14 Dec. 2021

Reporting live from the West Village in New York City, where I’m currently undergoing Day 1 of 10 of the state-mandated quarantine after receiving multiple positive tests results for COVID-19.  Let’s run it back to see how we got to this precarious situation shall we? We shall. Just heard a loose saxophone playing outside betwixt renditions of Christmas carols. Love it here.. I’ll miss the closed skies and pretty breads. 

So last time we spoke, I was bumbling around Los Angeles. I was tan, blonde, living in a city that I’ve loved since I can remember, and finally able to fully embrace my love for the city without being drowned in college schoolwork. and loneliness.  Every part of my life felt like summer for this short tidbit! Nostalgia can be divisively malicious sometimes, manufacturing an innocence and earnestness of a foggy yesterday.  But damn dude.. that time of my life really did seem simpler! haha. 

I lived in the guesthouse of my friends and collaborators Gina & Stray. Some mornings Stray & I would go walk Stevie and Tzatziki atop the hills of Griffith Park, overlooking the groggy bricolage of the LA cityscape.  Stray & I would talk about music & Australia.  “For two years straight I just did not fuck with the human voice” is a direct quote from him. Other mornings I would drive solo to Wildwood Canyon in Burbank and manically scale an entire mountain.  A few mornings were spent entirely in bed because of late-night FaceTimes with a special friend who was across the country. Oops! Aww just cute. 

The buzz from new Reservation Dogs episodes premiering each week was palpable! As artists I think we have to be wary of sensory overload.  The acclaim of being part of a wild successful show has been so fun.. I just have to reorient myself from time to time.  Maintain myself near the essence of why I’ve been making music for years: the fun of it, and how the creative release keeps my life going forward towards 1000 futures. To this day, a tasty chord progression or bass line still lights my life up more than anything. That’s how it’s gotta stay, right? 

I also shot a music video for my song “Down2earth.”  The video went well and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves on set, which honestly is my whole thing — I want folks to leave knowing that a part of them made this entire project possible. The video itself came out very close to what I imagined! My one regret is not getting a colorist (sorry Eve, you were right !!) because I did a bad job on it myself. But that’s a lesson you gotta learn only upon experiencing it! The fun thing about that video is that my hair is going nuts in it. Red, blonde, blue. No matter the shoddy color job on the video, at least the color job on my hair came through. Barely any views on it.. but what are ya gonna do.

All of that hoopla & west coast sun soaking came to an end upon leaving LA & heading back to South Dakota. Why did I leave? Well I guess because I couldn’t stay. Part of me needed to be back home to handle some family matters & to practice some reorienting that we talked about earlier. But exciting times were ahead. I bought a new car (new to me! hehe), quit smoking cigarettes (I was never really down bad with them, but I had given myself a year of debauchery after losing my dad. On Sept. 1st the year had come to a close, as did big tobacco’s deafening grip on my lung’s precious inner lining. Those pesky vapes still appear at some functions I attend, but I can usually refrain). My special friend Kinsale came to visit on my mom’s bday ! That was fun. We also went to the rez, visited my family, watched eagles mate atop a butte named Eagles Nest Butte. Sometimes life just alley-oops moment of grandeur.

Going back to South Dakota is always a nice reset before setting sail towards the choppy waters of the post-graduate, unemployed-artist, avoiding-therapy escapades. Ironically this began in Phoenix, where there really isn’t a chop of water anywhere. I flew there for a few shows and stayed with my friend Turquoise & Courtney, the latter of which completely surprised me! Had no clue she was gonna be there awww it was so sweet. I then rented a car?? My own temporary trusty steed?? to drive to Southern Utah with Kinsale to her rez for her sister’s wedding?? That was a blast and a half. Hanging with her family, crying all of the tears of joy in the hogan during the ceremony, eating all of the food, getting teased by the aunties, watching movies. Lovely times indeed. 

We then returned to PHX & flew to LA for a few days for reasons that I kind of forgot haha. I think just to go in all honesty. Quite the mobile two-person troupe she & I.  I had some business to tend to, as did Kinsale. It was nice though. We went to Malibu where we took some of my fav pics of us. Kinsale got us tickets to Erykah Badu @ the Hollywood Bowl for my bday that was soon approaching. Isn’t she sweet???

Amidst the travel & adventure of a fairytale that my life can oftentimes write, my older cousin passed away from complications with her liver. She was the cousin I had mentioned in the last diary entry, whom i visited in the hospital back in July. Yeah.. I don’t want to talk about it too much. But we had good conversations the last time we spoke. She said she was proud of me, and I said I loved her & was hoping she’d recover well. I left LA back to South Dakota to attend her funeral. I missed the wake but made the burial. Some family said I was too “Hollywood” to dig the grave.. so I never let my shovel go! With heavy hearts, my mom & her son took the trip back home & soon celebrated her son’s my 24th trip around the sun. 

So now, my best beloved, we arrive closer to where we first met: infected in New York City. I decided back in early October that, since I had reached a tipping point in my workload, I would take some time to travel to a new place. This new place was a place that i had been, but hadn’t known personally & still don’t completely. Do you ever know something completely? Not me waxing poetics to myself in my own public diary!! 

So yeah I moved to nyc! To be closer to my gf, my east coast family, and.. yeah.. to still work — lest I portray this adventure overly fantastical. In early November I moved into my airbnb on the upper westside. Not even three days later the neighbor knocked on my door & said I was being too loud. Yikes. It’s okay Rita, I moved out today. No longer will my retched bass lines rupture the equanimity of your evenings.  

Overall NYC was quite alluring & I did have a really nice time. Met some old friends, made some new friends. Danced! In retrospect, with my dry throat & zero sense of smell, I do wish that I did more with my time here. Go to more museums & shows, try more food, stress less about my future. But I did what I could with the mental capacity that I had. I learned much more about myself than I did the new place, which I think ended up being a good thing, and holds the potential to positively change my whole life — starting therapy next week :)

But yeah.. literally on the day I was moving out of my airbnb, I had decided that my common cold symptoms were worth further examination. Seeing the test results, the poignant twinge of electric shock that the little letters on the electronic mail application displayed to my drooping eyes. Ugh.

“At least it wasn’t a positive STD test!” assured my sister on the phone while I ugly cried, manically packing all of my things to leave my apartment before the cleaning person arrived. 

If any of this came across as less coherent than usual, it’s because I’m infected with a ravenous disease that has disturbed everyone’s life so much these past couple of years, and will likely continue to do so: untreated mental health issues. 

Okay I’m sorry I’m wilding out on this diary post haha, all dramatic. No but I am feeling this COVID right now, and praying that it doesn’t intensify. If TUNKASILA WILLING, IYOTA WAKAN NA TAKU WAKAN NA TAKU SKAN SKAN WILLING, I get sicker & become incapacitated to any extent, at least I have this half-cracked, overwritten, under-edited, cloying diatribe to memorialize me! 

Sending my love to you & yours. I’ll report back with more findings about myself when it’s most convenient for you.

RIP Larry, RIP Yolanda, RIP Toggy, RIP Donnie.. to all my family we’ve lost this year. Grief swallows us whole.  Together and whole.