Drum & Lace Field Notes 13

Summer Solstice celebrations & choosing to be kind

Ciao to all,

First and foremost, happy Summer Solstice to everyone! If you know me, or have been following me for some time, you know how meaningful the solstices are to me. The summer solstice, in particular, is one of my favorite days of the year- a day that I use and take to do some deeper reflection, which this year will be particularly weighty given the current state of the world. This reflection involves taking a look at what has/hasn’t changed since the last solstice. How do I feel in my head/in my body? Do I feel that what I’m doing artistically and on a basic human level is where I’d like to be, and reflects my morals? What intentions can I set for myself to reassess in December? You get the idea. I haven’t always been this way- for most of my life, especially when I was younger, I had lists upon lists, schedules and five/ten year plans that I was actively trying to work towards, often to a fault. In recent years, though, shifting to setting these shorter term ‘check-ins’ has been extremely helpful to be kinder to myself, in particular as the breaking of these rigid plans in the past has/had caused me a lot of stress & anxiety (hello control issues stemming from at times volatile childhood!).

(me in the gorgeous garden at our chef friend’s house, where they host a supper club called That Hungry Chef)

Anyhow, here are a few snaps from life lately- it’s very odd to feel great about life at the moment as you are concurrently living in a ‘doomscroll’ news reality & news story cycle. For what it’s worth, I’m so incredibly excited about the new music I’ve written (hopefully there’ll be more news to share about this soon?), the live shows I’m getting to play, the folks I’ve been meeting out and about & the deeper sense of community I’ve been able to nurture here in London 🫂 Trying to bring the creative zoom to focus in on a more micro community level, rather than stretching thin by expanding outwardly online/digitally, and finding that it’s absolutely the way to go.

Also, unbelievably, my album ONDA turns 1! On one hand, it feels like it came out forever ago and on the other it feels like we were just celebrating it. I’m grateful to Fabrique Records for releasing this album that I’m so incredibly proud and happy about (there’s some vinyl left online and on my Bandcamp). Getting to perform the tracks from ONDA live recently has been SO fun, especially with practice and allowing the tracks to have a slightly different flow live. If you’re reading this, actually, I’m curious- do you like when you see an artist and they play a track you know but it’s just slightly different/longer/shorter? For me performing needs to involve some elements of improvisation and breathing life into the music, so ultimately most tracks sound just a little different than they are on the record and I’m always wondering if anyone minds!

In closing, for those of you in London- I hope to see you at Solstice Solidarity Synthesis : Summer taking place on July 3rd at The Old Church in Stoke Newington. Elated that we’ll get to celebrate the solstice with some amazing music, and let us all summon all the good energy that we can muster 🌓 You can get tickets here (please do get them in advance if you can!) - https://ra.co/events/2169076

That’s all for now- choose to be kind & resist resist resist ❤️‍🔥

Happy Summer Solstice xoxo,

Drum & Lace