Home Alone Guide
Link to Max Siedentopf’s very funny Insta post with many more ideas for survival. Check it out, he has lots of funny posts.
Empty Streets
Today’s Bread

In November of 2011 I purchased the book Tartine Bread, by Chad Robertson, and a few weeks later I began to make bread. I estimate that I have made more than 1,000 loaves since then.
There are many books on baking bread at home. Pick one of them and make your own bread. It is incredibly satisfying to see the dough evolve over several hours and, as if through alchemy, become a lovely loaf. It’s calming, too. :-)
You can also use the sourdough starter to make banana bread or muffins. I have been obsessed with making thin flatbread to eat hummus with and made this using only starter, water, salt, and cumin seed.
Speaking about hummus… to my taste homemade hummus is so much better than store-bought and I make a batch once a week starting with dried chickpeas. But back to bread… while we are stuck at home, why not begin a bread making practice and start an American bread revolution. :-)
Face Masks
I bought a pack of these today.
Our 3-Pack face mask is made of 100% cotton and features an adjustable nose that you can form to the contours of your face. 2 straps to be worn around the head and neck that can be tied and tightened to preferred fit. Mask is made of a thick French Terry fabric constructed of 3 yarns, weighing no less than 12 ounces per sq yard (400 GSM). Fabric is laundered prior to construction.
* All consumer purchases of the FACEMASK help fund our ability to donate masks to other essential services while providing living wages and supporting vertically integrated US manufacturing.
New Music Friday
It’s Friday and I want to post another work in progress. Today I will share a song that has been reincarnated several times. The first version was called This Spring Release 10,000 Butterflies and was an improvisation I recorded for the album One Guitar. This piece of music was inspired by a story I read years ago, and re-read many times, a story that can be found in Burton Watson’s translation of The Complete Works of Zhuangzi.
Zhuang Zhou, literally Master Zhuang, previously also rendered as Chuang Tzu, was a very important and influential Chinese philosopher who lived around the 4th century BCE. He is credited with writing the Zhuangzi, one of the foundational texts of Taoism. If you read Laozi (Lao Tzu) and Zhuang Zhou (Chuang Tzu) you get a pretty good introduction to Taoism.
From the Wikipedia entry on the book:
The most famous of all Zhuangzi stories—”Zhuang Zhou Dreams of Being a Butterfly”—appears at the end of the second chapter, “On the Equality of Things”.
Once, Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering about, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know that he was Zhuang Zhou.
Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuang Zhou. But he didn’t know if he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming that he was Zhuang Zhou. Between Zhuang Zhou and the butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.
— Zhuangzi, chapter 2 (Watson translation)
The well-known image of Zhuangzi wondering if he was a man who dreamed of being a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming of being a man is so striking that whole dramas have been written on its theme. In it Zhuangzi “[plays] with the theme of transformation”, illustrating that “the distinction between waking and dreaming is another false dichotomy. If [one] distinguishes them, how can [one] tell if [one] is now dreaming or awake?”
The second incarnation of the piece was a remix Jon Gagan made, called 10,000 Butterflies Redux. This version was never released on an album and was only available from our now defunct ListeningLounge. Here is what I wrote in 2008:
Jon’s re-working of “This Spring Release 10,000 Butterflies” is available in the LL now. I am using the term re-working instead of remix, because it’s really an entirely new recording based on the chord sequence of the original. I played new Flamenco and electric guitar parts and Jon played everything else. It’s a lovely long track – almost 10 minutes – which I have been listening to often since Jon sent it to me last week. You will find “10,000 Butterflies Redux” here. Perfect for sunsets or candlelight or daydreaming. Listen, repeat…
The third incarnation was a version I created for the album slow, released in 2016.
After performing a new version of this piece with the trio for the last three years, I decided that I really wanted to create a fourth version. Butterfly Dream 2020 is a working title and subject to change. At this point only Jon and I have laid down parts for this piece. The music will substantially change once Robby will add percussion, and perhaps his brother Char will add accordion.
There is a fifth incarnation, a solo recording of the piece for a video I made around 2008, using images I had created.
Here are links to four mp3 files and one video file you can download:
– This Spring Release 10,000 Butterflies from the album One Guitar
– 10,000 Butterflies Redux – Jon’s version
– Butterfly Dream – from the album slow
– Butterfly Dream 2020 – work in progress
– This Spring Release 10,000 Butterflies – video with live recording in my studio plus photos and moving images
Please note: these links will only be active today and through this weekend.
