My friend Scott recently started publishing a beautiful quarterly zine series called Drift Body filled with wholesome, enchanting original poetry & prose alongside inscriptions from ancient Orphic tablets. I recently received the first issue and carried it with me down to the water below one of my favourite nearby wandering areas, Fort Rodd Hill, to read alongside a couple of old birthday cards & writings that my grandfather sent me two decades ago.
On Sunday she left us a cherry
On Saturday: water-logged bread
On Friday she left us most of a rat
On Thursday: a snake with no head
A corvid is feeding her offspring
Each afternoon, soaking their food
To some birds, the bath is for bathing
But for Raven, it helps feed her brood
On Wednesday she left us cat kibble
On Tuesday: a handful of rice
On Monday she left us some swollen dog food
A week’s worth of leftovers— nice
A corvid comes by, on a mission
Each afternoon, feeding her brood
To some birds, the bath is for bathing
But for Raven: a sink for her food
On Monday she left us another bird’s claw
On Tuesday: some limp deli meat
On Wednesday she left us a ratty mouse tail
On Thursday: a peanut-shell treat
A corvid comes by, on a mission
Each afternoon, soaking her food
To some birds, the bath is for bathing
But for Raven, it helps feed her brood
On Friday she left us a snail shell
On Saturday: bits of fish skin
On Sunday she left us a chicken leg-bone
And soon she'll surprise us again
Read on to reveal the inspiration for this bird bath ballad (warning – if you're squeamish about dismembered animal bits, don't scroll all the way to the end).
Being a full-time internet nature artist is great, weird, and lonely. This bird project felt more like being together than making art and I, who have never been up to the task of any sort of self-imposed daily practice, took dozens of pictures every day, sharing them with my internet friends. My friends became his friends, and I think caring about him became a way for them to care about me.
I came upon this heartfelt and entertaining essay about a city-dwelling human's friendship with Frank the scrub-jay through Robin Sloan's newsletter. Elisabeth does a fantastic job interweaving the emotion and humor of befriending free wild birds, and inspires me to want to write about my friendship with Patience—the only crow that I ever named, and who the stamp which serves as my bird-avatar here is based upon. Maybe at some point I'll post the results on this blog...
(On a side note: As I was reading Elisabeth's story, I realized that I've encountered parts of it before through her great dioramas.space project.)
A funny coincidence: I was starting to put together a post about two sleepy juvenile ravens (stay tuned!) when I got side-tracked reading an interview on The Creative Independent (“a growing resource of emotional and practical guidance for creative people” that I check occasionally). Its title (above) caught my eye, 'cause I've been pondering my own creative practice around playing piano. It ended up being an interview with composer and keyboardist Roger O’Donnell (of The Cure), who happens to have just released a beautiful piano album, called—get this—2 Ravens. Full circle! I love stuff like that.
It’s that abstract part of creativity that really interests me. When things are just flying around in your head and coming out. That’s what I find most interesting.
It’s when you have to make it palatable or understandable to other people that it becomes mundane. We all have these visions and sounds in our heads that are absolutely fantastic and amazing, but you then have to make them understandable to other people.
This is the first in a series of Bandcamp Friday posts – you can view the rest here.
In light of Bandcamp's wonderful, now-monthly tradition of waiving revenue fees—which resulted in $4.3 million worth of sales directly supporting musicians the first time they did it, and $7.1 million the second time—we thought it would be nice to share some purchasable songs that have been vibrating through our heads lately.
Although weeding is a daily duty here, we've started a weekly tradition called Weeding Wednesday during which we each spend a focused chunk of 水曜日 crawling around the Hill pulling Undesirable Plants to make room for greater biodiversity. In light of this new custom, I thought I'd take some time to research one of the weeds that I've been focusing on today:
An early morning stroll during May to July (according to the altitude) may discover the year's first Nootka Rose. Who has not then savoured the pleasure of the moment, the visual delight of the elegant buds, and the dewey freshness of the blossoms, the memorable fragrance—both of flower and foliage.
— Lewis J. Clark, Wild Flowers of British Columbia
Named after Nootka Sound here on Vancouver Island (“Nootka” itself being derived from a Nuu-Chah-Nulth term) Nootka rose's thorny thickets make great habitat for birds and other small animals, and its flowers are loved by bees, wanna-bees, and butterflies. This qel'qulhp (Halkomelm for 'wild rose bush') has been traditionally used by many First Nations groups for a number of medicinal and culinary purposes.
Apparently this rose makes a tasty jelly or jam, which we'll have to try sometime.
Artistic Inspiration: Drift Body
🎶 On Sunday She Left Us A Cherry 🎵
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