IN THE STONE AND CHATTERING

in the stone and chattering
of the walls which form the confines
of my in-between passage way
i am carried by invisible voices
and feathers that drop in place
the aid of hands that break time
and hurl me into a kind freedom
i was never wrong to fear
for it is a terrifying muscle
to rouse
the one that won’t stop bracing
no place feels safe
in the body that breathes just to stay alive
instead of that which opens
and trusts
oh blessed receiving I recall
and exertion that heaved not
but spun like pirouettes
in the dance of direct sunlight
i sense the magic still
and what is vital must now be in the twitching
of my fingers and the disintegration
of previous selves
violently bargaining for more time
i surrender what envy there remains
for those who seem to have played
and won the game
i know not what they gained
for they do not say
God winks a lot these days
and it’s a cruel joke
sometimes
to be both animal and divine
and yet sense in my blood
i can’t make a home on either side

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I have gone back and forth in my mind about how to ‘turn up’ at a time like this.

The world feels suddenly so foreign. I must find new ground, new scaffolding for the new world.

I must find new language too. So much no longer suffices.

Words are no longer tools for making meaning. They are the bricks by which I build the new world. An altar to remember you. They are an urge or a lump in the throat that I must follow. Necessity is the new impulse of my friendship with language.

I no longer need words for me to make sense of things for there is no making sense to the world without you.

I abandon sense and instead hunt for words that can give utility to this moment. Illuminate a void and give it a name.

Last night I lay in bed reading Christian Wiman’s book Zero At The Bone.

“There is a moment in the life of a writer when one ceases to care about the truth as if there were any sort of abstract objective word or occurrence that could warrant that name.

I don’t mean one loses fidelity to the fact. I believe one should hew to the facts as one remembers them, even as it seems scientifically incontrovertible that memory is mostly an act of imagination.

No, what I mean has to do with meanings, or the lack thereof. It’s not that I don’t believe in them anymore, it’s that I believe they are ultimately unknowable, even the most intimate aspects of our existence, including the mutilations that made us what we are.”

I remember when my Dad first received the cancer diagnosis. He said he had found a strange kind of solace in realizing the cancer wasn’t some foreign entity eating at him from the outside. It was a part of him. Part of his very self, his own body, his own cellular makeup. Yet, it was a part that had turned against the whole, a mutation or a mutilation even, but it was not something alien to be feared. It was intimate. Even in his dying, he had made friends with the aspect of his existence that was now causing his erasure.

Wiman continues on the subject of words and what we hope to seek from them in times of immense change and disillusionment…

“One wants only the cadences to continue as if there were something in the words themselves that sought meaning — sought concretion, even — out there in the world, or something out there in the world that corresponded so intimately and utterly to the sound of the words that the intensity and gravity of one particular existence — or even one moment in that existence — might catalyze the tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in the stones and every evil thing.”

Words as catalysts.

Words as cadences.

I feel as though I am spinning with a broken compass in my hand searching for the coordinates that get me ‘home’.

But my father was home.

Where is home now?

On July 7th at 9pm, my best friend, my hero and my beloved father took his final breath and left his body.

He was gone like a flash of light and now I feel him everywhere.

{ 7:01 am }

Dad, when I say I feel you everywhere, I don’t speak of sensations or senses. I don’t speak of meaning either.

I speak to an instinct and a stir of something unknowable. I search less for measurable truth and more for the truth that refuses common sense. There is no sense more common and more completely absurd and bereft of explanation than death and dying. Did my writing on the soil prepare me for this moment? Did some part of me know what was coming?

Words hold a different quality now. They are more of a provocation in the mouth, bearing witness to my soul, less of an explanation and more like an expiration of everything I previously held to be true, replaced by something at once ephemeral and frighteningly firm.

Frightening because… could it have been here this whole time? This portal? This thin veil between my world and yours? Closer than breath?

I’m drawn to try and name the swirling currents in the water. For myself and no one else. The whirlpools pointing downwards, the ones I must go down and through, the torrents of grief and joy. I search for the sailing boat on the surface of my water who gave orientation to all things. I search for you and you are not there.

That is true, in one sense, and not, in another.

You are not there, and yet… you are there.

I’m searching for you now, in everything. Because I sense, with no use for my usual senses, that you are hiding in plain sight.

I don’t think it is wishful thinking. It is not thinking at all — it’s the activation of previously untrained faculties that are now imperative and completely appropriate and sufficient for the new world I am building.

{ 8:07 am }

I continue to toy with the option of reclusive grief or sharing it in the open. I open the Substack app and find myself quietly (or not so quietly) nudged by the words of other writers that pop up on my computer screen like modern confessionals…

“I don’t write because I think I have something to say. I write because if I don’t, everything feels even worse.”

-Lily King (Writers & Lovers)

Dammit, she’s right.

I sometimes worry that if I start writing, the floodgates might open and I will feel ten times worse than if I carried this all in silence. But it always turns out to be the opposite.

I always feel better.

“Write so that you can remind yourself how you see the world”

-Aza McFadden

This one made me pause.
Does writing help me see the world as it is?
Or does it help me see the one I want to see?

Is it both? Does it matter?

The point is to see. See outside of one’s own echo chamber. Maybe you can’t see something clearly until you’re relating to it, instead of merging with it. All things find their true essence in relationship.

Suffering thrives in the lie of separation.

Father/Daughter.

Daughter/Father.

This equation, this conversation, this relationship, so integral to my sense of self. My safety. My perspective.

With the loss of your physical presence, Dad, I seem to have lost something of myself.

I not only grieve the loss of your hand, I grieve the loss of how mine felt in yours. How it felt to trust that fully.

I know it will never feel that way with anyone else again.

To Defend Your Dwelling Place…

{ 2:11 pm }

I receive daily emails from The Center of Action and Contemplation and inside today’s post were the words of Etty Hillesum, a young Dutch Jewish woman who wrote diaries during the Holocaust.

She died in Auschwitz in 1943 at 29, after refusing safe hiding to stay with her community until the end.

Something in this excerpt hit me like a sacred commission. She writes:

“One thing is becoming increasingly clear to me: that You cannot help us, that we must help You to help ourselves.

And that is all we can manage these days and also all that really matters: that we safeguard that little piece of You, God, in ourselves. And perhaps in others as well….

You cannot help us, but we must help You and defend Your dwelling place inside us to the last.”

It felt like the same words my soul has been saying ever since you transitioned, Dad.

I must defend your dwelling place inside me.

Lately, your voice has been coming to me from the same place I tend to feel God. I don’t know how to explain that place exactly, but you know it when you know it.

Frederick Buechner called it “the living center of who we are…”

It’s as though you are now occupying that same space.

When you speak it sounds like God, it sounds like a mother and a father, it sounds like my ancestors, it sounds strangely like myself.

Some ancient self I’ve recognized before. But now it has more scaffolding and feels more real, like your life is being slowly rebuilt inside my heart. A resounding, a recognition, a oneness with everything.

It poses a challenge to every name for God I might have settled for previously. My well-loved words are like froth on the surface of a wild ocean.

You cannot help me any longer, I must let you go, Papa. But I shall make a home for you to live in. You live on now through me.

I could not protect the outer circumstances; my faith could not make it better in the material realm. The songs I played by your bedside couldn’t miraculously cast a spell to change what fate had written into the room.

How do I feel you now without my senses?

I will defend your dwelling place within me.

My heart is broken and yet it is breaking open to a world and a reality I am determined to make friends with. As you would have and did so time and time again, despite so many challenges you faced in your own life.

Papa, I miss you. I will write through it, as I always have. To you and for you.

I will protect the love you gave me and build a beautiful house for it to thrive.

{ 2:43 pm }

I know there’s another reason why it’s been hard to turn up here.

I used to send you my Substack posts to proof read. I know I could correct the grammar myself but what fun is that? I loved having an excuse to share things with you. You’d email back with tweaks in red and additions in brackets and always an encouraging comment, giving me just the boost I often needed to press “publish”.

“Great work Kim, brilliant writing as always! Thoughtful, articulate and challenging… Yet another gem.”

What now?

I cannot email my drafts to you. You cannot email back. You no longer animate the hands that could do that.

But, hands feel so limited compared to the ways you can reach me now…

When the soul leaves the body it becomes so abundantly clear how finitely contained we are in these vessels. These temples… and sometimes, these prisons.

I’ll never forget the way you left your body in that hospital room. The way the air changed when you completed that final exchange with your portion of it.

You beamed almost instantly at me, from the other side.

Such a clear transition.

Such magic.

To Write or Not To Write?

{ 3:15 pm }

I have two internal voices that rush to answer this question.

One says:

“Darling, you have no obligation toward anything. Grieve as you must. You owe the world nothing. Post a poem. Wait, if it feels too soon. You don’t ever have to share if you don’t want to…”

And I appreciate this voice, I do…

But writing has never been about whether I should or not.

To be a writer in the world is not to feel as though you should write.

It’s to feel as though you must.

It’s to know that it matters less if anyone ever likes it, sees it or even connects with it. It matters that it gets out. That it gets shared, in some way.

Weeks before you left, I watched Sara Bareilles say this in a recent interview with Rolling Stone…

“Grief must be witnessed”

I write more from compulsion than anything else.

I am pulled in by an obsession more physiological than logical. If I do not give language to this moment, I cannot write you into the new story. I cannot pay tribute to the man you were and how I would not be the woman I am without you.

If I do not have a witness for this moment, then I struggle to keep seeing you myself. It’s like I need the eyes of others to gaze upon the memory of you, made manifest in me, to help keep you alive. If I can share your life, your light and the total impact of your personhood with one or three thousand witnesses, something of you gets reborn.

I now live broken hearted and my heart knows no other way but to lean into relationship as the cure.

{ 4:01 pm }

What skills must I acquire for the Brave New World?

This world where everything looks the same but is totally different?

Who am I without your anchor? Your ground? Your gravity? Your sanity? Your friendship? Your love?

I write to answer these types of questions — knowing full well that writing does not promise an answer to them.

If all my questions got answered like that, I guess there would be no need to write.

Alas, I renounce the need for an outcome. I write, without expectations, I write to find you again. I write to find myself again. I write to reclaim my peace. My joy. Your dwelling place within me. I write to awaken the faculties I shall now use to find you, hidden in plain sight.

To be a writer at the time of one’s greatest rupture is to keep turning up in a state of devotion. Turning up does not always mean outputting. It means being present to whatever is alive in the moment. Even the paralyzing sadness has some kind of vital life force latent within it. In every death, there is life. In every joy, there is sadness. Even in grief, there is praise.

“Let me tell you, any writer who claims writing is a calling and not an obsession is either blessed or afflicted with youth or dementia. I have been addicted to opiates in my life and I must say that there is a kinship between that flood of sane and aimable elation that opiates engender and the release of meaning when the right sounds are linked together.”

-Christian Wiman

I do not have perfect shapes and sounds for the new world yet. But Wiman is right that there is a strange release of meaning when certain sounds are linked together.

I search not for meaning and sense for I see how reasonable ideas fail us so completely when we lose someone who gave meaning and sense to our lives.

I search now for sounds that can give structure to the nameless days without him.

I search for one moment in existence that might catalyze the tongues in trees… books in the running brooks… sermons in the stones…

As hard as it is to be vulnerable in my writing at a time like this, I am committed to discovering this new world in real time, with time, in relationship with the world and not in denial of it.

Wiman ends that same chapter with what makes most sense to me out of everything I’ve read in this book so far.

“Poetry is the only sanity”

{ 5:09pm }

Here is a poem I wrote for you one week before we said goodbye.

I read it to you at your bedside and while it wasn’t obvious to my senses, I trust you heard me when I read it.

I know you're proof reading this from the other side, Dad, and that you're proud of me for keeping on even as the ground is gone from beneath my feet.

You are here, just in new ways.

As I finish writing this, from a small bar now in Auckland, your favourite song by Bread “Make It With You” is coming on over the stereo.

What are the chances?

It’s the last song I played you in hospital.

The song we played again at your memorial.

Okay, I get it… You’re speaking in symbols now…

Winks and Koans.
Riddles and Grins.
Dad, the Infinite Jester — peeking out from behind the veil.

Beaming with bliss.

I won’t stop listening for you in the strange coincidences of my life.

I’m already catching glimpses of you everywhere.

I miss you.

I’ll keep my heart open.

Till next time,

Inheritance

I knew something was wrong
when I couldn’t stop crying and saying your name

You’re back in the hospital
and all I can do is think

of you

thoughts
fall short
when trying to demonstrate
what only hands can say
when we held each other’s
through the redwoods
and you named all the trees
in Te Reo

I wonder where our blood would lead us
if we followed it back
to Flanders Field
where the poppies grew

and even further to the first trace of self
that formed the curl of your smile
the ancient refuge I ache for
as I lay tossing stones at almost-dreams

we have always been

both restless and willfully asleep
to the truths we could not bear to see

thoughts
too poor
a medium
for sending you the canyon
of my feeling

the spirit must carry my heart to you
no other part of my being will do
only the timeless part of me
that does not grow anxious
at the thought of losing you

for we have always been

and my love for you has no end
no limit
no border
no opposite

it holds the whole world in it

the love we taught each other
cannot be separated from itself

I overflow
with inheritance

Dear Reader, this is the final part in a series I’ve been doing reflecting on the phenomenon of soil. These are written in quite a stream of consciousness way and it will help to refer back to Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 to get the full picture and context for the music I’ll be sharing today!

Rudolf Steiner wrote a book called “How to Know Higher Worlds” which I read for the first time in 2024. In it he explains an exercise of concentration that can be used to wake us up to the potential gift in every living thing by concentrating on a seed for an extended amount of time. Steiner instructs the student to hold a seed in their hand, contemplate it fully as it is, and then inwardly perceive the invisible plant it contains—the whole future form held as potential within the tiny object. One does not just pay attention to the seed itself but actively contemplates that within this seed lies the entire tree.

It requires both deep imagination and attention to an invisible reality, asking us to draw on what he often calls ‘dormant faculties.’

This relates back to Teilhard and his vision of Christ being latent within the very fabric of creation. He suggests every atom is destined to eventually play out the resurrection story in its own way. If this inner Christ consciousness or Buddha nature—the seed of awakening already present in everyone—is actually etched into our very being, is the little seed not only sacrificing its previous body when it becomes a plant but also entering into an intimate relationship with the sun when it finally responds?

I wonder how it knows to trust that voice?

Now I’m thinking about the wild geese navigating by magnetic fields, star maps and infrasound—frequencies so low that they’re inaudible to human ears—reading a map of the world we can’t access which guides their grand pilgrimage across the sky. These routes appear to be encoded into their bodies before they were even born.

“You have to assent to the invisible if you are ever to see it.”
— Christian Wiman

There are processes at play that are so much greater than us and yet they invite us and even require us to participate, if they are to reach their full bloom. Even if it’s just for a minimum of 11 seconds in a songwriting challenge with Jacob Collier. I’m getting good at the callback, right?

But, the point is, you never know what will grow…

So… after all this build up… wanna hear? I know I’ve been teasing this out over the course of this series but now that you have a LOT of context, I’m ready to share a song idea I started which was inspired by all of this…

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Dear Reader, this is Part 3 in a four part series I’ve been writing about soil as a path of spiritual contemplation. These are written in quite a stream of consciousness way and it will help to read Part 1 and Part 2 first to get the full picture. I might share the beginnings of a new song I’m working on at the end of the series so stick around :)

Not Everything Can Make It

I told a story in our recent Koru gathering about a walk I took with my father in the redwoods last Christmas. I noticed many small shoots sticking out the side of the tree trunk and asked “will they all become big branches like the huge ones extending out at the top of the canopy?”

He said nonchalantly, “No, not everything can make it”.

I’ve always been so determined to catch every idea in the studio. I remember when making my third album, The Golden Echo, Thundercat would come into the studio and before he’d even started playing bass I’d hit record — I couldn’t bear to miss his first impression when he heard the song. I wanted that unfiltered response before he started thinking about it.

With my own ideas, I tend to lack the trust that they’ll come back to me if I don’t record them. But thinking about how this process occurs in Nature oddly calms me.

Not everything can make it.

Some of those fronds will grow into mighty branches, some won’t receive what they need to do so and they’ll drop off and go back into the soil. It’s just not their time.
So what? Are they any less beautiful for their short lifespan? Of course not.

It raises the question: what does it mean to ‘make it’? All I know is that, instead of feeling sad that those little shoots wouldn’t reach some idea of ‘full potential’, I instead felt a sense of peace that life has this sort of self-balancing instinct. It needs death to make life, so some parts of nature will be sacrificed to serve the larger vision.

This idea came back to me when I was spring cleaning my apartment months later and feeling the need to hold on to everything I had. I’m like this with food sometimes too — I can’t bear to waste anything. My Dad’s voice would pop up sometimes and say “Hey Kim, not everything can make it!” and I’d let go of the notion that by throwing it out I would be either deeming it unworthy or losing something innate to who I am. What if to let something go is to both to gain something and also assign it to a different role (going back into the soil)?

Not every frond becomes a flower.

Not every song seed becomes a song.

Some are just links to the next. Some are just keeping alive the channel of trust and intimacy. Some are just a contribution — even if, like the songwriting challenge that Jacob and I did (you can read more about that in Part 2) the contribution is only 11 seconds long and a bit shit. Jacob and I agreed that shitty songs were just as welcome as amazing ones.

Shit is BRILLIANT for the soil, by the way.

I’m learning to trust the contributions that are simply ‘good enough’ rather than demanding that they all be genius. In the last of this series I spoke about my move toward prioritizing intimacy (with both my creativity and my approach to prayer) over insight. I cannot control when and how insight emerges. I can only influence the conditions to encourage it. For me, the conditions for insight are intimacy.

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Intimacy in the songwriting context can simply look like small offerings over a long period of time and a good deal of crop rotation as Joni Mitchell says. That means sometimes I paint, sometimes I write poems, sometimes I make songs. Sometimes I do none of those things and remember that even when I do nothing at all, the soil is still incubating, metabolizing, germinating and generating.

I am not the centrefold of it all and reality doesn’t revolve around me and what I do. What a blessed realization!

“The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another.”
— Thomas Merton

I’ve been organizing all my lyric fragments into one master document recently. The process involved copying fragments of text from one note, pasting them into a new document, then repeating that with the next lot of words. The problem is that every time you hit Command C on something new, it wipes whatever was previously copied from the clipboard and replaces it with the new selection. While moving too fast through the process (classic Kimbra), instead of hitting Command V to paste the text I’d copied from the previous note, I pressed Command C again by mistake, which overrode the text I had planned to move over.

I probably lost about six pages of lyrics. Who knows what was in there — maybe the best stuff I’ve ever written. What could I do? There was literally no going back. I sat and felt my body freeze: judgement, self-attack, loss, disappointment, anger and then, as usual, the little friend I tend to find sitting at the bottom of all that: grief.

Not everything can make it.

I decided to take this as an opportunity to practise a small death. Can I trust that as a songwriter my best work is always ahead of me and not behind me? That whatever I lost is not really lost at all because if it was made manifest at one point, then it could very well find its way to the surface again in some other form? This seems to echo what physics tells us: that energy cannot be created or destroyed. So if the Word itself is energy, perhaps some idea from that note will come back in five years via a memory, a conversation, or a piece of art that reminds me of what I wrote.

What if I write it again in a way that is more refined and focused? Maybe that gives me the incentive to turn it into a song, instead of leaving it as a lonely abandoned Note file rotting on my computer? Of course, rotting is the ultimate act of creativity though… the soil will gladly take that, thank you very much!

I lost the initial insight, you could say, but what I got instead, was a new kind of intimacy with my soul as a place I could trust—the Ground of my Being. The soil that is not made barren by losing some seeds.

It brings to mind a Post-it note I’ve had on my mirror for the last four months, since my last silent retreat.

What if every choice we make in life is less of a landslide, a tectonic shift, a life-altering sweep full of harrowing consequences—and simply something we drop into the soil? Do it with care, certainly. The soil takes everything and does something with it. But once you turn it over, can you trust the purpose for which it will be used?

If what we fear is annihilation, can we look to the seed and remember what grows in its place once it surrenders its shell?

What would it be like to look at every acorn and simultaneously see the whole tree?

Because this is the reality. The conditions just haven’t played out long enough to reveal that full incarnation of its form. It is wired toward this destination and will reach it eventually, either through many cycles of decomposition and resurrection, or in fifty years if the environment supports it.

Either way, something strikes me as profound here—the acknowledgement of the innate divine potential of every living, and non-living, thing, regardless of whether it reaches that potential.

This is such a different mode from how we operate in our culture:

I love you IF you reach the potential I know is innate within you.

Rather than:

I love you FOR the potential that is innate within you.

The soil works more like the latter. This is the language of grace. I accept you for the potential you offer to this ecosystem. You don’t have to prove anything. You already belong because you’re here.

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I saw how we were doing this within the Koru conversation. One person lit up another. We became a little mycelium network. It was less about any individual having the answer and more about a disposition of receptivity that acknowledged the potential for everyone to land on something useful to the group. For the simple reason that we are all living in bodies interacting with the world and its conditions.

What grows from a conversation is beyond our control, but this one was brimming with life. It didn’t need to prove or produce material to be worthwhile, just witnessing what it could grow was enough. Potential doesn’t mean it always becomes. It means it can become. Given certain conditions.

I think what made a spiritual teacher like Jesus such a radical figure was that he saw the innate potential of wholeness in everyone, regardless of who they were. But he also held the invitation to transformation as something we could choose. Wholeness wasn’t something that could only happen if a person was good, saved and pious—it was latent within. The work was helping other people see it.

Maybe Jesus wasn’t performing miracles in the external way we tend to think, but rather altering the ways of seeing in everyone around him. A shift of perspective. He restored a clear sense of sight where people had seen only brokenness.

The potential of the tree is in the acorn.

Therefore, the tree is in the acorn.

It is both acorn and tree. The only things that differentiate between these two manifestations are a) time—time must pass before we can see it become that—and b) the conditions to support that becoming.

Could it be that its desire for the form suggests the form already exists within it?

“A man’s physical hunger does not prove that that man will get any bread; he may die of starvation on a raft in the Atlantic. But surely a man’s hunger does prove that he comes of a race which repairs its body by eating and inhabits a world where eatable substances exist.”

— C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

In Part 4, I will be turning to Rudolf Steiner for his thoughts on all this and sharing the seed of a new song with you… inspired by the soil!

As we approach the final part of this series, I wonder, what’s been growing in you?

Till then,

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Dear Reader, this is Part 2 in a four part series I've been writing about soil as a path of spiritual contemplation. These are written in quite a stream of consciousness way so it will help to read Part 1 first to get the full picture. I'll be posting on this topic all week so follow along with me. And I might share a new song I'm working on at the end of the series so stick around :)

Intimacy before Insight

“There is a Moment in each Day that Satan cannot find.”
— William Blake

I’ve been thinking a lot about this quote by William Blake. What’s the hour in my day where I can truly tune in? A time where I can be away from the noise and undisturbed? Instead of expecting this moment to find me, can I look out for it?
As though it were a door of sorts?

I’ve been experiencing 11:11 as one of these portal type moments lately. A friend once told me it’s a time when angels speak and maybe I just started thinking of it that way because they laid the seed in my brain soil, or maybe there is something happening in that moment that feels energetically different—it’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation—but either way, I like those numbers together and I find that I often take pause when I see them. So when my friend Jacob Collier suggested we do a songwriting challenge for a selected number of days earlier this month, I told him the number I was feeling drawn to was 11.

He suggested we write 11 ideas for 11 days and they have to be a minimum of 11 seconds. The ideas can be anything: a beat, a fully produced 5-minute song, an 11-second voice memo of knives and forks on the kitchen table, a melody. It doesn’t matter—much like the soil, it’s not judging what you give it, it’s taking all input as a contribution to something beyond what the eye can see. What matters is that there is a contribution, an accountability, and a container of time in which to operate. As I mentioned in my last post, time is the essential ingredient we are bound to on this material plane (though it also appears to be a construct whenever we travel beyond these bodies but that’s a story for another time). Time is important so one can measure the growth. If you’re not paying attention you might think there’s none going on, but there almost certainly is…

The other part of the challenge was that Jacob and I each provided each other with a prompt word for each day. This was a crucial part of the containment because it gave us a sense of a spectrum to play with, some duality. Yes—duality is a fantastic way to get the brain ping-ponging between two concepts and then slowly, in time and grace-filled conditions, something really creative can be found hidden between the two.

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So often in life, we think that to arrive at non-duality we need to eliminate either/or thinking. But what if we need to go through it? Entertain the duality of something, contemplate it, exist within it, experience it, toy with it intellectually, embody its qualities and how they feel inside us, then as a result of that intimacy with both ends of the spectrum, slowly come to transcend them both and discover the harmony that exists between.

We can detach from the stickiness of these two opposites—or what Pema Chödrön calls the hooks of “shenpa”—and the charge of energy they hold. Conflict naturally has a voltage to it and often an attraction, a magnetism, a sense of energy bouncing off one pole to the other, friction, tension and stimulation. This is why it feels strangely satisfying sometimes to be embroiled in an argument (until it doesn’t). The middle way doesn’t have this sort of immediate vitality perhaps, but once it’s felt as a reliable and trustworthy inner state, it is rich and generative and sustaining. It is found not by denying the two opposites present within any given thing, but by accepting them and making intimate friends with them, which, in time, gives way to insight.

Much of my life I chased insights on the spiritual path as a means of intimacy with God. I loved learning and discovering something new. Nothing made me feel closer to that divine essence than when I connected the dots inside myself and felt everything click and relate to each other. Insight appeared to give way to a more intimate encounter with the world. But I’m coming to appreciate things the other way round these days. Intimacy before insight. Relationship before the production of something.

On my last silent retreat I asked one of the long-time monks, Father J, who greets the retreatants when they arrive, how he prays. Does he sit for long periods? Is it a religious ordeal full of memorised scriptures, rosary beads and kneeling?

This was his response:

“Kimbra, you know when you haven’t seen a friend in a long time and that feeling you get when you have a really long hug and you don’t need to say anything? That’s what it’s like with God — I just sit down, and enter into that embrace. God holds me and I let myself be held.”

For the entire retreat, I gave up my mantras, softened my scrunched brow and instead I sat down and just imagined myself both surrendering into another’s breast and being supported by them simultaneously. I didn’t say a word in my heart or my mind. That small act of giving and receiving in my body became the prayer. I was practising resting in the divine. I was practising grace. Not earning to receive something. Not demanding insight before I could believe or feel enlightened. I was just practising intimacy.

And if I could stay in that embrace, perhaps I could come to trust that the insight would emerge in its right timing. Perhaps I would learn to trust that voice I appear to be so intently listening for all the time. And when I trust that voice, perhaps I’ll have the courage to actually go where it leads.

Does the seed also have to learn to trust the light?

Does it get so used to that dark, sacred womb that to be ruptured out of the earth and into the tyranny of elements would take an almost heroic kind of faith?

Underground, everything is interwoven, smushed together in the soil, supporting, trading water, nutrients and sugars in what scientists now recognise as one of nature’s most extraordinary examples of interdependence. The older trees actively send carbon to younger trees that can’t yet feed themselves, an act of astonishing generosity, and yet the seed must leave this supportive environment and burst into the open, taking the hand of sunlight, saying, “please! sustain me!”

Oof, relatable.

Surprisingly though, the seed’s first act of trust isn’t toward light. It’s toward darkness and moisture. It germinates in that black void with no evidence yet that light exists. It only encounters it after it has committed and broken open. The trust comes before any knowledge of what it’s trusting toward. It moves before it can see where it’s going.

What is fascinating is that in this process of becoming, the plant itself is simultaneously drawn upward while reaching down into the ground. It must live out this juxtaposition every day: stay rooted enough to receive nutrients while reaching outward enough to receive light and move in the direction of upward growth.

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Much like the first green shoot, half of us always stays hidden while the other half longs to be witnessed. What trust it takes to say yes. To reveal oneself above the ground and struggle through the earth’s surface (yes, despite how much we worship the life of ease, there is no growth without a certain degree of struggle) toward a lifespan one knows very little about. Or to put it more accurately, absolutely nothing.

We’re born with no idea what we’re doing here. But our roots give us clues.
Sometimes—especially when you start getting curious about what lies within—life can feel like a nonstop excavation into what’s overgrown, what’s poisoning us and controlling us. Some root systems run so deep you have to get a bloody AXE to cut them out. And even then they can come back. Certain roots, when severed don’t die, they regenerate! The act of aggression can even trigger the root to send up new shoots and multiply. What removes them isn’t force but patience. A slow withdrawal of whatever feeds them. A change in conditions.

The axe is rarely the answer. Changing the soil is.

May we not forget that gardening is a balancing act. Crops thrive when they’re rotating and planted alongside other plants and root systems which encourage other species and outcomes. Joni knew this too.

“Any time I make a record, it’s followed by a painting period. It’s good crop rotation. I keep the creative juices going by switching from one to the other, so that when the music or the writing dries up, I paint. You rest the ear a while and you rest the inner mind, because poetry takes a lot of plumbing the depths.”

— Joni Mitchell

If the breaking of a seed is akin to an insight in the human mind, and the first gesture of growth is initiated by a kind of intimacy with the sun, then perhaps death too is less like an end point and more like an exchange. Much like the ritual of giving before receiving in Native American ceremony. A bag of tobacco burned before entering the sweat lodge. The sacrifice offered at the altar. In this reciprocity we prime ourselves to receive. We give up something in order to be given. We die to receive life. Death will be, of course, the ultimate gesture of intimacy when we each arrive at its door.

In the end, is there any greater act of trust than to let go and surrender one’s body to the soil?

I wonder what it would look like to use my portal of 11:11 as a moment to pause and get as intimate as possible with the moment I’m in. Instead of extracting some kind of ‘meaning’ from it, perhaps I could be content with just feeling that closeness.
We have a culture wired on the dopamine of insight. I, myself, get really addicted to this feeling. I love that “aha” moment. That sudden coherence when scattered things snap together and make a shape. I also love altered states for helping me achieve this in an instant but I sense how quickly it can turn into a form of control. I want to understand and I want to understand now, please. It doesn’t honour the ingredient of time and that still, small voice which asks us to rest and relinquish in order to receive.

I think back to what Father J told me, about entering into that friendly embrace with God when he sits down to pray, practising trust before demanding inspiration or insight. There is less force in this approach. Perhaps it’s the difference between “I’m going to read all these books and make myself realize something on my desired timeline” versus “I’m going to set up conditions to help me come into the awareness of this desired insight in the fullness of time.”

The Fullness of Time, to me, means honouring both the ingredient of time in any great becoming and also the nature of time, which is not linear but probably more stacked and circular and mysterious. This path has trust at the forefront. It has faith in Grace being the natural state of the universe rather than reward. This veers starkly from the subtext of our culture which screams: you’ll get what you want — but ONLY IF YOU TRY HARD ENOUGH.

Even if you don’t try at all, or actively try not to, the soil will grow something. Think of Chernobyl—nature rushed back in the moment humans left. It’s true, it’ll never be the same and the wounds in the soil will last centuries but one can be sure, a world of unexpected growth will continue to push forward. The earth, it seems, knows only one direction.

“Nature is the one song of praise that never stops singing.”
— Richard Rohr

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Dear reader, this is Part 1 in a four part series I'll be sharing this week on the topic of soil. Much of this was inspired by my recent discussion with the Koru subscribers. I’ll be posting on this topic all week and I might share a new song I’m writing at the end of the series so stick around :)

“Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened.
Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”

-Rumi

This past Sunday evening, I met with my subscribers of The Koru to have a discussion on a topic that I’ve been finding to be a unique entry point into contemplation on themes such as non-duality, grace, interdependence and so much more. As the conversation developed, we all began to draw connections between this phenomenon in Nature and the architecture of our interior worlds and creative processes. The pathways that opened between one person and the next unfolded much like mycelium—that ever-astounding underground network weaving through soil, tree roots and decaying matter, connecting living and dead organisms into a single web of exchange. This conversation itself felt like an insight into what soil keeps pointing out: everything belongs and everyone’s input contributes to the eventual growth.

I’m so curious to know what has been growing within the minds of those who joined, but I thought I would first share with my larger subscriber network what has been percolating for me since the conversation. I’ve been so inspired by continuing to reflect on this topic and even more so when I’ve been putting my hands in the actual soil (which is happening a lot these days as I’m currently living in an area close to many forests). I’m noticing the soil everywhere I go now. It’s like the more you pay attention to something in the natural world, the more it seems to keep popping up. Do you feel that too?

Towards the end of our discussion, I spoke about my music process and how it relates to the soil but for most of this conversation we stayed pretty focused on our individual experiences with the theme itself. Everyone had such different entry points into the topic and they each led us down different paths. One Koru bud spoke to his upbringing with religion and how the patch of soil he was handed could no longer support the plants he wanted to grow with his life and required new conditions (and theological frameworks) to get healthy. Another Koru bud spoke to a speech stammer she'd been learning to work with, and how resisting it only seemed to reinforce it as a problem—as opposed to reframing it as a way to bend time and work alongside a body simply finding alternate ways to express itself in the world. As in the soil, perhaps this plant just needed different rhythms and resources than others because it has things to say that can't be achieved through the 'standard' faculties we've been taught to rely upon. I can relate to this a lot.

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We spoke a lot about non-judgement and how the soil demonstrates this so perfectly. Throw anything on it and with enough time, it will be absorbed down into the underbelly. Cigarette butts, seeds, chicken bones, micro-plastics, fruit scraps, a child's tears, yesterday's newspaper. It accepts whatever falls on it, even if what falls doesn't take root or eventually become a plant. Everything can be used in some way to serve the whole. Maybe it simply acts as a link for something else to grow.

“Only when we see ourselves in our true human context, as members of a race which is intended to be one organism and ‘one body,’ will we begin to understand the positive importance not only of the successes but of the failures and accidents in our lives. My successes are not my own. The way to them was prepared by others. The fruit of my labors is not my own: for I am preparing the way for the achievements of another. Nor are my failures my own. They may spring from failure of another, but they are also compensated for by another’s achievement. Therefore the meaning of my life is not to be looked for merely in the sum total of my own achievements. It is seen only in the complete integration of my achievements and failures with the achievements and failures of my own generation, and society, and time.”

- Thomas Merton

From our conversation I also learned that soil can be restored and brought back to health through human-initiated processes. As another Koru bud explained through his research on the history of the town he lives in, human input can, at times, become necessary for the soil to thrive again. Sometimes it can feel like humans only make things worse when it comes to the environment and that if we were to leave nature alone for a while it could set things straight—but hearing about this reminded me that we can easily fall into the trap of forgetting that we ourselves are Nature, and therefore capable (and I'd go so far as to say designed) to work in relationship with it, each drawing out the best in the other.

It brings to mind the health benefits we experience from the simple act of putting bare feet on the ground or digging our hands in the soil. We are changed by all we touch. Nature is changed by being touched. For many of us who are not trained horticulturalists (who? me?), what happens underground remains a mystery. We know there are root systems spreading, decomposition, some sort of selection process taking place—though not one that asks "is this good or bad?" but rather, "is this a lead character or a supporting character?" Some things become mulch and feed the larger organism and some get their place in the sun by taking form above the earth (only to return to it eventually, of course—let's not pretend this moment on the big stage lasts forever, for anyone…!)

Right below our feet, an empire of bugs and organisms reigns supreme: one only needs to lift a decaying log in a forest to see the teeming ecosystem that has swarmed around what is dying, literally transforming it and making it ready for New Life. What grace. What confidence. What a beautiful display of true community. And total chaos, of course. But soil seems undeterred in its ultimate purpose by chaos. It can certainly be devastated by chemicals but it has this almost stubborn orientation back toward life and a capacity to recover in ways and timeframes that are astounding.

Whatever chaos ensues, it appears destined to bring forth order within it.

Soil is both predictable in its eventual destination (life) and unpredictable in the way it arrives. Even when a farmer tries to control every aspect of the soil, there will always be surprises: potatoes popping up with unexpected growths, seeds deposited decades ago suddenly breaking through the surface—the soil's own memory asserting itself like a trauma that skips a generation and then one day shows up at the door (relatable, anyone?)—or a spring frost arriving without warning to wipe the vineyard clean of all its blooming beginnings.

The thing I find calming about soil as a source of spiritual contemplation is that it shows us our “right place” in life. Let me explain. We have influence, of course—we make choices that scatter like seeds on the surface and we can influence the conditions but our ability to actually control what grows remains the job of something far beyond us. The soil is the place where this process plays out and it happens in the dark, powered by thousands of tiny sets of circumstances that produce patterns and then eventually, whether you like it or not, they grow something. Not overnight though. Sometimes not for years.

Time, at least on this plane of existence—the material one—is an ingredient. An unavoidable component needed in order for things to grow and of course, to die. The end of a heartbeat in a living being is only the first gesture of transition; the whole material body must then decompose and this cannot happen without time. We think so often that things in life either happen in a flash of light or disappear in an instant.

But do they?

Everything appears to be a process when you look closer. And in the context of soil, nothing is really wasted, it becomes a sacrifice. An exchange and initiatory act toward the next process.

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There appears to be no remnant left of the seed once it becomes a tree. I raised this point in the conversation but when I looked into it further, what happens is almost the opposite of disappearance. It’s more like total transformation and total continuity simultaneously. Every cell of the oak tree carries the full genetic signature of the acorn it came from. The form changes beyond recognition but the essence is present in what follows.

It’s not quite a grand dissolution into everything, it’s a complete and total commitment to one thing. The seed gives itself entirely to becoming this particular tree. I find great solace in the idea of being so devoted to one purpose. Perhaps it’s why I’ve always been drawn to monasticism. An orientation toward wholeness but achieved through a single act of love.

“The purity of heart is to will one thing”

- Søren Kierkegaard

The seed gives its life to be the tree.
The one gives himself to the whole.
A Christ-like destiny encoded in all things.

“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

- John 15:13.

This all brings to mind the writing of Teilhard de Chardin, who writes that the process undertaken by the Christ (birth, sacrifice, death and resurrection) is actually a script of sorts that is written into every living thing and an evolutionary propulsion that the whole earth is playing out, down to every tiny particle. What a wild new way of reframing this story! One that retains its beauty but expands it far beyond what we have been traditionally taught.

“God incarnates or invests Godself organically with creation, immersing Godself in things, in the heart of matter, and thus unifying the world. The universe is physically impregnated to the very core of its matter by the influence of divine nature. Everything is physically ‘christified,’ gathered up by the incarnate Word as nourishment that assimilates, transforms, and divinizes.”

— Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu

What is the incarnate Word for a plant?
Is it Light itself?
Gathering it up with “nourishment that assimilates, transforms, and divinizes”?

Stay with me here…

John’s Gospel opens with: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... In him was Life, and that Life was the Light of all people."

I can’t help but explore this connection between the Word and Light. One seems to proceed from the other. Not just biblically but scientifically too. Vibration precedes what is made manifest to our eyes. The Word speaks, and Light is its first emanation into the visible world. They belong to the same unfolding movement. Hazrat Inayat Khan speaks to this in The Mysticism of Sound and Music:

“As the fine waves of vibrations produce sound, so the gross waves produce light. This is the manner in which the unseen life manifests into the seen — by first becoming audible and then visible.”

What we find, when we contemplate soil, is that it acts like the great equalizer. The decisions in our life become the nutrients and resources that encourage or agitate life but are they ever really right or wrong? That would depend on what you are attempting to grow. One thing is for certain: the soil will accept what is left lying there if it is left long enough. One day it will take our own bodies into the ground and slowly metabolize them into nutrients for the soil.

It cannot do anything other than move toward Life.

Life insists on living. The soil is where the magic happens. It dissolves hierarchies and turns particles into links, networks, root systems and distributes precious resources based on equal measures of death and life. In fact, death is the input for life. It organizes all things towards love and that reality is operating right under our feet in this very moment. God as alchemy or as Paul Tillich called it, the Ground of Being.

I keep thinking about something I heard Chloé Zhao (director of the movie Hamnet) say in an interview with the NYT:

“Grace is the natural state of the Universe”

What if this is true?

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Hey everyone,

Below is the Zoom Link for today (aka Sunday June 14th at 7pm EST / 4pm PST + Monday June 15th at 9am in Australia and 11am in NZ) ~!!

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86396887334?pwd=Jhk5kChxYahVkLadTTopQWrrYAIe5Y.1

Really excited for this chat.

See you soon,

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This is your friendly reminder that tomorrow is our gathering!

The Details :

Sunday June 14th at 7pm EST / 4pm PST

(Which is Monday June 15th at 9am in Australia and 11am in NZ!)

I will send out a Zoom link in the morning and see you all for a discussion about a phenomenon that has been endlessly revealing in my recent contemplations…

…

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“The Waking”

by Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

selah

This is one of those poems that leaves me floored in its ability to capture so much of what I feel, observe and intuit about both the world I’m moving in and the one within me… the mystery of it all and how I grow only by moving forward on the path that I’m on. The one I am asked to stay with. There is a sense of both duty and acceptance baked into this pilgrimage. Fate unfolds in the places where fear dissolves.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?

Is there not some sacred softening when we realize that, at the end of the day, we are all just guessing as to how exactly this all works? My mind relaxes when it realizes there is a futility to fully understanding the immense beauties of the world. “Light takes the Tree”— four words that read like four thousand.

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

This description of how it feels to sense one’s self, one’s essence and the ways in which it requires me to loosen the familiar faculties I usually attempt to understand myself. Though the line evades my logical mind, I know exactly what it is getting at: to hear movement and to feel it oscillating between those two organs usually used for hearing what is on the outside. Instead, the listening is directed inward— sensing one’s vital being as vibration and choreography. It’s such a simple line but I could unpack it for hours.

What’s a line that really spoke to you?

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Thank you to my friend Hana Tajima (who is also an amazing designer) for introducing Roethke to me this past week. This poem was taken from The Collected Poems book and I’ve been falling in love with language again in new ways. What a beautiful feeling.

I wrote a song with Hana called The Robin and if you’re feeling like a dip into my archive today, you can hear all about the process of the song in an older post I did here. Basically, I borrowed some lines from journal entries that she shared with me, written in a really hard time of her life to accompany me in my own. They turned into a poem which turned into a lyric and then suddenly I was in the studio with Jake Sherman and an entire song came out. Hana also created the beautiful, contemplative artwork that accompanies the video we made. I think you might find the lyrics in this song have some eerie echoes to the feeling in Roethke’s poem.

Maybe it’ll be a nice soundtrack as you bathe further in his words.

You can also watch a live performance of the song here which I just uploaded today.

And to watch Hana and I talk about how the song was written, see below.

Till next time

P.S. As you may know, there’s a small circle that gathers within this publication called The Koru— a space where I share more directly with my readers and host occasional gatherings throughout the year and we have a meet-up happening on Sunday at 7pm EST centered around a theme I’m really excited about. If you’re feeling curious, you’re warmly invited to be a part of this conversation and the Koru community. All the details for our gathering live here and if you feel called, you can upgrade your subscription to take part.
Thank you x

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Dear reader,

It’s June 8th 2026 — you’re here! Same! It takes a lot to keep going in a world this energetically dense, delightful and devastating all at once. It’s good to take a moment to celebrate that sometimes.

I’m taking a break from poetry this week and have some other offerings I’d like to share with you. Some of them quite silly. Included is an invitation for you to tell me where you’re positioned in the world and wether you’d like me to visit your neck of the woods as I’m dreaming up the possibility of playing some small shows later in the year to celebrate the 15th anniversary of my debut album, Vows. Now, that’s wild. In honour of that fact, here’s a flashback to one of my favourite music videos I’ve ever made taken from that very album for a song called “Come Into My Head”.

She’s lost the plot and I’m loving it.

Now for today’s offering, it’s a mixed bag of treats. From things that caught my eye recently, to some announcements I’ve been meaning to post on here for a while… I’ve put into a list called ‘things worth your attention (according to me) <3”.

Strap in for some goldfish, brit-rock/industrial rap fusion madness and a rework of one of my songs that I co-produced with one of my favourite artists Gabriel Garzón-Montano from my last album (“Stuff I Don’t Need)”. If it’s not on your rotation already, I’m insisting you correct that.

I’ve also decided to share a voice memo of chicken noises I recorded at my friend’s farm and the subsequent seed of a beat I made by pitching them and applying some formant shifts because, well... it’s just been that kind of week.

We’re getting weird.

Enjoy.

things worth your attention (according to me) <3

1. The Hardest Commandment Of Them All

2. Goldfish Are Very Psychedelic

3. New Music: “Stuff I Don’t Need” (Gabriel Garzón-Montano Rework)

I’m really proud of this one. Gabriel Garzón-Montano (if you don’t know his own music you must get on it) put a whole new spin on the original and I added a bunch of production and new vocals to it so it became a whole new thing. I mixed and mastered the track myself because I loved how it was sounding inside my session so much and turns out, I can just do that and call it done. I think it sounds awesome. You can stream this rework on all platforms here & click the YouTube link below which features awesome artwork by my bud Casey Burns. Headphones is the move.

4. Important Video of me Dancing with Alex Tōth

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5. Your Guides Hide In Plain Sight

6. Should I Play A Show Where You Live?

I’m gathering data on where my fans are around the world because I’m contemplating a run of shows later in the year to celebrate the 15 Year Anniversary of Vows. Can you believe it? I want to know where you are and if you’d want me to play your city. It’ll probably be a small run of shows but the responses I get will help me determine the routing. Even if you live in a smaller town, fill the form out and tell me because I’ll be keeping track of all this for future touring!
(Plus, you’d get a 25% discount off the tickets & early access when the drop:)

Fill out the form here and you could be part of making these shows happen!

7. My fav new artist: Max Winter

This dude read the rulebook and threw it out. I’m obsessed with his new album and basically everything I’ve heard him put out. My top songs of his are as follows:

Just

Candlelight

How I Got Rid Of Me

P.O.S

Genre bending, emotionally diverse, cathartic, super sonically textural and daring. Best stuff I’ve heard in a while— especially if you’re feeling stagnant and want something to shake you up.

8. And Now For Something Completely Different: Chickens

Their sounds were kind of intriguing so I recorded them in my phone.

9. Chickens Turned Into a Warped Beat

No animals were harmed in this process, just a bunch of lo fi audio compressed and pitched into pulp plus a few expletives thrown at ProTools when it kept crashing due to incompatible plug-ins with my current version of the software. Really inspiring stuff when you’re trying to get into flow state.

Nonetheless, it turned out kinda cool. I tweaked out the sample and it revealed some pretty cool syncopated sub-divisions to build off. Rhythm is hiding in everything.

10. Have You Heard About The Koru?

You might not know it but this publication has a small circle called the Koru, where I host occasional online gatherings and share a few things that don’t always make their way into the wider newsletter. It’s sometimes referred to as the Founding Members tier, though The Koru is the name I use for it, a word from Te Reo Māori—which refers to the unfurling frond of a native New Zealand fern. It’s a lovely metaphor for how I think of these discussions— they’re a mutual unfolding of thoughts we each offer around a topic I choose and a way for you to learn more about how I approach my creative process. It’s also the most meaningful way to support and sustain my work here on Substack if you’re feeling called to do so.

Excitingly, we have a meet up coming up next Sunday, and I’d love to welcome some new faces into the fold. If you’d like to join us for the discussion (I’ve picked a theme which I think will reap a lovely harvest- wink wink iykyk) then you can learn more that here.

That’s all folks!

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Dear fine friends of the Koru,

I’m excited to be getting this next meet up off the ground. The ground, itself, will be our theme.

What do I mean by this?

As you’ll remember from previous Koru meet ups, we often have a topic which serves as a springboard for discussion.

I want to treat this next gathering as a chance to discuss a phenomenon in nature that h…

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Now and then I pop onto the Substack app on my iPhone and browse around the saved posts I have. My recent post Faith popped up and I clicked on it but was alarmed to see a button saying “listen”.

How could this be? I didn’t recite the poem and upload any audio? I thought to myself.

Lo and behold, my poem was suddenly being read back to me in an AI voice and I’m not having a bloody bar of it. Nope. From now on, I’ll just have to read my poems myself. I assume this will solve the problem. I’d like to build confidence reading my poems anyway. I have friends who have to read their poems aloud in order to write them. They have to hear the cadence and feel out the shapes in their mouth. It makes total sense, and of course I do this with my lyric writing, what other way would I make friends with the way the words sound set against melody? But with poems, my process is very internal. Most of them I’ve probably never said out loud. Maybe I like them feeling like a secret. Unarticulated. Said only to God in the silence of my heart then made manifest on a blank page. Wholly un-vibrated.

But, you know, it’s also cool to change your mind.

Whenever I finally release a book of poems (yes, I’m plotting) I would love to try reading them in public spaces. I’m not sure I’ve found my voice in this way yet. Perhaps exploring more reading of my work here will help me discover some things. I always wanted this Substack to be a place of permission for me, a place where I could try things out and be in process.

I still remember the first poetry post I did on here and how NERVOUS I was to press publish. I remember reformatting the text in a hundred different ways, haunted by the tweaking of the finest details as though they could make or break how it landed. These were all clever ways to avoid that ache of being exposed through a new medium and taking that first step when my knees were still shaking. I finally pressed post and now I’ve posted close to 40 poems on here (you can look at the whole archive here).

Through this space of exploration, my writing and confidence has grown a lot. It allows me to be less precious. When I post my poems, I often realize they still need work but I post them anyway. Other times I feel like they are just right. And in those times it is exciting to have a place to put them rather than hide them away in a Google Doc. The instant sense that it could touch someone straight away, that it can begin its life right now, and that it may continue in a published format down the line. I like that poems have a life of their own like that. Of course, songs work the same way but sharing my songs too early in their process can sometimes cause me to get too married to the demo. Because the production is such a big part of the way I present my songs, I often want to give the song the time it needs to find its sonic home before sharing it. At other times, it can feel great to share an acoustic demo of something. But I’ll admit, I’m more shy about it. Poems on the other hand thrive in their total lack of production. There’s no other way to go to the ball than to go naked.

So, all of this to say, unless it feels totally wrong to read the poem aloud (because I want to honour those that ask for that), I will now be kicking AI out of my Substack posts (I never invited you to read my poems on my behalf, please leave) and maybe even thanking her (it was a female voice that was generated, I can confirm) for pushing me to expand into another area of self expression with my poetry. It’s one I’d dipped a toe into then got a little self conscious about and stopped. This is where I think AI can help us perhaps… by pushing us to push back in the areas that we know only we can do the job. AI can do so much so well… linear thinking? Forget it! Way better than me! Take the prize! Organizing and labelling and executive functioning type stuff? Yup, all yours. I definitely don’t score high in those areas of life.

But AI cannot tell the story I had to live to write Faith.

It can’t know the cost and it can’t sound my truth. When I sing, I am a living chamber of resonance. That resonance is alive every time I speak too. My frustration at hearing my poem read by AI lit a fire in me to take back my words and put them in MY voice. Because there is only one me. One story that is like mine. And perhaps the more truthfully I can embody those words, the more they can become manifest inside someone else. When we are so deeply rooted in our truth, it is contagious. AI can relay the words accurately, yes. And in some instances that may be helpful. But NOT FOR POETRY. Poetry is blood and bone.

I think we need to get glimpses of the world we don’t want, to remember and start reclaiming back the one we do. We don’t have to look far. The music industry is facing this crisis of ‘authenticity’ big time right now. AI music is growing by the minute and the idea that a kid on Spotify might not even know the difference between human music and AI music is pretty terrifying to me. The soul is a precious thing that cannot be replicated and the voice contains the soul. My voice will likely be replicated by AI at some point (no surprise when you’ve been part of one of the most streamed songs of the last decade) but in some ways it only deepens my reverence for the one voice I actually have. The total uniqueness of it and the absolute irreplaceability of its vibration when captured in real time. This goes for every one of us. From our voice to our thumbprint.

If you’re angry at AI sucking the originality out of things, let that anger make you double down on your loyalty to the individuality of your gifts. And use them. In whatever way. That doesn’t have to be some big wild grand gesture or the launching of a Youtube channel. But it could be remembering that no one can make a mark on a piece of paper like you can. Certainly no one can write the poem you can. Ask ChatGPT to write a poem and you’ll quickly find out how horribly soulless it sounds (no matter how many times you’ve trained it to ‘learn your voice’).

So, to use an often used criticism thrown at musicians who start speaking out on important issues, stay in your lane, AI. I’ll read my poems thank you very much.

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Faith

Faith is most tested when you have barely a button of it
In this waking anguish I ask for no pity
But simply a thread to fasten this faith
To the breast of a Being who calls me by name
And says no more but wait
So I wait with my button and thread
And the swelling chest of a divine invisible promise
To whom I assent with no certainty
For I have none left
But I’m not asked to give
More than I have
My blue button of faith
Will be enough
The Lord is making me a fine coat
The only call now is to be in my body
So there will be someone living there when it comes time to get dressed

The painting above was sent to me as a photo by my friend Joan Taylor who had recently witnessed it herself in person at Geneva’s Museum of Art and History. She wrote some words about what the painting evoked in her and I found them so moving and apt for todays poem about faith and grief so I thought I’d share them here with you.

“If ever there was an image of Jesus that speaks to our times it is surely this one. There is Jesus, on his knees, sadly praying to his Father, aware that the ignorant, self-seeking, corrupt world would even end up killing him, rejecting his message of mercy and forgiveness. He was not the macho warrior King people were expecting. His was a message of peace and community. Burnard sums up Jesus’ pure simplicity by having him dressed in one plain mantle, with just a little sewn edging at his neck. Jesus is deeply, spiritually absorbed, and unselfconscious. There is this feeling of quiet, and yet focus, and real sorrow. It is as if we have just walked in on him, at a completely private moment. I wanted to say, I was so very sorry.”

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Curious eyes and ears,

I write from Skywalker Ranch, the legendary post-production studio / private creative retreat / mystical wonderland built by George Lucas in the rolling hills of Marin County. I’ve been in heaven walking these grounds as I finish up an exciting project out here that I first started working on over 3 years ago. I can’t wait to share more about it but for now my head is down and my lips are sealed.

The Sparks today are a selection of beautiful music I’ve either come across in the last few months or returned to and found to be sustaining in this season. I’ve opted to simply list the sparks without my commentary on them as I want you to go in with fresh ears and no preconceived ideas. I hope one or more of these lands where it needs to.

Sending love from Northern California,

May the force be with you,

Till next time

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1. Bill Evans - Symbiosis, 1st Movement: Moderato. Various Tempi, Pt. 1

2. Pedro Martins - Esqueça

3. Marlon Williams - Ko Tēnā Ua

4. Silicon - Personal Computer

5. Frankie Avalon - Venus

6. Zammuto - My Dog’s Eyes

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My friend Shawn Hanna came to spend an afternoon with me while I did some painting and I told him a bit about what the practice means to me and how it relates to my world as a musician.

I’ve always loved messing around with watercolours but when I moved to New York in 2016 I became more interested in it as a regular artistic expression. I got really into drawing and painting my versions of saints, especially Mother Mary. Though I wasn’t raised Catholic or anything close, I’ve always felt such a resonance with the various depictions of her. These days I’m really interested in the bleeding of black ink with watercolour as many of you will have seen in the paintings I share along with my poems sometimes.

Surprisingly, around the time I started this Substack, Brandon Boyd from Incubus (who were one of my favourite bands in high school—my friend Kate and I knew every single word of Make Yourself by heart and my bedroom was plastered with their posters, right next to Destiny’s Child, The Mars Volta and Interpol — let’s just say it was an eclectic era for me) saw some of my paintings on Instagram and suggested I think about selling them through the platform he founded called Moonlight Arts Collective.

This is the second run of prints and originals I’ve done with them and it’s been a beautiful way to share another side of who I am with people. If these paintings connect with you, maybe you’d like to own one for yourself.

You can head to the link here to purchase either a one off original (signed) or a print of one of the originals (also signed). Here are the paintings:

Here is me signing the prints and thinking about the homes they’ll end up in.

I feel the maternal figure in this painting embodies a quiet sense of safety and the kind of world-expansion that comes from unconditional love.

I hope these paintings bless whoever they end up with. Here is the link again and thank you for supporting my work— it means a lot to me.

https://moonlightartscollective.com/collections/kimbra

Till next time,

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Today I share a poem I wrote on the last day of a week long silent retreat I took last week at a Trappist monastery in upstate New York. I also attached a photo of the poem which I wrote out with a little watercolour and gifted to the monks before I left. I find it hard to put into words these types of experiences especially as they often resist that type of containment and sharing (preferring the privacy of prayerful reflection) but I find poetry is the best medium to give at least some shape to the soul stirrings while still honouring the mystery that asks to stay quiet.

The Language of Grace

After so much silence
what could I say?
What words could contain the
aching void I have touched?
The cacophony of half-loves
that grew mute in the passage of time?
What gestures of my mouth could do
justice to the intimacy tasted
and revealed to me in the refuge of rest?

For I could not quieten my hungry ghosts
I could only offer them up one by one
Sweet tension in the bow
there are melodies I will sound in the fullness of time
born from this sacred absence
of any one true answer

Let my lips set boundaries
to my insatiable urge to make my inner life known
Make my tongue a drawbridge
so I may give but not be drained
Let the words I speak be a fresh spring
and my heart an infinite well
guarded by the parts of me that cannot be named

The closest way to my God is by the breath
effortless, unsounding
a trust fall so brave
with no guarantees
a submission to the language of grace
with every ritual inhale

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the codes of waking and dying

closing in
deathly slow
widened concentration through narrow time
the chain link of events that brings me to this inaudible friendship
with every blade of grass
the slicing light that casts across ribbons of leaf and fern
to hunger for reality is to accept the cost of it
to willingly arrive at the singular truth that in all its diversity
the codes of waking and dying are written
with relentless loyalty
the whole earth presses forward leaving nothing to fate
all is folded from one moment into the next
nothing wasted
nothing left

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Was there ever a sound so cautious and brave as that of a breath? So full in its eventual expression, so delicate in its virgin opening. The ever circulating orbit of air that animates the body to stay life-full, it is both timid and mighty. The truth of being human sits bright with confidence, this wind we house in each waking moment is still present when we sleep. The surging potential that takes refuge in our body, reminding us of our unbreakable connection to the air surrounding us and that which flows through everyone else.

I feel the cruelty of gravity like a concrete slab on my forehead. Magnetized by the skies, I sit without aim, terrorized by their total purity and the knowledge that I belong to them. I’ve known this my whole life. My origin inside the abyss, where limbs do not reach their limit when moving. Maybe I’m not stuck when I stare, but remembering, recalling that blue-hued freedom, stretching time with my non-doing as though I could make it stop altogether. But it never does, and so the minutes unfold and I remain land-locked in my body; the temple, the home, the obstacle.
I choose myself back again, for it is the vehicle my soul chose when it said yes.

Yes to the joy, the pain, the terror and the transcending.

The whole world holds you in a perfect invitation
Through every namesake and crooked instinct that calls out for nurturance
A hidden Christ that cautions through closed eyes
No thing is separate
Give yourself over to entropy
It does not always make sense
Let it be chaos should it desire to be so
Let reality rearrange itself before your eyes
Resist the urge to rush time and twitch while feeling every pulse and flow

Till next time,

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Recently I sat down with my close friend Alex (who makes music under the name Tōth) to talk about the voltage that runs through our bodies and seeks to ground through sound. In preparation for the conversation, we decided to have an impromptu dance party to Deerhoof because… obviously.

After shaking it out, we sat down to record an unmoderated chat for a transcript series by Talkhouse. Our conversation starts with my massive appreciation of Tōth’s new album “And The Voice Said”. I got to hear the album before it came out and spun it to death while I was in New Zealand over Christmas. I blasted it down the country roads and found myself moving from tears to laughter many times over the course of the record. The songs have become real friends to me.

We then dive into existential angst, mental health, tree therapy, the freedom we’ve found in spiritual practice and how music gives us the space to feel and convey both sonically and somatically the things we feel limited to express in the “day to day”.

This conversation speaks to so many themes I explore here on my Substack so I am sharing the transcript below for you all. This interview was originally published here for Talkhouse. I’d love to know what connected with you after reading through.

Don’t forget to check out Toth’s album, And The Voice Said out now and the song I feature on called “Touching”. Also, I have an announcement at the bottom of this post so keep reading to the end!

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Alex Toth: That was a great little dance party we just did.

Kimbra: We’re both a little puffed.

Alex: Yeah, we almost canceled the interview.

Kimbra: Well, I think it’s the perfect way to go into an interview, because I’m always overthinking myself before I go into any kind of interview or conversation in general. But because we just got in our bodies, I feel like I’m really aware of all the sensations inside me in this moment and I feel very present with you.

Alex: Yeah, I’m still catching my breath. Kimbra put on a 10-minute long soul, prog, R&B song.

Kimbra: It was a journey.

Alex: We really fucking danced.

Kimbra: Let’s talk about your album. I was listening to it on the way over here.

Alex: Thank you.

Kimbra: It’s one of those records that gives names to many of the emotions that I feel day-to -day, but don’t feel like I necessarily have the vocabulary for in my own head. You’ve written songs that very much appeal to people like me who have that combination of existential angst and longing for the divine, but severe limitation in their own skin and thoughts — limitation in the sense that we get in our own way a lot. And something I appreciate about your music is just how honest it is about that experience of desiring freedom. That’s what I hear a lot in your work: the desire for freedom and the total raw experience of being so human at the same time. The animal and the divine, wrestling within the person.

Alex: I don’t think of you as somebody who’s severely limited in any way. [Laughs.] You’re like a radiant superstar.

Kimbra: Well, thank you for saying that. I feel like that side of me comes to life through art. But when I’m just moving through the world day by day… That’s why I write. I’ve been thinking about this recently: a part of our friendship is that we’re always looking for ways to better accompany ourselves through this journey of life, to be a better friend to ourselves. So what I mean by “limited” is that some of us feel like our brains aren’t always on our side when we make art.

Alex: I think maybe one of our commonalities is there’s so much energy in our bodies, and that can create an overwhelm.

Kimbra: That’s a good way to put it.

Alex: Yeah. It’s not a limitation as much as, I’m overwhelmed by the amount of electricity or energy moving through. It can be painful. Because like every human being, there’s childhood wounds and messaging that’s imperfect and that is very critical. And when that is combined with a lot of moving energy, it’s pretty intense. We’re coming up on 10 years of friendship in March, and I feel like a lot of the people closest to me — there is an eccentricity to us, you know? There’s energy. Like, we went from sitting at the kitchen table calmly drinking coffee and eating oatmeal and talking about life, to angular, convulsive, 10 minutes straight of dancing. [Laughs.]

Kimbra: [Laughs.] Totally losing it. Actually, it was a lot like the music video. I was thinking about how natural it was in that music video, “Touching,” to be making shapes with our bodies. Because I feel like I’m one of those people that — I’ll come back to the word “limitation” again — I feel like I only have so many words that I can use to explain my experience, so when I get to use movement or melody or sound or texture, suddenly I feel like those voices that are maybe in your way or fear-based or conformist get freed, because I’m able to put that voltage into something that can hold it. The moving and our music — it can hold that voltage [from] day-to-day life, interacting in a world that is kind of designed to keep people within their fears. The more afraid someone is, the more likely they are to stay small. And artists have always been outside of the norm there.

Alex: The thing you said about the desire for freedom in my music — this has been the case as long as I can remember. In Rubblebucket, it was always the goal, to break that fourth wall between the audience or the listener and to shake people up and help them find their freedom, their feeling, their joy.

Kimbra: Tell me more about that with this album. To me, it goes into so many things that I know about you as a person that we talk about so much, and then it’s in the music so strongly. But did you go into it with an intention to talk about certain things, or did the songs just kind of unfold as you went?

Alex: Yeah. I think the thing that can be really troubling for any human being is when we’re in pain and and we’re attacking ourselves — it’s that terminal uniqueness. We think we’re the only ones that are going through this, and we are worthless or I shouldn’t be here sort of feelings. And the thing about that is, it is pretty universal. From an early age, I was really interested in psychology and understanding my friends; I was always drawn to people that were more tweaked or going through something and like, Well, what is that? And what is that in me? I think I’ve learned over time that whatever’s happening in me, I’m touching on something that’s universal to the human condition. So by exploring that in myself, by witnessing that, it doesn’t matter how specific I get in certain songs, I have this trust that the feeling will be understood.

It actually reminds me of the book that we’re reading together, the Thích Nhất Hạnh book, Living Buddha, Living Christ. He talks about the importance of paying attention to what’s going, paying attention to our bodies and what’s happening inside, noticing our own judgments, our own inner violence. That is the key. The more we’re with ourselves in that, the more we can be compassionate to our, quote-unquote, “enemies” and to others, and the more we can show up activistically in a really effective way. And so I think that on this record, it is a goal. It’s a goal when I’m writing songs to reach down deep.

Kimbra: That’s so beautiful. It’s exactly what I feel. I think of a song like “Ice Cream,” how you go from talking about the very commonplace experience of just getting ice cream, and then also accompanying a friend to the psych ward. And that chorus, “There’s mountains that don’t have names, they don’t have names, they don’t have names. So many folks are insane, they’re going insane, they’re going insane. I don’t want to die alone.”

Alex: [Laughs.]

Kimbra: I mean, this is coming out of talking about just buying ice cream. To me, so much of life is this combination of these things that are just so mundane, seemingly, or rooted in seemingly no real larger meaning being smashed right next to things that are just crushingly real and heavy. And when someone sings about this to you on a song, it just puts it so bluntly. That is the ultimate fear of human beings: death itself and dying alone. That combination expresses so much that we long to be connected, we long to understand death as well.

Alex: To be held in our pain.

Kimbra: And yet we also have to wake up tomorrow and put on clothes and do our teeth and go to work or go back to a song that we’re working on. There’s something so tedious about the daily ordinariness that we have to engage with while also holding these massive longings, fears. That’s the thing that comes out when we were dancing before, right? It’s that tension of… I can’t find an answer to these things, but they live in my body as these question marks that I have to get out somehow.

Basically, what I’m trying to say about your music is that there are other people who would ask those questions, but do it in a very heavily poetic, overly ornate, decorated way. That’s also beautiful — that’s the great classical pieces like Debussy, drenched in that sort of emotive longing, questioning of the human experience. But when I listen to your music, I do feel like I’m in your living room here having these sorts of talks with you. It’s the relatability of your voice and the relatability of your putting it as it is, not dressing it up too much. That goes a really long way for people, I think.

Alex: Thank you. I think about… for some reason, Thelonious Monk is coming to mind.

Kimbra: Oh, yeah?

Alex: Thelonious Monk talked about music coming from the body, and most of his practicing, from what I understand, was listening deeply to music. And when he played, just the importance that nothing is intellectually thought of, that it’s all released from the body. That’s always been really important to me. That’s how I make music. I think it’s the part of music that makes it really cathartic and healing for me. If you let the ideas speak through you — they’re not my ideas, they’re just coming through and it’s so physical. I love that about it because I don’t ever know what’s going to come out. The process of creating is one of discovery. And similar to therapy or journaling, you can really work stuff out as you’re doing it.

Kimbra: That, I think, is very much true, that music is the vehicle for doing the self-discovery. So much of music is where I learn where my fears are, and then I learn to take risks. And through the use of the body being so completely committed to something — it’s why I have to use my hands when I sing — they are gestures that help me to let go of analysis.

Alex: Watching you sing, I love how your hands are, like, tracing your voice. It’s so cool.

Kimbra: But I am following the spirit. It feels like that. I mean, you’re right, there’s a channeling thing. My hands are moving according to instinct, and the instinct that’s flowing through the body is that sense of spiritual momentum, because it’s coming seemingly from somewhere else or deep within you.

And it’s the thing that’s animating what you’re doing, and you’re not making it happen through force; you’re trusting that it has something. Like you said, I’m trusting that if I say this really deep, journal entry thing, someone else will also know that, because it’s something so essential, isn’t it? It’s like trying to find the purest version of gesture or human emotion. The more pure it is — not performative.

Alex: Authentic.

Kimbra: Yeah. When you get out of trying to perform for people… then it maybe makes you more available to be used in the moment. I think my whole goal in life is to be in collaboration with that spiritual essence, that thing that animates us, that thing that ultimately seeks to harmonize in the world, to create wholeness in the world. That’s what we’re doing with music as well, giving life to things that need to be felt.

Alex: Yeah. That’s why I think the daily practices for me around spirituality are essential. They’re essential to, as you say, harmonizing with that spirit. And that energy within is a double-edged sword: While there’s a gift to having energy that makes you want to dance and sing and write poetry and and perform and try to bring joy to other people, there’s just so much ouchie with it.

Kimbra: Oh yeah.

Alex: There was something around the biological selectivity of different mental illnesses and how there’s only maybe 1% of the population that are bipolar and, like, 90% of them are in the poetry, music field. Don’t quote me on that… [Laughs.] But it’s something like that. So as a result, all throughout history, there’s been incredible poets and artists and musicians [with bipolar disorder]. I have my own version of that thing that tries to pull me under. And over the years — I’m now 12 years sober, going on meditation retreats and getting better and better at my daily meditation and journaling and exercise and therapy and recovery meetings and dharma groups and talking with friends — I’m able to harness that angularity, that ouch, in a way that’s it’s beautiful. I can actually be a musician and enjoy being a musician, too, if I’m lucky. I’ve really been coming into that more and more recently.

It feels cool to gradually show up over the years in this ritual disciplined way in a world that’s so wild and volatile. You’re touring all around the world and just manipulating compressed air. The money’s really erratic and sleep can be erratic, and the whole thing is just weird. So to find your own consistency through spiritual practice and self-care, it’s just been crucial.

And I’ve found that journey has exponentially deepened my relationship to the music and my ability to hear more and more subtle and more authentic or pure messages that I’m less in the way of. because of doing that.

And you’ve been a huge part of that over the last 10 years, because you came into my life only two or three years into that journey. I just had gotten off a meditation retreat and was going through a breakup of 11-and-a-half year relationship and I’d just started a punk band. You were immediately connecting with the punk band and the “I Am Sensation” thing.

Kimbra: That song is a mantra for me with my own spiritual practice, remembering that I am just a series of nerve endings… OK, keep going.

Alex: But then, as I was going through this breakup, I was writing these new songs, and I didn’t have a home for my punk record yet. I was like, “I don’t know what these songs are… Kimbra, do you want to sing this?” And you loved the songs, but you were really encouraging to me, “You should make this record, Alex.” You really encouraged me to start this project that’s coming to fruition today. I’ll never forget that.

Kimbra: I’m so glad that I was honest with you about that when I said that, because I knew that you were looking to find how that song could come to life in different ways. And I just remember thinking, There’s only one person that can bring the song to life. There’s only one point of view that’s coming across from the song. It’s your story to tell. It’s so clearly such a singular perspective, and it is due to so much of the shared experience that we felt, even on that day. I was like, Oh, the person you are in normal conversation and who you are on the record, there’s very little, if anything, between those two experiences. I think that’s what’s really powerful about certain artists. And that’s the greatest compliment I can receive as well about my own music, when people say they feel so close to you on the record. I mean, performance is not bad, of course. There’s a heightened exaggeration to what we do as artists. But it’s almost like that’s the entry point. And then when you’re on the track, you can get to that point where you can be so completely there with people. And that’s what I felt. I was like, This is a through line. The person who’s walking in the house here and the person they’ve captured on the record is one.

Alex: Yeah. That’s what we want.

Kimbra: And that’s why the erratic, eccentric sides, putting that into the work too, it finds a home. It finds an expression. Because that’s how humans are meant to be. We talk about bipolarity — we’re told it’s not OK to surf these extremes, because at times it is really worrying when we have to live in those spaces for too long. Super high, super low. But the way that we feel that that is somehow wrong, in a sense, it becomes like an alien experience for people to go into those heightened states. It becomes like something that is very, very wrong, when really it’s very human to have that. And I think what maybe is the thing that makes it so difficult to hold it in our bodies is that we’re not given spaces within our society to actually safely go into that. We were talking about the power of ritual to hold us and keep us aligned with higher power — I think it’s the foundation that allows for us to explore those spectrums. Within reason.

Alex: I am curious what you mean about the certain highs. Because from a medical standpoint, some of the bipolar highs can actually do permanent damage, like burning synapses, if you stay in them. So that’s also the importance of finding various means, whether they’re Western medical or Eastern or otherwise, to ground it, so that you can experience some form of that without doing long term damage.

Kimbra: That’s the thing: this industry — talk about artists and poets — has a high kill rate. It has an intensely short lifespan for a lot of people. Because for a lot of artists — and myself, having been on this journey — to help that side of us can be a fear that it will lessen our creativity.

Alex: What has your experience with that been? Do you have any reference points for being not necessarily in a super low or super high, but also feeling creatively aligned and happy?

Kimbra: [Laughs.] “Can you be creatively aligned and happy?”

Alex: [Laughs.] No, like in the neutral, or just a little bit high.

Kimbra: It’s increasing your ability to tolerate that space, to give yourself the support systems. And they do often, for especially severe mood disorders, include medication. But they also include so many other things that give us the ability to increase your window of tolerance for those experiences, so that you can touch them but not have to believe that they are necessary and required for great creative work. I always used to be more drawn to melancholy and, like you said, people who had been through hard things, because sometimes you think that there’s more value or weight to those experiences because of their intensity. But that’s the same thing: It’s the voltage in the body looking for a way out, so it’s drawn to intensity. And that can be not good, because we take ourselves into situations that create more of that voltage that actually needs to ground. So nature is a huge one for me — when I touch trees, I’m able to actually feel all of that in my body root down into the tree, and observe the stillness of things, listen to things deeply and listen to my own internal ebbs and flows without seeking to attach to one more than the other.

I think the life of someone who swings severely can feel sometimes like you are losing the ground. So I’m grateful as well that we have had each other to walk through that journey with.

Alex: I absolutely love the tree thing. I have this image of you just hands and head on the tree. I haven’t really done that.

Kimbra: I do it all the time.

Alex: Do you ever hug them?

Kimbra: Yeah — kiss them, actually.

Alex: You kiss them?

Kimbra: Yeah. I hold the the trunk and then I kiss it. And what you’re holding is this entity that is so deeply rooted in the ground. It’s an actual living symbol of rootedness. To hold something that is so deeply grounded, you’re actually taking on some of its energy when you do that.

Alex: I love that. I want to do that. Let’s do that.

Kimbra: [Laughs.] We should! It’s a beautiful practice.

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Ps. I’m selling my paintings!

I just released a series of prints and originals for sale through Moonlight collective. I know a lot of my readers here on Substack enjoy my watercolours. Now you can own one for yourself!

See here to shop the collection.

the peril of every worthwhile endeavour

quiet postures
carved from a state of enquiry
action born from wanting
muffled by resignation
to the peril of every worthwhile endeavour

blind rhythms
led forth by a magic touch
the kind borne of angels
who in seeing our forgetfulness
beckon with symbols
and smiles on the subway
that could be missed in a flash

if it were not for the ache and conviction
planted firmly in the heart
of all beings
the rumbling and cautious chivalry
that urges on our growth

the timid and inevitable conversion that happens
without assignment
but stirs from within

tiny revelations
some impetus of nature to go on
without an audience
to speak and become
through all matter of things

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