Goodnight from Rockaway :) <3

It’s Saturday, June 20, the last night of Spring. The summer solstice is arriving soon, at 4:24am ET, and I for one am ready for a shift. A washing away, a cycle completed, a fresh introduction. And Midsummer, a time often regarded as sacred and magical, seems the perfect opportunity to start anew.

After a slow walk along the beach and a mint chip ice cream, I got into bed this evening and read about ancient and modern customs and celebrations surrounding tomorrow. Ritual baths, white gowns, crickets and candles, Mugwort beneath the pillow, bonfires and dancing all night, music and feasting, flower crowns and whimsy, herbs and wine, singing and leaping.

“For thousands of years, communal fires mirrored the sun’s power to ward off malevolent spirits. Revellers would leap over the flames to seek protection and good fortune.

Ancient druids and herbalists gathered plants like St. John’s wort, verbena, and yarrow during midsummer, believing the sun’s peak energy imbued these plants with enhanced medicinal and protective magic. These herbs were dried and used throughout the winter for healing and protection.

In Scandinavian traditions, collecting seven or nine different types of wildflowers and placing them under your pillow on Midsummer Eve is said to bring prophetic dreams about a future spouse.

In Celtic belief, the solstice was a powerful "liminal" threshold when the veil between worlds thinned. Fairies and nature spirits were believed to be highly active during this time, weaving enchantments through the forests

The Greek Klidonas involved collecting fresh sea water, placing personal tokens under a tree overnight, and reciting prophetic rhymes the next day.

Pagans make pilgrimages to local rivers, lakes, or “holy wells” to solicit blessings and leave offerings.

Solstice worshippers have historically gathered at sacred stone monuments, such as Stonehenge in the UK, to watch the sunrise, a practice that continues today.”

I feel happy to be here at the ocean where everything is innately restorative and cleansing. I’m thankful to feel enchanted by it all tonight, comforted by soft images of imagination, knowing that when everything changes from Spring into Summer, I’ll be somewhere deep in dreams, waking to what I wish will be a better world.

How will you observe the solstice? What are you excited for, hoping, wishing for?

The moment I finished writing this little message, the sky outside became an orchestra of fireworks. We walked to the beach to see them. Here they are for you. <3

I think somehow, this is a good sign. :)

Wishing you all a Happy Solstice Eve, and if you’re reading this on Sunday, Happy Summer Solstice to you. <3

Good morning from dreamy and rainy NYC <3

It’s the holiday weekend, a time when we might have wanted to visit the beach, go for a bike ride, prepare a picnic, anything just to be outside, but here in NYC it’s a perfect day to hide indoors. I spent the morning sitting here on the couch, wrapped in a pile of blankets, consuming heavy articles, maddening videos, navigating the mental cobwebs of existential crises that seem to multiply with each new morning, with or without help from an outside informant.

I know you can relate, we all can. There is so much to be angry about, and it’s all available at our fingertips, 24/7. I was starting to feel sick though, time to take the reins and pull myself up and out before drowning. I sent a voice memo to a friend to process some things I read, put on a comforting playlist, and opened this fresh page on Substack, extending my survival in the form of a long branch that reaches from me to you. Already a breath of relief, worlds better.

I thought in that moment of a conversation I had with backstage before a recent show in Brighton on May 12. We were talking about our nonnegotiable values and the hardwired passions that drive us forward. Our personal sources of hope. The words that we reach for, what we wish to cultivate much more of as our lives continue. Mine were compassion, real compassion, curiosity, and equality. His were community, equality, and music. We talked about how each of these choices were in a way, versions of the same ideas. Then we thought of other people we knew and imagined which words they would choose.

I’m thinking of this now because of the actions I took a few minutes ago, in that heavy moment when my mind was a dark cloud, raining.

1. voice memo to a close friend

2. put on music

3. open Substack, start a new article

4. write to you all

Each of these shifts, actions of comfort and connection, and each elevated my state of mind, returning me to myself, to community, and to the seed of hope. As easy as it is to enter the vortex of news stories and a world gone wrong, it is also just as easy to return to action, solution, community, using the fuel of horror to bring ourselves back to each other, asking ‘what now? what about today?’

As my greatest broken record song, I repeat myself again saying thank you to all of you, thank you to this community, thank you for being.

What are your words, the nonnegotiable values, the passions that drive you forward, your personal sources of hope that pull you out of the muck? And what is a physical action you might take in a moment of heaviness, in the way I put on music and opened a fresh Substack page to talk to you all? Think about it if it’s interesting today, journal or write about it, and if you don’t mind, please add your thoughts in the comments if you have some time.

In light of this theme, I also want to show appreciation for a few writers on this platform, friends and peers who embody the soul of community and curiosity, and who use their time, energy, and platform with purpose - to move towards a better, more beautiful, and more just world.

They come from different industries and backgrounds, using different mediums - words, music, research, cooking, visual art, etc. Something for everyone.

So if you are home today, open to a new companion, needing a moment of departure from the demoralizing torture of the news, something fresh to elevate and inspire, here are some new friends. I have words to say about each of them, but I will let their pages speak for themselves. :)

writes

writes

writes

<3

<3

writes

writes

writes

writes

writes

And a big shout out to some incredible friends who also embody these ideas, who continuously bring comfort, give me hope in this world, and who I would love to read a Substack from: Dawn, Bird, Parker (pen&brush), Sunday, Jaclyn, Kristine, Coulee, Rev Todd, Christiane. And bran new friends Penny and Amanda for reminding me of true human kindness.

Thank you so very much for reading this, for everything. If you have any thoughts related to the questions posed, the writers referenced, or want to add any other publications you love, please add everything and anything in the comments. As always, I would love to read them all.

Sending good wishes on this rainy Sunday :)

A few nice songs that I listened to while writing <3

Good morning from NYC! It’s a beautiful day because this evening is the opening night of the NY International Antiquarian Book Fair, one of my favorite events and favorite moments of the year. As you might know from reading along, the book fair is dear to my heart, and I’m proud to stand today in my third year as Founding Ambassador of a growing circle …

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Hello, everyone!

***I started this post on Friday, and then I met Kristine for lunch and the Print Fair. Now I am back to complete the post***

Written on Friday:

How are you all doing? It’s 61 degrees and sunny here in NYC. I am nestled in my studio, though meeting a friend for lunch and a visit to the garden very soon. This morning, when it was colder, an…

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Good morning!

I hope everyone is feeling good. Today is a big day: full moon and lunar eclipse this morning. I slept very deeply last night after days of restless sleeps, vivid nightmares, and an accumulating sleep debt. Still am catching up, but feeling a little better, even with this dreary rain today and the ongoing heaviness of the world.

Blood Moon:…

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Happy Lunar New Year, everyone! The Year of the Fire Horse is upon us. I hope everyone has been doing well. This transition out of the year of the Wood Snake into the Fire Horse year has been intense and life changing, pushing forward into a brave new era, and I am ready. Are you feeling ready??

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Good morning. I don’t know how this is possible, but this is my first Substack post of 2026. Happy New Year, everyone! There is a good reason for this behavior, I promise. Other things are on the way, soon to be announced, and I think you will enjoy it all.

One piece of recent news: as of January 8, I am officially on the Board of Directors of the Eliz…

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Good morning, everyone. <3

Happy New Year’s Eve. :) It’s a day that feels both peaceful and chaotic, fraught in a way I can’t fully articulate - this uncomfortable undercurrent feeling, this push and pull from inside, from the background, from underground. Maybe it’s real, maybe it isn’t, but still there is a big sensation there.

How are you observing th…

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Good morning! Happy Sunday. Today at 10:03am EST is the exact moment of the winter solstice. What will you do in that moment? What will you do this evening? On the darkest day of the year, we celebrate light, and so we can have our own private celebrations, our own personal festivals of light, and this can mean anything we like.

Solstice meaning:

The sho…

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Good morning! Happy Friday :) I am writing to you from the Cafe Car on the Amtrak train to Washington, D.C., on my way to meet my mom and Tony for an event this evening at the Lincoln Theatre, celebrating Bread of Angels. I’m looking forward to seeing them and performing, to meeting my internet pa…

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Good morning, everyone <3

I hope you are having a beautiful December so far. Is it cold where you are? Here in NYC there is a gentle feeling of holiday spirit that I find so sweet and charming. The local firehouse has …

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Thank you so very much to Calimucho Screen Printing for hand printing our designs and being so wonderful, easy, and fun to work with. Cannot recommend you enough!!!

**If anyone is located in a city outside the tour route and is interested in purchasing anything from our souvenirs line, things will be made available in an online shop in December, OR you can feel free to send me a message to place a personal order which will be hand shipped by me. Stay tuned also as different items will be available in Chicago and at the East Coast shows - a few more tee designs, mini totes, and 2 limited edition posters. :)

Happy Birthday also to Neil Young! I shared the Note below in case you want to add your favorite Neil Young song. It’s fun to see everyone’s personal choices. You can also share yours in the comments here, too.

Here is the post I referred to about my time in Michigan. <3 <3 <3

Don’t forget to share/send your Northern Lights photos if you have any!

Okay that’s all for now!!! See you tomorrow, Live from San Francisco. <3

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Hello everyone. <3 I’m writing to you from a cozy collective workspace here in Detroit, where the temperature is 30 degrees, and the snow has settled softly on the ground, the warm sun peeking through the colorful foliage of the autumn trees.

Today is the first day of the US leg of the Horses 50 tour (also the actual 50th anniversary of the album today)…

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There are a few days remaining of October, and this morning, before tea or coffee, again under swathes of blankets, I’m thinking about some questions I asked myself and answered last year during this week of moody shifts and darkening days. Reading my answers, I’m thinking about my life today, how things have changed or not changed, how I’m different an…

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Below are the poems and quotes in the order they were read. I invite you to watch the video and follow along with the text. If you would like to take notes, here is also a downloadable PDF you can print.

As I write this to you now, I’m on the couch, wrapped in a pile of cozy blankets, drinking coffee, and feeling the crisp touch of autumn. I’m thinking about the silver threads that wove through the poems yesterday. Words of grief, nostalgia, the passage of time, remembrance, the medicine of nature, divine insight, the secrets of the poet, and profound knowledge that can only be found in the wild. I wonder which ideas ignited you, awakened your senses. Remember the elements are all within you and around you, and you are the igniter, the alchemist who can/must keep them all in balance.

The Poems

October

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
To-morrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
To-morrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow,
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know;
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away;
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

-Robert Frost

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

-Robert Frost

-Mary Oliver

Fall, leaves, fall

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;

Lengthen night and shorten day;

Every leaf speaks bliss to me

Fluttering from the autumn tree.

I shall smile when wreaths of snow

Blossom where the rose should grow;

I shall sing when night’s decay

Ushers in a drearier day.

- Emily Brontë

Sonnet 73: That time of year thou mayst in me behold

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou see’st the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west,

Which by and by black night doth take away,

Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.

In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the death-bed whereon it must expire,

Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by.

This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

-William Shakespeare

Pleasant Sounds

The rustling of leaves under the feet in woods and under
hedges;
The crumpling of cat-ice and snow down wood-rides,
narrow lanes and every street causeway;
Rustling through a wood or rather rushing, while the wind
halloos in the oak-toop like thunder;
The rustle of birds’ wings startled from their nests or flying
unseen into the bushes;
The whizzing of larger birds overhead in a wood, such as
crows, puddocks, buzzards;
The trample of robins and woodlarks on the brown leaves.
and the patter of squirrels on the green moss;
The fall of an acorn on the ground, the pattering of nuts on
the hazel branches as they fall from ripeness;
The flirt of the groundlark’s wing from the stubbles –
how sweet such pictures on dewy mornings, when the
dew flashes from its brown feathers.

-John Clare

All Hallows

Even now this landscape is assembling.

The hills darken. The oxen

sleep in their blue yoke,

the fields having been

picked clean, the sheaves

bound evenly and piled at the roadside

among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises:

This is the barrenness

of harvest or pestilence.

And the wife leaning out the window

with her hand extended, as in payment,

and the seeds

distinct, gold, calling

Come here

Come here, little one

And the soul creeps out of the tree.

-Louise Glück

When You Are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

-William Butler Yeats

Autumn Song

Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf

How the heart feels a languid grief

Laid on it for a covering,

And how sleep seems a goodly thing

In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?

And how the swift beat of the brain

Falters because it is in vain,

In Autumn at the fall of the leaf

Knowest thou not? and how the chief

Of joys seems—not to suffer pain?

Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf

How the soul feels like a dried sheaf

Bound up at length for harvesting,

And how death seems a comely thing

In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?

-Dante Gabriel Rossetti

To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,

Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

-By John Keats

Woodnotes I

For this present, hard
Is the fortune of the bard
Born out of time;
All his accomplishment
From nature’s utmost treasure spent
Booteth not him.
When the pine tosses its cones
To the song of its waterfall tones,
He speeds to the woodland walks,
To birds and trees he talks.
Cæsar of his leafy Rome,
There the poet is at home.
He goes to the riverside,—
Not hook nor line hath he:
He stands in the meadows wide,—
Nor gun nor scythe to see;
With none has he to do,
And none seek him,
Nor men below,
Nor spirits dim.
Sure some god his eye enchants,
What he knows, nobody wants.
In the wood he travels glad
Without better fortune had,
Melancholy without bad.
Planter of celestial plants,
What he knows, nobody wants,—
What he knows, he hides, not vaunts.
Knowledge this man prizes best
Seems fantastic to the rest,
Pondering shadows, colors, clouds,
Grass buds, and caterpillars’ shrouds,
Boughs on which the wild bees settle,
Tints that spot the violet’s petal,
Why nature loves the number five,
And why the star-form she repeats,
Lover of all things alive,
Wonderer at all he meets,
Wonderer chiefly at himself,—
Who can tell him what he is,
Or how meet in human elf
Coming and past eternities?

2.

And such I knew, a forest seer,
A minstrel of the natural year,
Foreteller of the vernal ides,
Wise harbinger of spheres and tides,
A lover true who knew by heart
Each joy the mountain dales impart;
It seemed that nature could not raise
A plant in any secret place,
In quaking bog, on snowy hill,
Beneath the grass that shades the rill,
Under the snow, between the rocks,
In damp fields known to bird and fox,
But he would come in the very hour
It opened in its virgin bower,
As if a sunbeam showed the place,
And tell its long-descended race.
It seemed as if the breezes brought him,
It seemed as if the sparrows taught him,
As if by secret sight he knew
Where in far fields the orchis grew.
There are many events in the field
Which are not shown to common eyes,
But all her shows did nature yield
To please and win this pilgrim wise.
He saw the partridge drum in the woods,
He heard the woodcock’s evening hymn,
He found the tawny thrush’s broods,
And the shy hawk did wait for him.
What others did at distance hear,
And guessed within the thicket’s gloom,
Was showed to this philosopher,
And at his bidding seemed to come.

3.

In unploughed Maine, he sought the lumberer’s gang,
Where from a hundred lakes young rivers sprang;
He trod the unplanted forest-floor, whereon
The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone,
Where feeds the mouse, and walks the surly bear,
And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker.
He saw, beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds,
The slight Linnæa hang its twin-born heads,
And blessed the monument of the man of flowers,
Which breathes his sweet fame through the Northern bowers.
He heard when in the grove, at intervals,
With sudden roar the aged pine tree fails,—
One crash the death-hymn of the perfect tree,
Declares the close of its green century.
Low lies the plant to whose creation went
Sweet influence from every element;
Whose living towers the years conspired to build,
Whose giddy top the morning loved to gild.
Through these green tents, by eldest nature drest,
He roamed, content alike with man and beast.
Where darkness found him, he lay glad at night;
There the red morning touched him with its light.
Three moons his great heart him a hermit made,
So long he roved at will the boundless shade.
The timid it concerns to ask their way,
And fear what foe in caves and swamps can stray,
To make no step until the event is known,
And ills to come as evils past bemoan:
Not so the wise; no coward watch he keeps,
To spy what danger on his pathway creeps;
Go where he will, the wise man is at home,
His hearth the earth; — his hall the azure dome;
Where his clear spirit leads him, there’s his road,
By God’s own light illumined and foreshowed.

4.

‘Twas one of the charmed days
When the genius of God doth flow,
The wind may alter twenty ways,
A tempest cannot blow:
It may blow north, it still is warm;
Or south, it still is clear;
Or east, it smells like a clover farm;
Or west, no thunder fear.
The musing peasant lowly great
Beside the forest water sate:
The rope-like pine-roots crosswise grown
Composed the network of his throne;
The wide lake edged with sand and grass
Was burnished to a floor of glass,
Painted with shadows green and proud
Of the tree and of the cloud.
He was the heart of all the scene,
On him the sun looked more serene,
To hill and cloud his face was known,
It seemed the likeness of their own.
They knew by secret sympathy
The public child of earth and sky.
You ask, he said, what guide,
Me through trackless thickets led,
Through thick-stemmed woodlands rough and wide?
I found the waters’ bed:
I travelled grateful by their side,
Or through their channel dry;
They led me through the thicket damp,
Through brake and fern, the beavers’ camp,
Through beds of granite cut my road,
And their resistless friendship showed.
The falling waters led me,
The foodful waters fed me,
And brought me to the lowest land,
Unerring to the ocean sand.
The moss upon the forest bark
Was pole-star when the night was dark;
The purple berries in the wood
Supplied me necessary food.
For nature ever faithful is
To such as trust her faithfulness.
When the forest shall mislead me,
When the night and morning lie,
When sea and land refuse to feed me,
‘Twill be time enough to die;
Then will yet my mother yield
A pillow in her greenest field,
Nor the June flowers scorn to cover
The clay of their departed lover.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

“You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light.” - Ernest Hemingway

“At no other time (than autumn) does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke

“I love the autumn—that melancholy season that suits memories so well. When the trees have lost their leaves, when the sky at sunset still preserves the russet hue that fills with gold the withered grass, it is sweet to watch the final fading of the fires that until recently burnt within you.” ― Gustave Flaubert

“And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days...”
― Dylan Thomas

Thank you so very much for participating yesterday evening, this morning, and anytime you’re able to. Nothing is frozen in time and we can always revisit. The candle continues to burn brightly within us all. Please share any thoughts in the comments, your own memories, ideas, a poem or prose written during or after watching. Sending lots of love on this autumnal morning and hoping all is well in your world. We have to do our best to stick together and to hold onto magic as others try to strip it away from us. Luckily though, try as they might, they don’t understand what it is or how to find it. :)

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Good morning/afternoon/evening from Paris. <3 After breakfast and coffee, some goodbyes to those who are headed back home today, I retreated to my room to share this letter with you all.

Last night was the final show of this European leg of the tour, beginning in Dublin on October 6. Tomorrow my mom, Lenny, and I have one more small show in Colmar, and …

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Thank you for your patience with my low energy the last two live-videos - full transparency: I had food poisoning for the last 2 days and was not in great shape :D I am on the mend though today, building back hydration and strength!! I was going to tell you that yesterday when I got cut off early. That the most exciting update, but we are on…

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Good morning/afternoon to everyone. I’m sitting here in a Paris hotel room, having coffee and preparing for the day ahead. There are two boxes of merch, safely delivered, awaiting some books for my mom to sign, readying for load-in and soundcheck later on. It’s a sleepy sort of day, but all is well. It’s been amazing to see footage and images of all the…

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Get more from Jesse Paris Smith in the Substack app

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