The mammoth is silent, the way an ancient stand of trees are “silent”. They may be “quiet”, but what they can tell us is only a sliver of what they actually know. I’m too curious and I don’t care if I can’t take it all in, so I say, “Hi! How are you? (I’m addressing the literal elephant in the room, and, yes, and I hate myself for typing this.) Out of respect, I am waiting for him to answer and I am listening as hard as I can. It takes a few minutes but he finally says I’m not supposed to see him like this – “reassembled”. He says it’s embarrassing.
You know, I've had many years to get used to your intricate and challenging genius in songwriting and performing. I'm accustomed to how interesting you are in interviews, and I'm privileged to be familiar with how awesome you are in live shows.
So there is an especial delight in this unfolding discovery of how wonderful, idiosyncratic, passionate, and captivating your prose writing is! This newsletter is a gift, it makes me so happy.
Aaaagh, this is so fucking cool! Thank you for sharing the links, I loved reading about the discovery. Thank you for sharing the museum conversation, as well - it takes me back to working in the KU Natural History Museum (I was the live venomous snake exhibit caretaker) and hanging out backstage behind the exhibits while watching my friend Greg repair the specimen-folk. Man...I miss my danger noodles.
Hello it's me I'm back. I realize I suck at digesting these in first read, so I've been coming back. 1. I hope you don't feel bad about not being able to digest technical science papers. They are notoriously jargony and often times each author/s comes up with new terms just for their own study, so it's a lot of work to understand definitions and concepts. It took me reading literally hundreds of these papers to come up with a strategy for understanding them that didn't make me feel nauseous. Its part of the reason I quit grad school because I thought I was too stupid to understand them. Now I am mad because I understand them really well, I just didn't give my brain time to adjust to that learning curve and just decided to be depressed about it instead. Rejection sensitive dysphoria ftw. The lesson here is that it taught me not to care about when I am bad at stuff & just keep going anyway. But yeah, the way scientist are made to write is exactly why science communication is so hard, and it makes me sad because there aren't enough scientists who are able to bridge the gap (kimmer is one, Robert Sapolsky is another good one. If course Carl Sagan and Neil Degrasse Tyson, bill Nye, etc etc are pretty good too). But none of those guys can make you feel like your sleeping in the ribcage of a mammoth in one sentence, and that's why we need poets. My second thoughts are about music. I keep thinking about music before phonograph, before heavy commercialization. There's so many good things about music to have come out of the 20thc, but also I think about how much institutionalization has made music seem so intangible when I truly feel that it's a basic human nature/right. And yeah, I think I see how people like you who do make it in the game totally get fucked over because of this process. It blows my mind, neko, that you are worried about paying to put out a new album. Like what?!?! After two+ decades of solid quality and hard work. It makes absolutely no sense to me. But also money as a concept mystifies me in general, and I'm begining to prefer to have none (that's the commie hippy in me). Maybe I'm just particularly defensive over you, but I think about it /a lot/. Anyway, that's all. Hope you are taking care.
I always click the links, but that's because I am a kiss ass and a huge fucking nerd. I miss museums so much. I spend the majority of my travel wondering down exhibition halls. When I lived in the bay area I was at the de young and ca academy of sciences often (I actually owned memberships). I should have worked at a museum. I've been looking at jobs at the NY museum of natural history, but I feel like I am under qualified. Maybe it's just imposter syndrome. Maybe I need to ask a mammoth his opinion...
Also I love ancient genetic studies cause it always be like, "surprise!!! Everyone and their mamma is intermixed because fucking is popular!!". When people try and tell me that humans always discriminated I'm like have you read ancient genetic studies??? Unless there were significant temporal and geographic separations between them, they were probably fucking. Sorry, bro!!
I loved this post so much. Thank you. I've sat in museums over the years and thought about the stories of the shells of animals "restored" for our enjoyment and (hopefully for some) education. Thank you for the scientific journal links as well. A prescient reminder of our finite time here on this planet. Also Last Lion of Albion is one of my all time favorite songs and it rings in my head anytime I see big cat dioramas. Thanks again friend.
This has the feel of some great extras that might be included on like say, a Middle Cyclone anniversary edition. Insights, new songs & these words. That she had too leave a caveat about being facetious (for those maskless parents, natch!) Is still making me laugh...
Thanks for providing the links. And I'm gonna amaze my friends when I regale them with the fact that mammoths and mastodons (or saber-tooth tigers for that matter) are most certainly NOT dinosaurs.
Neko, your imagination and broad interests are somewhat childlike, aware and utterly honest. Makes you unique and always worth listening to and reading. I can't think of a contemporary who would explore so much in a dialogue with the past, apologize for antropormorphing and the have so many for the present. Every time you talk about being stupid or ignorant, I think of Socrates, as interpreted by Kierkegaard. Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. Kierkegaard wrote that Socrates was wrong; the unexamined life is not lived. Lady, you music and your other writing show someone conscious of living and trying to understand just what it means...
Total Wow! I just love your writing. So interesting and evocative. It reminds me of David Sedaris and makes me wonder why you aren't in the "New Yorker"?
You know, I've had many years to get used to your intricate and challenging genius in songwriting and performing. I'm accustomed to how interesting you are in interviews, and I'm privileged to be familiar with how awesome you are in live shows.
So there is an especial delight in this unfolding discovery of how wonderful, idiosyncratic, passionate, and captivating your prose writing is! This newsletter is a gift, it makes me so happy.
Aaaagh, this is so fucking cool! Thank you for sharing the links, I loved reading about the discovery. Thank you for sharing the museum conversation, as well - it takes me back to working in the KU Natural History Museum (I was the live venomous snake exhibit caretaker) and hanging out backstage behind the exhibits while watching my friend Greg repair the specimen-folk. Man...I miss my danger noodles.
Hello it's me I'm back. I realize I suck at digesting these in first read, so I've been coming back. 1. I hope you don't feel bad about not being able to digest technical science papers. They are notoriously jargony and often times each author/s comes up with new terms just for their own study, so it's a lot of work to understand definitions and concepts. It took me reading literally hundreds of these papers to come up with a strategy for understanding them that didn't make me feel nauseous. Its part of the reason I quit grad school because I thought I was too stupid to understand them. Now I am mad because I understand them really well, I just didn't give my brain time to adjust to that learning curve and just decided to be depressed about it instead. Rejection sensitive dysphoria ftw. The lesson here is that it taught me not to care about when I am bad at stuff & just keep going anyway. But yeah, the way scientist are made to write is exactly why science communication is so hard, and it makes me sad because there aren't enough scientists who are able to bridge the gap (kimmer is one, Robert Sapolsky is another good one. If course Carl Sagan and Neil Degrasse Tyson, bill Nye, etc etc are pretty good too). But none of those guys can make you feel like your sleeping in the ribcage of a mammoth in one sentence, and that's why we need poets. My second thoughts are about music. I keep thinking about music before phonograph, before heavy commercialization. There's so many good things about music to have come out of the 20thc, but also I think about how much institutionalization has made music seem so intangible when I truly feel that it's a basic human nature/right. And yeah, I think I see how people like you who do make it in the game totally get fucked over because of this process. It blows my mind, neko, that you are worried about paying to put out a new album. Like what?!?! After two+ decades of solid quality and hard work. It makes absolutely no sense to me. But also money as a concept mystifies me in general, and I'm begining to prefer to have none (that's the commie hippy in me). Maybe I'm just particularly defensive over you, but I think about it /a lot/. Anyway, that's all. Hope you are taking care.
I always click the links, but that's because I am a kiss ass and a huge fucking nerd. I miss museums so much. I spend the majority of my travel wondering down exhibition halls. When I lived in the bay area I was at the de young and ca academy of sciences often (I actually owned memberships). I should have worked at a museum. I've been looking at jobs at the NY museum of natural history, but I feel like I am under qualified. Maybe it's just imposter syndrome. Maybe I need to ask a mammoth his opinion...
Also I love ancient genetic studies cause it always be like, "surprise!!! Everyone and their mamma is intermixed because fucking is popular!!". When people try and tell me that humans always discriminated I'm like have you read ancient genetic studies??? Unless there were significant temporal and geographic separations between them, they were probably fucking. Sorry, bro!!
That drawing is magnificent. What’s coming out of that speaker?
I loved this post so much. Thank you. I've sat in museums over the years and thought about the stories of the shells of animals "restored" for our enjoyment and (hopefully for some) education. Thank you for the scientific journal links as well. A prescient reminder of our finite time here on this planet. Also Last Lion of Albion is one of my all time favorite songs and it rings in my head anytime I see big cat dioramas. Thanks again friend.
This has the feel of some great extras that might be included on like say, a Middle Cyclone anniversary edition. Insights, new songs & these words. That she had too leave a caveat about being facetious (for those maskless parents, natch!) Is still making me laugh...
Thanks for providing the links. And I'm gonna amaze my friends when I regale them with the fact that mammoths and mastodons (or saber-tooth tigers for that matter) are most certainly NOT dinosaurs.
Neko, your imagination and broad interests are somewhat childlike, aware and utterly honest. Makes you unique and always worth listening to and reading. I can't think of a contemporary who would explore so much in a dialogue with the past, apologize for antropormorphing and the have so many for the present. Every time you talk about being stupid or ignorant, I think of Socrates, as interpreted by Kierkegaard. Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. Kierkegaard wrote that Socrates was wrong; the unexamined life is not lived. Lady, you music and your other writing show someone conscious of living and trying to understand just what it means...
I observe your next album cover at the bottom. Perhaps, The Elephant in the Room?
Total Wow! I just love your writing. So interesting and evocative. It reminds me of David Sedaris and makes me wonder why you aren't in the "New Yorker"?
I really love this message, Ms Neko. Plus, I can picture you chatting with the mammoth and the mastodon. Thank you for sharing.
<3 this.
Feels a little George Saunders-ish...a good thing. Great story. Thanks
Enthralling parable, Neko - thanks!