The Awetist: Recent Episodes
Adam Lodestone
The Awe-tist is a show without a theme and which doesn't fit neatly into any genre... but you will likely be following us down the rabbit holes that are our special interests: everything from Autism to Xenophobia, Culinary Passions to Yurts, Quantum Theory to Queer Culture, Foraging to Unsolved Mysteries/Cold Cases, from Climate Crises to Rumi... Join us on our explorations! Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/adam-lodestone/support
During the height of the first year of the Pandemic, my circle of creative friends experienced cabin fever, loneliness, and a deep hunger for collaboration. This musical soundscape was inspired by my friend, Jarish, and the stories he shared with us of his visits to Kerala and Karnataka, the year previous. Jarish is a masterful sound artist!! Everywhere he goes, he is recording the ambient sounds, documenting the livingness of spaces, of environments. He has inspired me to take up this same practice. We both love incorporating those audible signatures into music. It is our way of inviting others into our way of sensing, experiencing, and being.
Jarish offered up his samples and together, with our friends, we manifested "Anticipated Monsoon".
Temple songs and chants, rainfall, marketplace carts, people talking, monkeys, bells and gongs... the flavors of India saturating our senses.
Credits:
Jarish Majarhalal ~ original composition, live recorded ambient sound samples (2018/2019), tabla
Adam Auron Lodestone ~ original composition, supplemental percussion
Brida Burdose ~ Flute
Gregory Nunes ~ Strings, Harmonium, Piano, Akai Prophet
Copyright: The Awetist, Adam Auron Lodestone, 2022
--- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/adam-lodestone/support
Join us for a few moments, on a rainy summer night in Vermont. Sit and breathe in the cool, effervescent air of a soft breeze. Marvel at the changing colors and contrast of the sky. Delight in the sound of playful birds taking shelter in the bushes and trees just outside the window. Cozy up in the energy of sharing heart-space and tender considerations with a loved one.
Original musical composition, spoken word, and ambient sounds (captured audio samples of a conversation we had, the rain outside, and birdsong), copyright 2021, Adam Auron Lodestone and Ben Hodges/"The Awetist" podcast.
I highly recommend listening with headphones or earbuds, in order to take in all of the nuances.
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"Komorebi" is the Japanese word for sunlight as it passes through leaves. I wanted to create a piece of music that captured what watching sunlight is like, for me. I sometimes spend many long minutes (or hours) sky-gazing or watching sunlight move across a room. The suppleness of leaves saturated with light fascinates me. This elemental interplay is one of life's joys and I hope that this music delivers to you some small measure of that specific joy.
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Ben Hodges is one of the occasional hosts of The Awetist. Adam has invited Ben to introduce himself and to share some of his own life stories.
First, Ben speaks a little bit about... speaking... and about growing up as an Autistic child with aphasia, being medicated, and stumbling into some bad habits in his young adulthood. He talks openly and candidly about recovery, spirituality, mindfulness, and coming to some measure of equanimity. Reconciling internalized ableism is a process that Ben describes with articulate grace.
Next, he shares with us a wonderful tribute to his grandparents, who were (and are) the primary influences in his life. His love for and admiration of them are abundantly clear as he begins to tell us their origin story: two children of immigrants who came of age, in NYC, during the tail end of the Depression and the beginning of WW2. Ben sweeps us into the young lives of Olena and Charlie and I (Adam) cannot wait for the next installment so as to witness more of this beautiful love story.
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*technical note: at [34:06] the recording becomes garbled. what is said in that segment is: "... if it weren't for the fact that he took that position. He had to travel to schools, universities, book stores, book fairs, and conventions to deliver texts that had been printed and bound in his factory. The people that he met opened doors for him that he never would have known to approach before."
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An original composition with ambient sound captured in and around Burlington, Vermont ~ August 2019.
Concept, composition, arrangement, live audio capture recording, editing, sampling, and percussion by Adam Auron Lodestone.
"Clarion Carnival Trumpet" royalty-free sample courtesy of Soundtrap.
"Whimsical Sun II" watercolor by Cee Cee Dubois, 2018.
Donated bassline performed and recorded by Juno Wald in her home studio during COVID-19 Quarantine, May 2020.
Male foreign-language musical vocal capture: Haromi Burunsal on Church Street Marketplace (with permission granted for use in this recording).
Copyright, Adam Auron Lodestone for The Awetist podcast, 2021.
Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/adam-lodestone/support
BAM = "Ben and Adam"!! That is our 'ship name, apparently and, in preparation for Ben joining me as occasional co-host for The Awetist, we decided to share a snippet of a recent conversation in the hopes that your appetite for our future considerations will be whetted. We talk to and about one another... please do forgive us our foray into the mutual admiration society that we have going on... and we also discuss art, nature, ephemeral art in nature, poetry and word-craft, the profound power of surrender, and the idea of "legacy".
A few notes about the audio:
At 17:31, Ben's speaking becomes garbled. The part that got dropped off is him saying "simultaneous presence and withdrawal."
At 29:27, Ben's speaking becomes garbled again. He said: "... how vulnerable I was, out in the landscape."
TO BE CONTINUED: In Part 2, we shall be discussing world-crafting and the art of spiritual cartography of future landscapes, ancestry and the weight of personal lineages, ancestral memory, Mitochondrial DNA, and we will meander back to art (and its role/function in human evolution). There won't be nearly as much talking about each other.
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Incorporating sounds from my small city: traffic, dogs barking, crowds in the marketplace, people gathered in a cafe... with my own musical composition, I am seeking to take you on a journey. I am inviting you to wander, with all of your senses alert, as the sounds and rhythms move along in a kind of walkabout.
Welcome to my synesthetic world! I highly recommend that one listen with headphones or earbuds, as that will provide the very best immersive experience.
Enjoy the travels...
Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/adam-lodestone/support
Natural, ambient sounds ~ recorded as I walked along the Burlington shoreline and in the woods of Oakledge, along with a few snippets of my arriving ar a friend's house, which has a wonderful and squeaky screen door ~ mixed with piano and sampled instruments. Opening with the sound of ice forming.... my walk captured the sound of wind, bells from a town church, winter songbirds, a crow, my footfalls on the ground and on snow, the jingle of the keys to my friend's home, the incoming text alarm on my phone, meditiation bells that belong to my friend, and more.
"Meander" is an experiment in not only capturing ambient sounds, but in celebrating them. A composition such as this, with music layered around the captured sounds, is as close as I can come to conveying my own synesthetic experience of the walk: mood, inward psychological response, harmonious or cacaphonous sensory emergence...
I hope that you, as the listener, find this mini creative project to be interesting.
Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/adam-lodestone/support
Yes, it is rather late in the game, the film having been out for almost two years, but I just watched the film for the first time last night. I was inspired by the release of Andre Aciman's sequel novel, "Find Me", which just came out this past week.
I discuss the fresh effervescence of the film, free as it is from so many tired and harmful tropes. In this review, I also explore the value of understatement and all that is not said.
"A non-tragic love story is a rare creature in the world of LGBTQ+ storytelling. Hollywood loves "gay tragedy porn". "Call Me By Your Name" is so far from that... the film breathes a bittersweetness, yes, but this is no catastrophic tale of heartshattering doom. The bitter, set against the sweet, is due to the necessity of parting and the loss of the beloved but the rest of this film is saturated in lush longing, held captive in anxious hope, released by mutual desire, satisfied and content in the realization of love..."
We are longing for what it is we do not know we are missing...
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My live delivery of an original poem at the Queerspace Spoken Word Sharing Night at a local "LGBTQIA+ Pop-Up! Event", October 18, 2019.
This poem is about the friend that I first came out to as Transgender before I even had a language, really, for it. I spoke too, that night and that weekend, about my sexual identity and being Autistic, about being a mystical creature ~ about feeling outcast, unwanted, unseen, a freak, and un-love-able. I was 15. They were 17. We were kin, clearly, but I was terrified to speak at all of any of the vulnerable truths of my beingness. I was also bursting at the seams with need to be SEEN by someone, Anyone. They honored me and made me feel safe. That conversation... hours and hours long... days long, really... has lingered with me, my entire life and rare is the Autumn season that passes that I don't remember those extended moments and the confidential friend of my youth with deep, abiding affection and with infinite gratitude. They were an anchor for me and quite literally saved my life.
Perhaps that gift ~ given to me ~ is one of the reasons why I am drawn to offer that same space to others...
Ambient sound from the space and some reverb from the mic/sound system.
Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/adam-lodestone/support
The Awe-tist is a show without a theme and which doesn't fit neatly into any genre... but you will likely be following us down the rabbit holes that are our special interests: everything from Autism to Xenophobia, Culinary Passions to Yurts, Quantum Theory to Queer Culture, Foraging to Unsolved Mysteries/Cold Cases, from Climate Crises to Rumi...
Welcome to our introductory episode!
Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/adam-lodestone/support