I am an island
working hard in valley sun
up and down a ladder
thinning apples in a tree
when’s dinner?
Greetings from mysterious, majestic, and ~m e l l o w~ Mendocino County, California. Life here is beautiful, challenging, quiet, deliberate, vast, and full of personal change and growth. Completing a partly diaristic newsletter is challenging when each week or day can reflect new moods, reflections, interests, and thoughts. All my expectations have been shattered and exceeded; my predictions naively false and revealingly true; my workload too little for my wallet and more than enough for my body.
I work at The Philo Apple Farm in the Anderson Valley. The farm specializes in over 100 different organic heirloom apple varietals including Spitzenberg, Kerry Orange Pippin, Wickson, Jonathan, as well as a few varietals of quince, pears, and plums. Besides the orchards there are chickens, goats, pigs, and a vegetable garden used to feed the farm family and a local boutique hotel. I spend up to eight hours a day inside of apple trees thinning and pruning the trees in preparation for harvest starting in late August. When I’m not in the trees I’m making compost tea, moving miles of irrigation pipe, weeding, bottling hard cider, and cleaning barrels used for balsamic vinegar, ciders, and brandy.
Crispy Funky Juice
Sweet on the schnoz, golden dry
How ‘bout them apples?
Fake Sword is Michael Chadwick and Jenny Hirons, my friends and former roommate. They recently released Blind Contour, an abstracted electro-pop boogie fest driven by winding synth, laid-back bass lines, Cale-inspired guitar riffs, rhythmic trickery, and loungy vocal lines vibrating with whimsical lyrics and satisfying harmonies. I’m super happy to have contributed some bassoon to “Anonymous Caller” and “Golden Calf”. This has been a frequent soundtrack to long Mendocino drives and welcome relief to tedious farm shifts.
Cherry Danish nose
Velvety melon mouth feel
Tart gamey finish
Crush me with quiet.
I crawled underneath a waterfall
absence straining my rockmoss cheekbones
eyes went cold, coursing back till they hurt
who knew I could be this hungry all the time?
my channels quake, shift, and set
silent torrent before tranquil wake
polishing me new
Qvevri orange, so dank
pond water, dried apricot
WOAH is that yogurt!?
An Album a Day Keeps the Boredom Away
A playlist for all those times you find yourself in the Anderson Valley up a ladder thinning apple trees for eight hours a day.
🍏. KeiyaA- Forever, ya girl (2020, Self-Released)
Steezy mantras, woozy glitterscatter beats, and rich indulgent jazz harmonies. Light as air and heavy as fuck. Collaged, psychedelic, and diaristic. Incredible production throughout featuring assistance from dj blackpower (aka MIKE) and dj cowriiie.
🍎 Dean Blunt- Black Metal 2 (2021, Rough Trade Records)
Dark, murky, warbly, and deep. Ten irritated, lethargic, tender, and beautiful reverb-drenched tracks in just 23 minutes. Easy to chew, hard to swallow.
“All is spoken, after that
There's a desert left behind
You're a stranger in a dark room
Holding on to someone new”
🍏 Spellling- The Turning Wheel (2021, Sacred Bones Records)
Moonchild music. Spellling holding hands with Kate Bush holding hands with Joanna Newsom holding hands with with Bjork holding hands with Jenny Hval all dancing around a burning spire. A haunted pop musical with the most amazing and bizarre instrumental arrangements. Florid and powerful.
🍎 Water Borders- Harbored Mantras (2011, Tri Angle Records)
Witch House dirges bubbling out of a neglected San Francisco harbor. Bass-y, fermented electro-pop with a nocturnal, poisonous edge. Music for Scorpios, fungi, and dark sneaky bitches.
🍏 Space Ghost- Aquarium Nightclub (2019, Tartelet Records)
G-funk blissout of spacey, sleek, and angular bumps. Lots of thumpy bass amidst groovy shuffle bops, four on the floor house struts, and chrome tinted vibes painted in rich DX7 hues and drum machine. A total analogue synth party.
🍎 Wajatta- Don’t let get you down (2020, Brainfeeder)
Unexpected and unusual power couple of producer and DJ John Tejada with musician, beat-boxer, and comedian Reggie Watts. Using samplers, synthesizers, and vocal loops, Watts and Tejada craft completely bananas house anthems of the internet-age.
🍏 Ney Matogrosso- Ney Matogrosso (1981, Universal Music Brasil)
Fabulous, gender-bending, schmaltzy Disco, Choro, Samba, and MPB ballads. Fat and stabby hornlines punctuating groovy vamps and electric piano overload are all a vibrant and tropical habitat for Matogrosso’s impressively wide and commanding vocal range. Put on some heels and dance.
🍎 Nobukazu Takemura- Songbook (2001/2003, Bubble Core Records)
Takemura briefly veered away from laptop music to make this spunky menagerie of mumbled nonsensical lyrics, synthesized wind instruments, blistering drumkit, Bossa-tinged guitar, and analogue synth oodles. Rich luscious pop with the perfect pairing of absurd serialism and adorable deviance.
Easy, bright, and round
Pepper, Flowers, Cola, Plum
All too quickly, done
In Mendocino I’ve developed a bit of a Stockholm Syndrome for creepy crawlies. There is no shortage of big spiders, strange critters, sting things, and slithery snakes. Wasps keep attacking the other farm hands, a Tibellus spider fell on my face while I showered, I’ve almost stepped on several snakes in the orchard, and interact daily with probably 72,000 earwigs.
Getting comfortable with all these bugs is a bit of self-inflicted exposure therapy. Earwigs are everywhere on the farm. They love the shelter of the tightly packed clusters of apples I am tasked to thin out. Wasps have particularly fascinated me while working at the farm. Plenty of yellowjackets buzz about but we also employ the help of tiny parasitic wasps called Tamaraxia which lay their eggs inside the eggs of codling moths which can destroy entire harvests.
I’m really bewitched by these misunderstood and often feared insects. My interest was piqued by my daily interactions with the bug but also an episode of Ologies with Alie Ward (** honestly a hit or miss show. Sometimes I learn so much, sometimes I cringe so hard.) where she speaks to a Spheksologist (Wasp-ologist.) Besides having some of the most brutally parasitic albeit fascinating egg laying techniques, there are thousands of varieties of wasps ranging in an array of colors and sizes, they’re not inherently aggressive, and some are even pollinators. I’m reminded of an awesome story I read about a town in central Japan called Kushihara with a wasp festival, hebo matsuri. Soleil Ho wrote this great piece and produced a captivating podcast. Listen here:
chill red and classy
ripe Rainier and jasmine tea
whoops! drunk the whole thing
Friends and places
The day I left L.A my car wouldn’t start. I crammed my entire room into my polite-sized Swedish sedan and ate breakfast with my friends Dan and Sivan and my housemates. I left L.A a little after 1 and cried on the 5. I stayed with my cherished Kentucky friend Maya in Monterey before heading on north.
In the Bay Area I stopped in Hayward to meet with my friend and former roommate Roger before finishing the rest of the day driving up to Mendocino. I moved in with my friends Max and Jenna but had the place to myself for the first few days. I squirmed and soaked in the unbroken silence and enjoyed this time reading, writing, and driving to the beach.
Life rhythms are totally new here- a clatter of syncopated patterns trying to find a new balance amongst each other. I used to say I “loved change”, and that I was “good at it”, but I realize that I’m actually really slow and meticulous with it. Living and working in a new place in near solitude reveals a lot about yourself and generates a lot of thought. Sometimes it’s frustrating and crushingly lonely, but I feel good here. I feel healthier and more able to write, reflect, change, and relax. Life is more in sync with nature and much more routinized and that can’t be beat. I have zero desire to make music right now, which is weird but cool. I’m trying to lean into whatever feels best.
My friends Sivan and V came through on their way in between Portland and Oakland. We drank tea and wine, flaneured the foggy coasts of Fort Bragg and Mendocino, skipped rocks and fought bugs at a remote watering hole, and had long meaningful conversations over meals and on wheels.
I have really enjoyed my proximity to the Bay Area. I’ve taken two weekend trips to visit friends, museums, and parks, and to overspend at thrift stores, wine bars, and restaurants. I had a really beautiful time visiting with my friends Jon and Sam in Oakland where they got tattoos, we drank beers in a park, gathered a posse and grabbed delicious food from Tacos Oscar in Temescal. Seeing familiar faces in new places is grounding, revitalizing, and comforting.
This past weekend some cherished homies came up from L.A and over from Lake County. Nothing makes you feel more at home than with good friends. We tasted wine, got breakfast, went to the beach, got sunburned, drank more wine, played catch, attempted to watch Hod Rod, had a BBQ, and went to two incredible local dive bars. We met the Grateful Dead’s guitar technician, a millionaire amateur sailor, and the oldest living fire chief in America who had more crass wit, one-liners, and dirty jokes than a Zucker Brothers movie.
Next week Max and I move to Sonoma to start our wine job. We found a killer deal on a spot just 12 minutes from the vineyard. While I’m sad to leave Mendocino so soon I am excited to delve into winemaking and to just keep moving forward. Maybe I’ll come back to Mendocino but who knows…I’m open to whatever. I miss my friends but I love the personal growth, quietude, cheaper rent, and the space.
sssoft wildflower
silk fennel soaked jasmine cream
wont last drink it fast
This place is
a space in
always been
an oasis
a quiet I
land
Fruit Punch, Cherry Drop
Funky, let it open up
Vibrant dram, goddamn!
I’ll close out with this performance by the Abdullah Ibrahim Band from a 1968 German TV production. Ibrahim’s band is an all-star lineup of free-jazz icons from South Africa, Denmark, Argentina, and the U.S. The crew romps through a sunny and organic groove featuring strange, soulful, and screeching solos, sublime fashion styling, and a music video meets art gallery feel. I’ve really enjoyed mining vintage free-jazz TV recordings–it’s amazing the kind of main stage spotlight this kind of music was given.
Thanks for reading, friends. Keep in touch and reach out if you want a postcard!
Until next time.
Love,
Cody