These last two weeks have bounced between Spring-like and "kinda not Spring" here in Florida. Some of my family in the north report that flowers are blooming, and the snow is gone. Regardless of how non-committing Spring may be this year, we always anticipate it with hope. It's our sign that life has survived the frost and snow and that summer is coming.

This week's podcast is inspired by the process of installing drywall.

This week's podcast is highly experimental. I sampled two industrial air scrubbers that have been hanging out in my house and used the recordings (and only those recordings) to make this track.

This year has started with an exaggerated pace of getting things done. And after the lull of 2020, I'm somewhat good with that. But at the same time, it's easy to compare a break-neck pace to an open flame. There's something peaceful and life-giving about a fire. Flames can be wild and frantic, full of energy, but they can also be smooth and subtle while they move across the surface of wood, turning it to ash. Not unlike trying to do too much in too short a time.

When I was a kid, my dad offered the advice that we shouldn’t wish to speed life along. I was probably six or seven years old, but I couldn’t wait to be ten. As it turns out, my dad was right. Since then I’ve realized how much time we spend saying things like “I can’t wait for Friday” or “my birthday is in 21 days!” There’s nothing wrong with those kinds of hopeful anticipations, but they can quietly steal from the here-and-now.

When you really stop and think about it, isn't life a series of chances to start again? That's especially obvious in the first moments of a new year, or in spring. But each and every minute of our lives holds dozens of tiny opportunities to make new changes, or take alternate paths. We can choose to see those as either positive or negative things. Which will it be for you?

As 2020 comes to a close, I wanted to walk back through the material I've released on the podcast this year. There was a lot of motion in theme and style during the last 16 episodes, and I combined them all into one big track. Some of the episodes are fairly close to their original sound while others have been heavily modified for this mix.

Sometimes life is so crazy that you don't have time to sit down and ponder the meaning of things. In my case, this track. What I can tell you is that I wrote four or five editions of EP-016 before this one showed up. I hope you enjoy it!

When I started looking at the idea of working with a Christmas song this year, I knew this one was the one. I know that it sounds pleasant (like almost every other Christmas song), because a lot of the hymns from way back when were... (They often reused and borrowed music from other stuff, but never-mind that for now.) But there's a lot of unseen depth to this one.

The context of this episode felt worthy of a voice note. The full transcript is available in the description of EP-015.