“Come into the mountains, dear friend Leave society and take no one with you but your true self Get close to nature Your everyday games will be insignificant Notice the clouds spontaneously forming patterns And try to do that with your life.”
-Susan Polis Schutz, from Come into the mountains, dear friend
On the northwestern edge of the Anderson Valley you meet the Mendocino Ridge that crags, creaks, and peaks at 2,500ft before descending ruggedly into the pacific ocean. The valley is sparsely populated and filled with vineyards and farms while the coast is peppered with tiny towns and dairy farms starting with Albion in the south and tracing up past the small city of Fort Bragg to the “Lost Coast.” The ridge is dense with a coastal redwood forest also dotted with occasional wineries, apple orchards, and remote homesteads. Between the town of Philo and the coastal hamlet of Elk is where I spent a week with my friends Max and Jenna. A whole week of cool crisp quiet nights, perfectly awful cell service, crisp clean tasty air, a cozy wood-burning stove, incredible stargazing, and days spent crawling up and down the Mendocino coast to swim, hike, eat, and chat all while chugging copious amounts of wine.
The morning I left for Mendocino my friend Sivan drove me to LAX in exchange for Bagels from Belle’s in Highland Park– hardly adequate compensation for such an ask. I felt inspired to participate in the ironic and puzzled bemusement of Angelenos after a New York Times article claimed Los Angeles had better bagels than the big apple itself. Like most bouts squaring up The City of Angels to the Big Apple, Angelenos shrugged with indifference leaving New Yorkers huffing and puffing. My kind of city.
“To stand on the bottom of any of the valleys is to have
the feeling of being down in the center of a great round
cup. To stand on top of one of the narrow ridges is like
balancing on one of the innermost petals of a gigantic rose,
from which you can see all around you the other petals
falling away in wide rings to the horizon.”
-Jean Ritchie on Appalachia, from Singing Family of the Cumberlands
Over 40% of Kentucky’s population lives in a rural area but I grew up in Lexington, a burgeoning, quirky, college basketball and horse racing obsessed, churchy city with small town energy. Lexington nestles up against Appalachia right to its east. A twenty minute drive east on the I-64 will fold you into tumbling forested hills with deep valleys, limestone outcroppings, punctuated by horse farms and tobacco fields.
Being on the Mendocino ridge reminded me of Appalachia. Basically take the dense foliage and rolling hills of Kentucky and triple them in size. Southern California offers more novel differences with magical deserts, awkwardly charming palm trees, humbling mountains, and vast expanses of flat dusty scrub littered with pastel stucco dingbat apartments, strip malls home to Michelin starred restaurants, and infinite tracings of power lines.
“The acronym [L.A] functions here as a slightly derisive diminutive. Now it’s become second nature, even to the people who live here. Maybe we adopted it as a way of immunizing ourselves against the implicit scorn, but it still makes me cringe. Only a city with an inferiority complex would allow it.”
-from Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003) Dir. Thom Anderson
“Lights of the city look so good
Almost like somebody thought they would
Thought they would”
-Victoria Williams, “Lights” from Happy Come Home
Los Angeles blooms at dusk. It is a city dressed best in the golden hour of 7pm shading terra cotta sand tones in hazy pinkgreenoranges. Past this time, Los Angeles transforms into a different city. The light-works of L.A are some of the most iconic parts of this city. When you land at LAX at night you face east passing over the glowing electric gridlock of streets and suburbia stretching from San Bernardino to Downtown to El Segundo.
Countless times I’ve taken my eyes off the road to glance the downtown skyline from the 10 or the 5 or to soak up the fluorescent fog of the Mission Junction train yard. Deep in quarantine I drove up the Malibu coast to sit on the beach so I could observe the shimmering cliff of circus lights radiating from the Santa Monica pier and Venice Boardwalk. Walking in the Theater District in downtown or through Chinatown is pure neon bliss. A trip to the Baldwin Hills Observatory at dusk is worth it for the humbling panorama of Los Angeles encapsulating Westwood to East L.A. On regular introspective walks in Mt. Washington I get a little dewy when I see the lights of Downtown or the vast expanse of lights stretching back out to the San Gabriel Valley. A sky full of starlights reminds us that we’re human but an expanse of city lights reminds us that we’re not alone.
4/6/21 Elk, CA
I haven’t experienced silence like this in a long time. I think there is a difference between desert silence and forest silence. To get here you drive north from San Francisco for 1 1/2 hours to Cloverdale. Once there you head northwest for another hour and a half through super rural, sparsely populated redwood forest.
I feel calm here. A bit unnerved as I always feel… I took a walk down Max and Jenna’s driveway this morning and it was stunning. It’s so foggy and brisk here in the morning that it feels like you haven’t fully woken up yet, like when your eyes are still cloudy with sleep. I’ve made really good friends with the cats here especially the super fluffy one who keeps bumping into me as I writewwwwwwuhqqqqbquqqqoooooaaaaaaa;;;
“Appa-LAY-shuh is the pronunciation of condescension, the pronunciation of the imperialists, the people who do not want to be associated with the place, and the pronunciation Appa-LATCH-uh means that you are on the side that we trust.”
-Sharyn McCrumb, Appalachian Author
~On June 1st I’m leaving L.A for the rest of the year. I got a seasonal job with FEL Winery in Sonoma County where I will help harvest, produce, and bottle wine! I’m elated to dive into this new passion, explore a new place, and take a breather from L.A, from the hustle, and to spend some time outdoors, with myself, and with my friend Max who is working on the same team. I’ll be spending June and July in coastal Mendocino county before moving about an hour north of San Francisco just outside the town of Sonoma. Feels crazy, feels exciting, feels fresh, but feels right. I’ll miss y’all terribly but I’ll still be in touch, writing this newsletter, and will likely return to L.A in early 2022. 🍷
I’ve been very thankful to continue making music throughout this last year. I contributed bassoon, harmonica, and cornet to a set of five haunting tracks on my friend Erika Bell’s new EP Awry. Playing in Erika’s band is a really rewarding and stimulating practice of improvisation, texture blending, and song structure and I’m proud of the work we all did. It’s an immense joy to make music with cherished friends. Check it out on Bandcamp and support their music! Shoutout to Christina Huang for their killer album artwork.
Other 2020/2021 musical projects include two beautiful releases with Tasting Menu, Bassoonage for feel-good instrumental music by my dear friend Logan Hone, and my own release of electronic music as Lights in Private.
“Let it go
Let it go down
It’s okay
Let it come
Let it take all
thoughts away”
-Beverly Glenn-Copeland, “Sunset Village” from …Keyboard Fantasies…
Until next time, y’all
Love,
Cody