Harp and percussive loops.

Harp & Percussion: Emily Sanzaro
Recording & Production: Jack McLaine
Additional Production: Melissa Vallence
Mixing: Melissa Vallence
Mastering: William Bowden & King Willy Sound
Visual Art: Melanie Kate Photography

AWAKEN

CLEARING STORM

"No, there’s no end to the tales that might be told, the tentacles spreading and sprawling across the seas, deep into them, and onto land as well."

This is the second part of a 'cephalopodcast', made in collaboration with the Spring Bay Squid Festival in Tasmania. It's great if you're listening to it on your way home from the festival. Whatever the case, dive deep into this collection of tales -- history, folklore and fable about cephalopods.

squidfest.com.au/

II: The Museum of Recalcitrant Cephalopods (with Spring Bay Squid Festival)

"'All my life, my way of loving was to say goodbye.' That’s what the poet Marina Tsvetaeva once wrote. Perhaps it’s also true of the world: its way of loving is to present us with phenomena that are always poised to leave us."

I have been watching things come and go in the world around me, and trying to pin down those phenomena in words. Join me as I ponder that which is fleeting in the bush, and in the universe.

In a Train Carriage, Going Nowhere: (37: Flüchtigkeit)

"And when he fell asleep, it was like the moss had him in its embrace. And the sense he got from his dreams was that the ultra-fine rhyzoids of the moss had spread throughout his brain, that he was being held in place by it, and that he too had squeezed into a mysterious shadowy realm where anything could happen."

I have been looking closely at mosses around the train carriage. Who knew that something so small could prompt so many stories?

In A Train Carriage, Going Nowhere (38: Moss I)

'The southern brown bandicoots have been busy, pressing their snouts into the earth in the search for subterranean mushrooms. This time of year must be their favourites: they root around, sniffing out the fruiting fungi and feasting on it. When I see them, I notice their almost feverish motion; the way they twitch and scratch their way through life. No moss will grow on a bandicoot’s back.'

I'm delving deeper into the world of moss, and everything that might be associated with it. Everything from bandicoots to poets seem to be connected with this simple plant.

In A Train Carriage, Going Nowhere (39: Moss II)

"The pathways broadened into promenades, and the irresistible route zigged and zagged through innumerable pedestrians, who made bottlenecks and bridges; I twisted my torso and stretched my lanky legs out to squeeze by them. "

I thought I should account for my travels in Venice. But I have only been there for one afternoon; they are mostly travels through my imagination. 

A collaboration with Emily Sanzaro on harp.

Venice (with Emily Sanzaro)

"Standing on the stump of an old eucalypt, glaring at the yellowy-grey of the forest and the fields, she let out an almighty scream. It echoed through the woods, off towards the new neighbourhoods, running up the avenues and out to the mountains that rose on the horizon."
 
The Youngtown Regional Reserve is a small patch of bush in the outer suburbs of Launceston. These stories are a personal and ecological study of this modest bit of country. There are tales of ghosts, games, love affairs and magpies. As it happens, so many yarns pass through even a simple little place like this.

The soundtrack is produced in collaboration with my good friend, the ever-creative Yyan Ng.

Youngtown Regional Reserve (with Yyan Ng)

"There are other ways to look at it. You might say that as a body gets burnt, as it turns into wisps of smoke, the atoms of which a human is made get separated, wander off into the atmosphere, change form, and become rearranged so that they link up with other operations in the universe."

I'm living in a train carriage on the edge of the bush, on the verge of a bushfire season. Such circumstances elicit a lot of thoughts and stories about the nature of fire.

In A Train Carriage, Going Nowhere (40: Fire)

"There are places you can go only in summer – over the high passes or down the long peninsulas. Up honey-coloured creeks that climb to craggy façades. Across meadows matted with colourful flowers."

Reading a book called 'The Last Summer', I find myself thinking about the way memories fuse with the phenomena of summer.

In a Train Carriage, Going Nowhere (41: The Last Summer)

"The nest of a pink robin is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. Imagine, in the palm of your hand, a hollow bowl built of feathery moss and ice-blue lichen, stitched together with spiderwebs and stuffed with a fern’s light-brown fur."

Recorded as live performance from A Festival Called Panama 2024, this series of stories honours the feathered friends who share the forest with us. 

A special thanks to sound engineer Henry Rippon, as well as everyone involved with Panama for having me.

Birds of the Panama Forest (Live at A Festival Called Panama)

"We must take it upon ourselves a responsibility to improve the health of these habitats: that’s where the hard yakka comes into it. In some ways, the act of picking up rubbish from the beaches of the south-west is the perfect activity for connecting with the spirit of the place...It’s almost meditative."

In autumn, I joined a long-running marine rubbish clean-up project in south-west Tasmania. These are the reflections that came from ten days in that special part of the world: thoughts on ecology, history, ethics and change.

Follow @teamcleantas on Instagram to support the project.

The South West Coast

Emily is a solo contemporary harpist from Tasmania, Australia. Emily builds sonic landscapes with layers of sound made with harp and voice in a plethora of different ways. Think hitting drum mallets on strings, bowing, percussive taps, singing into the harp, dreamy reverb and distortion along with plucking the usual way. Soundscapes that take you anywhere.

CLEARING STORM

Emily Sanzaro

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