2024 =
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hi friends ~ I am migrating my website email list over to Substack and starting a new experiment for the coming year—capturing “notes” under the heading of “tender revolutions” (which is also the name of a possible new hybrid project in the works)… although I’m not exactly sure what’ll happen here yet, I hope to share some small writings and songs, some writings about songs and other processes, images, etc; plus news and updates on both my solo and collaborative art projects. *Note: some of you are on this list because you signed up from my website in recent years, but some contacts on this list were imported from years-ago mailing lists so I understand there are likely folks on here who don’t know why they are on this list anymore. I tried to clean it up as best I could, removing all emails I didn’t personally recognize anymore. Please feel free to unsubscribe if you don’t want to receive these updates from me, and thank you for following along if you decide to.
Another option: if you don’t want email in your inbox but are still curious, you can also find me on IG as @herandthesea and sporadically on FB (under my name). You can also follow my collective projects on IG at @decanonproject and @shewhohasnomasters
1.5.24
It has taken me awhile to understand, and accept, that my processes (creative and otherwise) tend to be slow, recurrent, and follow their own wayward timing. A song I wrote inside an afternoon years ago, I am still *learning* how to play, to inhabit anew, ten or fifteen years later. In writing, I lean toward the long poem and sequences, rather than single poems; of the fiction books I’ve written, the one that is a collection of four novellas (with a fifth interrupting “interlude”) felt truest to my own sense of narrative and rhythm (despite publishers wanting it to fit inside labels like “novel” or “story collection”). With songs too, I often favor the slow-burns vs. the more palatable 3-4 minute missives. This is all to say it has been a challenge for me to adapt to the culture of faster and shorter consumptions that we live in; or to myself even pay attention at that speed. In my own work, I am aware of being compelled by returns and rememberings (what returns to one or returns one to, what recurrently asks to be resonated & re-membered, again…); and this is at the heart of much of what I’ve been [attempting to] write or sing over the years. At the same time, another thought has begun to occur to me, that the work is not just about what is attempting to be *re-membered*, but also about the process, the scale, the textures of attention itself… I am slowing down here or trying to, in hopes of finding a language (a method) of perception that may help me to better see and (re)present things; to engage and receive.
Toward this attempt, I return again and again to the ‘home’ of voice—the space I have had the grace and ever-evolving experience to grow through, to encounter through, that has opened so much for me, in terms both bodily and imaginary, through the realms/landscapes of both words and music, of writing and singing, of sound and thought.
Encounter has been key in other ways too: each one of the hybrid projects I’ve made since 2015 has, in fact, involved encounters/engagement to some degree or another—material arising out of or coalescing after travels, interactions with places, people, cross-diasporic conversations, cross-genre collaborations and experiments… It’s been interesting to observe that these projects and processes are not discrete; the boundaries are porous, the elements continue to bleed into one another and won’t stay inside drawn boundaries. This has been an ongoing facet of hybrid (cross-disciplinary) work for me, in so many ways.
If you are still reading, thank you for traveling this far with me, as I continue to unfold and untangle the projects as they reveal themselves…
While 2023 was a year of mostly inward and behind-the-scenes work for me, in December I released a 3-song EP of “Redux (Outtakes)”—recordings I didn’t include on the Redux album released in March 2022 on Antiquated Future Records, an exercise in revisiting old songs (mainly ones written in my Austin, Texas music days) and reimagining/re-voicing them for reasons that felt important for me to do: I recorded and mixed these redux-ed versions at home (with help final-mixing and mastering from Portland sound-wizard Jason Powers). This endeavor of doing as much as I can musically in my own home-spaces has been also a means of trying to get closer to the “tender” heart of things, trying to capture interiority, and is a process I continue to explore. The Redux (Outtakes) EP can be found on my Bandcamp page (also on the usual streaming platforms), and below is a clip from one of the songs, “Wake Up In the Cold.”
I also spent much of my time in 2023 working on collaborative projects that are now readying to share in 2024. More on those below, and hope to see some of you in this new year…
~dao
De-Canon Hybrid-Literary Anthology Project - Forthcoming
Forthcoming in Spring 2024: A Mouth Holds Many Things: A De-Canon Hybrid-Literary Collection, a full-color, print book of hybrid-literary works from 36 women and nonbinary BIPOC writers/artists, will be jointly published by Fonograf Editions and De-Canon. This will be De-Canon’s first foray into publishing; the collection is co-edited by myself (Dao Strom) and Jyothi Natarajan. It features amazing work by established and emerging writers/artists, including Samiya Bashir, Sasha Stiles, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Vi Khi Nao, Gabrielle Civil, Paisley Rekdal, and others.
Pre-orders for the book will become available in early spring 2024 on the Fonograf Editions website. Please follow us for updates on IG at: @decanonproject or @fonografeditions, or sign up for our e-newsletters at our websites.
*a note of gratitude: We are so fortunate to have received a 2023 Creative Heights Grant (from the Oregon Community Foundation) to support this project, as well as a 2021-22 RACC Make Grant. We are also grateful to our community partners, Stelo Arts (our fiscal sponsor) and Fonograf Editions (our publishing partner). Stay tuned for news about the hybrid-literary art exhibit that will follow the book release, to be hosted by Stelo Arts in their downtown Portland art space.
She Who Has No Master(s) - “Gold Futures” + 2024 Activities
Astoundingly—my Vietnamese women arts collective, She Who Has No Master(s), came in 3rd place in the 2023 Gold Futures Challenge, a grant program presented by Asian American Futures and Gold House. We will be receiving a grant award of $75k, to continue developing our collaborative multi-voiced art projects and our mentorship program. We are still stunned by this and immensely grateful to all the community, friends, family, colleagues, and even those who didn’t yet know us, who voted for us in this unique grant challenge.
To come in 2024: applications for the SWHNM Mentorship Program will open mid-year or so; please stay tuned & spread the word. We are also excited to be doing a group residency (with 6 collective members) in April at Mass MOCA.
Also on our website this year we added this page to introduce our current collective members. I am so honored to be in this company and in the grace of these creative friendships. *Special thanks to our friends at Fonograf Editions for acting as our fiscal sponsor as we find our new footing as an independent arts entity/collective. You can follow SWHNM on IG at: @shewhohasnomasters
Other Highlights & Pending Projects
Another collaboration I’m very excited about is with the amazingly talented Portland poet-musician-composer, Alicia Jo Rabins, another kindred spirit exploring a form of “diaspora songs.” We are working on an EP together, blending ambient and country/roots songs, that we’re aiming to release later in 2024. More on this tbd. :-)
I also invited my good friends Julian and Emilia Saporiti (of No-No Boy) to collaborate on a song of mine I’ve been carrying around for a long time, “Mother Lode,” which was inspired by the ‘gold country’ of El Dorado County where I grew up. This will be another single or EP project I’m currently figuring out release plans for, so another tbd on this. :-)
If you want to support local Portland record labels, cassettes and digital downloads of my two albums, Redux and Traveler’s Ode, are available at Antiquated Future Records. I recommend checking out the other wonderful artists and projects on their roster.
And, if you want to support local Portland small presses, Fonograf Editions is doing such exciting things in poetry records and books. I’m honored that Instrument was the first print book in their catalog; and we/De-Canon are so thrilled to be publishing A Mouth Holds Many Things with them in 2024… please check out the rest of their 2023 and 2024 catalogs!
*to note: So many editors/organizers, not to mention authors, musicians, and artists, work for little to no pay in the small press and independent music worlds. I strongly encourage supporting art and artists on the local level, because so much vital culture would not exist without these labors of love.
Also in 2022-23, on behalf of De-Canon, I was invited to curate a collaborative poetry installation (poetry stones!) for a public art project, “(Re)Configurations,” by local artist Adam Kuby. Six poets—Anis Mojgani, Samiya Bashir, Sam Roxas-Chua, Stephanie Adams-Santos, Trevino Brings Plenty, and myself—mingled our voices together to form a multi-voice poem that has been engraved onto boulders that will line a new path in Mount Tabor Park. This has been a one-of-a-kind collaborative experience, and we can’t wait to walk this path with others in person. It is supposed to open to the public sometime this spring (hopefully in March).
Reading Highlights
Just a few books I read in 2023 that I think must be mentioned (and too many others to name here)…
Ordinary Notes, Christina Sharpe
To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness, Robin Coste Lewis
From From, Monica Youn
Suicide: The Autoimmune Disorder of the Psyche, Vi Khi Nao
Things You May Find Hidden in my Ear, Mosab Abu Toha
Ephemera…
~~thank you for reading~~