Highwater at Catfish Bend

  A few years ago, I learned that one of my favourite sensations in the entire world has a formal name: petrichor . There are few sensations of the human experience I love as much as petrichor.  There was a little bit of it on Sunday and Monday with the much-needed, though sadly no where near enough, rain. The way that the rain drops strike the soil are like these little pin pricks of joy into your heart. Being surrounded by grass hills and big beautiful trees of various kinds just adds a whole different layer to the beauty of the petrichor sensation. The soil, grass, eucalyptus, the redwood, the salt of the sea air--all of it converges into what is nothing short of unparalleled beauty, and awe-inspiring humility. Most mornings on the coast are damp mornings--that's fine by me. I don't mind cold humidity. I know we need the moisture. It's just not a replacement for rain. Foggy and wet mornings are a comfort to me. But they make me miss my grandmother. Today would have been

  You can purchase and listen to the single HERE . Tomorrow my first single through Spinnup is being released. It wouldn't have been my first choice for a single through my new distributor, but I had to give them something at least. Placing bets now on how long it will take for the plagiarism of this one to happen, hahahaha. I am very tired. I have to force myself to keep making music, but the constant and continuous plagiarism is making me crazy.  Anyway, enough of that. There is an option through Spinnup for submit tracks for consideration. I won't be submitting this one because I don't think it's good enough, if I can be honest, but I will be submitting the next one, hopefully? I...I am just tired. :/

 We're almost there! I haven't talked about my music yet on this blog. I mentioned it briefly in the introductory entry, but, hi! My name is Melody, and I am an opera singer! Right now I am working on finishing up my opera record. I have been working on it non-stop for about....3? years. I first started working on some of the arias in 2018, back before I knew I was going to make an opera record, so I guess technically 4! I am on the last 3 arias: Mein Herr Marquis ,  Der Hölle Rache , and  Les oiseaux dans la charmille (with the A6, because I am a jerk) You can listen to my almost done record as it is now here , because Blogspot won't let me embed!!! >:(  I finish Mein Herr Marquis this weekend! I was going to put it off another week, but knew if I put it off again, I would never, ever finish it! I am doing my best to study it today and tonight, so I can record it tomorrow! This is one album where I couldn't WAIT to be done. The "almost done" period of al

  I am sure myself, much like everyone else on this planet, is watching the conflict in Europe unfold. I don't feel comfortable saying anything about it, and, for the most part, have refrained. This is beyond my scope. I know it's not as simple as American propaganda media is making it seem. I have chosen to only get my news from Reuters, and focus on the little moments , and stories of hope . I am not choosing to look away out of selfishness; we are not meant to consume images of war, kitten videos, and then an advert for butt smoothing cream one after the other like that. I check Reuters a couple of times a day, even if it's just briefly skimming the headlines to get a SparkNotes version of world events, and then close it. It wouldn't do me very much good to be afraid. Everything just feels all at once precious, insignificant, vast and minute, all at the same time. What I can't handle are people who just zero in on their own very privileged problems all of the ti

  Spring is here again. I long for my old stomping grounds. I long for them in ways I could have never imagined. I hadn't thought of this place in years, and suddenly thought of it this morning and it was like a hole in my chest opened up and this love for this place opened back up. For the last several years, I haven't been out and about town very much. Not only because of Covid. I had issues with a longtime stalker and this person has finally moved away. It was in the moment when I learned that this person may finally be out of my life that my heart and soul opened up and all of the places that my heart missed that it didn't know it missed became this very particular kind of longing. Part of this is also because I have SO MUCH to do on the weekends and such limited time to get all of my chores done, that it is impossible to even dream of carving out time for fun things. The place my heart longs to go to right now is Higgin's Way, which was a public access former utili

  It's Spring Recital Season once again, after a two year Covid-related hiatus. Everyone is sending me this Bernie Meme (again). When they were first a Thing, everyone had sent this to me because this was, in fact, literally my grandfather during every school event. The one that everyone is was thinking of specifically in this instance was the Fall Choir Recital of my freshman year of high school. I remember this very vividly (and apparently, so does everyone else), because this was the recital that we all had to stay on stage for the full duration of the recital. So no only did we have to sit through a  LOT of bad  singing, but having to keep a straight face through that AND my grandfather looking like he'd rather be somewhere, anywhere, else, slinking down in his chair like a small child trying to escape the horrors of the most hackneyed cliché of high school performance clichés in which someone who was a terrible singer was slaughtering showtunes. But, not just ANY showtunes

  I have been thinking about this a lot lately. If I can be perfectly honest, if "hard work" were the true and sole provenance  for success, people like my mother would be millionaires.  On my grandmother's side (her mother's people), I come from a long line of coal workers, as in people who come from the "salt of the earth," and who rooted around in the coal mines. They all lived, worked, and died in poverty. SO, forgive me, please, if I just find this whole concept patently, demonstrably false. And just plain horseshit. If I may. There was this HILARIOUS meme I saw (a variation of which is above), and it really got thinking--are any of your "indie" faves any good, or are their parents just rich? It just made me realize, almost everyone who has any degree of success in any of the media or the art realms is a god damn nepo baby . I know that nepo babies, and their cousin the Industry Plant , were everywhere, but it wasn't until very recently th

 I feel like the title is self-explanatory, hahaha 1.) Jump! by Van Dyke Parks It's a "what if" musical about Brer Rabbit inspired by the books Parks wrote with the same name. It is physically impossible for me to be in a bad mood whilst listening to this album. Unfortunately, it's been taken off of most of the streaming platforms. Fortunately for me, I bought it in 2015, which is one of many reasons that, if you are able to, should buy music. I bought it and became re-enamored with it right at the height of my going to New York all of those times, and for years, I was unable to listen to it. I am so glad I gave it a spin again recently, because it's such a comfort to me. It makes me feel so very happy. Plus, the person who almost ruined it would absolutely hate it, so there's that. Everything I do with spite, which strengthens me, etc. Brer Rabbit does it again. 2.) Sam's Town by The Killers. Hot Fuss by The Killers was one of the most special musica

  Well, that was fast. Spinnup did NOT reject my submission and in fact, I got the email this morning saying it was off to the various platforms. That went nice more smoothly than I ever could have imagined. That was FAST. I think I shall count it as a Nice Thing that has happened. I am very tired. I am emotionally tired. I am physically tired.  I am very tired. If there is one thing that this pandemic has taught me is that I enjoy being alone. I can spend days not interacting with other people. I enjoy it. I've spend more of my life than not being isolated from other people. It doesn't really bother me because that's just how most of my life has been lived. I find over the course of this pandemic, that I enjoy very much being alone, and am happiest when I am alone.  I find joy and solace in being alone. I've grown less and less patient with people whining about problems they could absolutely fix, because they don't want to fix anything, they just want to wallow and

This photo was not from this morning and has nothing to do with anything; I just like it.  I hate the time change. I hate both the Spring and the Autumn time changes, and  can't stress enough how badly they disorient my brain. My brain is a chaotic place enough as it is! Yesterday morning, I woke up 10 minutes before I had to leave I managed to get out on time, thanks to the fact that I prep everything religiously the night before. It's borderline somnambulistic at times--not being fully cognizant until I get to work at 8:30.  This morning, I gave myself a whole, full 35 minutes. I snoozed my alarm several times. It was still pitch black outside. I could hear the soft rain outside. I love rain. I loft soft rain, its restorative nature. I like being indoors and watching it. I love that no camera made by man could ever accurately capture its beauty. I also rather hate being out in it.  I had ample time this morning to make myself a coffee, heat up a pork bun, and eat a banana, wh

  Last week, I mentioned the Bastion of Snobbery that is Hillsdale, which reminded me of another story. I thought I might as well share it. It's a good story. I have told this story before, and I will surely tell it again, but it's always fun telling as much as it is hearing. Hillsdale is a VERY FANCY mall down in San Mateo that takes itself far too seriously. Its marble halls (no exaggeration) are far too grand for peons. Apparently, this pretentious waste of space now has fountains ? Good lord. The stores, though they are still just retail stores at the end of the day, see themselves as FANCY retail stores,--dare I say it, SPECIAL retail stores. This mall has Bufano statues , for crying out loud. It may be marble latent in an upscale (if even that, lol) mall, but it's still a damn mall, for Christ's sake! That should give you a decent idea of what we are dealing with. Put a pin in your brain of that staircase in the above photo, by the way. It was 2006. Very vividly e

  On Friday night, I made the Great Migration from LJ to Dreamwitdth. Previously, I had had a Dreamwidth Account during the era of the anon-wank meme, SadFrenchPeople . When I had reported the group to the admins, especially since the anon posters were saying really disgusting and straight up defamatory statements, DreamWidth's response was to just ~le shrug~ and tell me not to look at it. I immediately deleted my account. It took a LOT from me to make a new account with DW. I hope to be back on LiveJournal someday, it's just not okay for me to be on there right now, either everything that is going on. I painstakingly went through and downloaded each and every LJ icon. Only 6 made the Great Migration, because I am not going to pay DW for an account when I am already paying for LJ. At least I have everything preserved there for the time being. You know that old adage that you're not supposed to talk about the internet off of the internet, let alone ON the internet? Unfortuna

  I am a bit hesitant to share anything from the trash pamphlet that is the SF Gate, but this article caught my eye last month. A mall that was always very near and dear to my heart is closing down this month, and is to be razed for some stupid biotech campus. Quite frankly, the last thing that we need is another biotech campus. Plus, I thought all of those people were working from home now, so why are we building new things for them?! Tanforan shopping mall has been around for about 51 years. Formerly, it was a racetrack  that was made famous by Seabiscuit --yes, that Seabiscuit (and was even used as a Japanese interment site during WWII). I am not morally opposed to change. I am not one of those anti-change curmudgeons. I just hate the reasons why things change.  At the end of  2019, I posted on my LiveJournal about how deeply saddened I was about the closure of one of the best stores in the Bay Area--the Palo Alto Fry's. When I tell people, "you don't understand,"

Hi. My name is Melody. I have been blogging on the internet since I was a child. Since the future of LiveJournal is unknown, I am starting another blog.  I don't really WANT to start another blog, but I feel it's very necessary. I know in many ways, my life is never going to be the same way losing such a huge part of it--even the suggestion of potentially losing is it quite daunting and sad. But since this is in the context of many, many more sad things in the world, I guess I will be alright. I guess I should introduce myself to this new space. Hi, again. My name is Melody. I make music as Le Bas-fond. I am also a professional illustrator and an artist.  I am First Nations Abenaki and Nahua from Mexico. I am also a Geordie Scot and German, but those are less interesting to people, I guess. I still refer to myself as "an Indian," because all of my documents and my family's documents had always listed "Indian," and I know that upsets some people, but it&#