taegan MacLean

.

Woodbine explores Taegan’s attempts to pull together various threads of his life after losing his dad at a young age, sixteen years ago. I’m honored to have provided the soundtrack for the entire documentary, and this piece, “Beneath the Woodbine”, was written specifically for the film.

Taegan is an incredible storyteller and filmmaker, and I feel so fortunate to have had the opportunity to collaborate with him on such a deeply personal project. My own dad passed away in 2019, and we lost my father-in-law not long after in 2020, so this collaboration has been especially meaningful. Taegan and I are also both new fathers, and working on this project together allowed us to, yes, connect through loss, but also explore our grief in a way that felt hopeful and forward-looking, even as we spent time — together and separately — excavating hard moments from our pasts. Sitting with Taegan’s well-crafted work has surfaced dozens of dormant memories I’ve carried of my own dad and has inspired me to think deeply about the kind of father, and person, I want to be for my son, and my family.

I don’t want to give too much away — so, please carve out some time to watch the documentary yourself, especially if you want to find out what’s beneath the woodbine. And if you need a good cry.

Woodbine

📷 This month’s photo was taken on Mt. Hood in Oregon.²

I had the chance to stay at this historic cabin over a long weekend last fall. I snapped the photo above during a rare break in the rain before ducking back inside to sit by the wood stove. It was a gloriously slow few days: I chopped wood, hiked, listened to the rain, wrote, read, slept, and did little else.

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. And please go watch Taegan’s documentary, Woodbine.

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.

---

A Poem

To See It

by Laura Foley³

We need to separate to see 
the life we've made. 
We need to leave our house 
where someone waits for us, patiently, 
warm beneath the sheets. 
We need to don a sweater, a coat, mittens, 
wrap a scarf around our neck, 
stride down the road, 
a cold winter morning, 
and turn our head back, 
to see it—perched 
on the top of the hill, our life 
lit from inside.

🔈 A reading (by me):

---

Currently

Reading

• Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel (Bookshop) (Thank you, Jon, for the recommendation!)

  • 📖 Explore all the books that have been shared in this newsletter:

Listening to

• Call It Dreaming by Iron & Wine (Listen)

  • 🎧 I put all the songs shared in the newsletter into this Spotify playlist

Sharing

• The news that I had the opportunity to hear my first film score up on the big screen here in Portland last week.
  
  I wrote the score for

  Erika Bolstad
  ’s short documentary, To Be Rich, a companion piece to her fantastic book Windfall, which was shown at Cinema21 last week as part of a local film screening.⁴

• Another ambient piece I wrote for the most recent chapter of

  Elle Griffin
  ’s utopian novel, Oblivion:

Is utopia real or imagined?

• Rich says: “I love this shirt. It’s the best shirt I’ve ever owned. Very soft and such. Everyone should have one.”

  

1. Beneath the Woodbine in E-flat minor / Written and produced by Fog Chaser / Recorded in Logic Pro

2. Cabin, iPhone / Mt. Hood, Oregon, USA

3. “To See It” from It’s This by Laura Foley, Fernwood Press, 2023. Shared with generous permission from the poet. (Bookshop)

4. That’s me, Matthew M. Evans.