PORTAL LAND, OR





songwrights apothecary lab (two)

wade ︎︎︎


For this iteration of the lab, Corey and I started by asking each other: what do you need a song for?

We discovered through conversation and song-sketch sharing, that we both wished for a song to enhance our ability to communicate what is most difficult to say between intimate loved ones.

This became the over-arching theme of the Portal Land Songwrights Apothecary Lab - or as our art-director and collaborator Rob Lewis poignantly coined this batch of formwelas : the practice of saying.



Formwela 4
feat. Corey King

the articulation of needs streaming oxygenation through your ancestral vessel/vein of infinite life

For tuning oneself to expect and receive attunement when speaking intimately to the heart’s un-articulated needs. Use to remind oneself that loving and self-giving are not individual undertakings; that even in the most intimate circumstances, ancestors and earth’s support forces are in attendance, for the honoring of their beauty via the truth of how you really are, and what you really need.

+
credits

Formwela 5
feat. Corey King

filial veneration penetrating the massive heart nerve deep within the hard-shelled mind-body of a male sibling’s protective, enduring, and searingly luminous survival style

For transmitting to your older brother, -who has survived by means you don’t understand- the register of your love, and recognition of the profound gift he is to the world you both bore into.

+
credits

Formwela 6
feat. Corey King

the scrambling vulnerability after overly-cryptic confessions of heart-scarring, slackens into synch with another’s tender relational orbit

For steadying the vast-spinning “potential hurt” analysis triggered by the bliss of new romance. Invites the memories of past burns to passively collaborate in the charting of orbital alignments more conducive to channeling the flow of self through intimacy.

+
credits

apothecary shop:

(SPRING 2021)

IN COLLABORATION WITH: 
ROB LEWIS

three ears


for

‘the practice of saying’

Each formwela created in the Songwrights Apothecary Lab is sold along with a functional object, collaboratively designed to embody the intended salutary effect and use(s) of each formwela.

(see details below)

My ultimate goal is to stop producing plastic CDs and Vinyls, and be able to fund the S.A.L. through sales of the objects and digital downloads.     
    like everything else in this lab, the process of making this work sustainable - ecologically and economically- is iterative. Thank you for supporting this cycle of the journey...


Formwela 4

for when an un-revealed current at the river bottom of your being needs to rise up and be made lovingly legible.


$25

to use: 

cup ear in hands. practice saying what you need

  - or -

iron onto a sweater cuff, living room curtain seam, pillowcase, or any location you can readily reach with your saying apparatus.  practice saying what you need.

while you practice saying into this ear, imagine you are speaking ease-fully at the lobe of a tenderly lapping sea, blue and glittering in its consummate receptivity.

Includes one blue ear (iron-on patch), one handmade letterpress info-card, and a digital download of Formwela 4 (feat. Corey King).



Formwela 5

for when a beloved male kin repeatedly exhibits a sub-capacitated ability to receive and/or believe your articulations of true love, recognition, and admiration.


$25

while you practice saying into this ear, envision your words radiating x-ray like to the un-armored heart of your brother (or brother-like kin) freely basking and splashing in the quenching shine of unconditional love.

to use:

cup ear in hands. practice speaking benevolence to your brother (or brother-like kin).

  - or -

iron onto a sweater cuff, living-room curtain seam, pillowcase, or any location you can readily reach with your saying apparatus. practice speaking benevolence to your brother (or brother-like kin).

Includes one yellow ear (iron-on patch), one handmade letterpress info-card, and a digital download of Formwela 5 (feat. Corey King).



Formwela 6

for cooling and remembering the possibility of balance when the magma of love churns in ways reminiscent of past eros-eruptions that completely threw the surface and core of your sanity-planet out of whack and careened its goldi-locks orbit onto a crash course of total annihilation with the tirelessly burning star of desire at the center of love’s known universe.


$25

while you practice saying into this ear, envision your words as vast, cool space surrounding and gentling hot currents of emergent eros, into flow-patterns smoothly aligned with your wellbeing and service to life.

to use:

cup ear in hands. practice speaking sea and space to the love-lava burbling up your enrapturement with (_______) …notice how new, yet solid earth may slowly form.

  - or -

iron onto a sweater cuff, living-room curtain seam, pillowcase, or any location you can readily reach with your saying apparatus.   practice speaking sea and space to the love-lava burbling up your enrapturement with (_______) …notice how new, yet solid earth may slowly form.

Includes one red ear (iron-on patch), one handmade letterpress info-card, and a digital download of Formwela 6 (feat. Corey King).