Newsletter Updates & Musings

What a time to be alive!

Hey dear ones,

I found some new subscribers to my so-called “newsletter” and decided it was best for me to combine that “newsletter” project with the ongoing routine blog post that I make every week.

What does that mean? Well, I’ve been sharing pretty vulnerably with people on here for a while now. It was originally meant to be for close friends and family, but I’ve grown to feel that sharing vulnerably and authentically with anyone who wants to receive is an important human part of making art.

So, I will keep sharing what’s going on in Lucyland, with some added information about upcoming shows, projects, etc. For those who know me well, I hope these remain solid updates. For those who know me less well, I hope that reading these posts enrich and complicate your view of me, and I hope you find resonance with or nuggets of intrigue in them. AND, I hope you all come to my shows, when you can :)

Now for the newsletter publicity portion of this post:

I’m playing one last show in Minneapolis before I leave again for the summer. And I’m sooo excited about it. This combination of musicians is going to be absolutely stellar. They are all inspirations to me, people whose magic shines through their music.

That’s Sadie Gustafson-Zook, Jackie Rae Daniels, my friend Tuesday and me.

This Tuesday, 6/24, in a friend’s backyard. Dm me for the address :)

Other potentially relevant updates: I’m driving across from Minneapolis to Washington next Thursday to attend part of Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend. Then I’ll fly to New York and do an artist residency in Brooklyn for the month of July. If you are in NYC and want to collaborate on a theater project, hit me up :) Then I’ll fly back to Washington for August, where I’m playing the Subdued Stringband Jamboree with Brady and the Pinto Pals will be releasing our album!! We’ll do a little tour around Washington and then I’ll head back to the midwest for Tigre, Tigre, the Fox & Beggar’s puppet operetta. Summer plans, boom!

Now for the rest of the blog:

What a week it’s been in the eyes of the world, in the eyes of time, in the eyes of the trees. Or has it? It’s been quite a week for my heart and my feels.

Last week I was feeling sad. Thanks for holding me in that sadness. It feels a little awkward to post a blog that admits I’m in a tough place, and be received, beautifully and lovingly, by my family and community in that grief. It feels uncomfortable, yet comforting. I am so lucky.

My failed attempt to capture the sign that said “IKEA has better cabinets”

I went to the No Kings protest at the Minnesota state capitol on Saturday. It was the first protest I’d been to in a while. It brought back memories of camping out in front of that capitol, sleeping in the church on the corner, running around trying to stop people’s cars from being towed in the middle of the night, back in 2021 on the last few days of construction of Line 3.

This time, I followed my friends, two of my same friends I’d been with on those streets four years ago, through the crowd as they drummed and wailed on brass instruments and enlivened the chants of the marchers. I was glad to be with the musicians. The sheer amount of people present at the protest was exhilarating and stressful. The protest itself didn’t feel as satisfying as it would have in my days as a follower in the religion of democracy. (I wrote an essay in college once about how if democracy was a religion, then protest was its prayer). Mostly, I felt frustrated with the messaging and the lack of motivating chants.

To be clear, I think gathering together and expressing ourselves, our anger, or our support is important, and I’m glad I went. But I want to also think deeper about what we are shaping, what this crack illuminates, what we can dream up outside of our current structures, outside of what we can even understand. Sure, we need clever signs at protests, but we also need to venture beyond what any one sign can express. Sure, we can try to reclaim the flag, but the flag means patriotism to a country: a country with borders, a country ridden with a history of imperialism. What if we aim for beyond the familiar, beyond what we know?

Okay, okay. Political spiel over. Again, I welcome disagreements, challenges, comments (held with grace and compassion, for we are in this boat together). I am learning and changing my ideas constantly because I am in relation to you. What a strange and complex time to be coming to know this world, navigating and balancing a relationship with it and with myself. It is not easy.

Woof. What else? Friendship. I am grateful for Mikey and us cosplaying—doing drag one might say—as “normal” humans. We decided we needed to celebrate a new holiday: Normie Day. On Normie Day we: attend a baseball game, go fishing, and go to the Mall of America (Mikey’s out for this one). Things I almost never do, but which seem to Present Lucy like they might be varying degrees of fun (or terror). (Disclaimer: if you do one of those things on a normal basis, you are not necessarily a normie. If you do two or more of those things on a normal basis, you might be a normie. But don’t be offended! We’re just coming around to realizing that these are actually just viably fun things to do).

Mikey on Orange

On Tuesday I had studio tiiiiiiime and recorded 6 original songs with Mikey on cello, Jackie on violin, and Willow engineering. It was a dream to record with good friends; I felt very supported and had a blast! And I think the recordings will be raw and precious and hopefully contain nuggets of magic. I’m so excited for you to hear them, probably in a few months.

What else? I’ve been deep into Octavia Butler stories. Vampires and time warps and such. I’ve also been getting curious about AI and the mystery that it points to. I am intrigued by how it brings us to the edge and beyond what we can understand. There is inherent danger, for sure, and something mystical as well.

And I leave in a week! I’m excited to leave and will miss this place and my friends here dearly. And I’m so grateful for the life I am living. I will be treasuring this last week, these longest days of the year, in this beloved place full of so much inspiring community.

Happy Juneteenth, happy solstice, happy Midsummer. Hold on dear ones, we can do this.

Love,

Lucy

P.S. friends being doggone adorable, a series.