Dear friends,
I am excited to announce that the EP-tizer for my album in progress, Desert Brigids, dropped on October 31st. As I am nearing the end of a long creative journey, I feel a bone-deep exhaustion setting in. But the resounding message from the dear friends and family who have listened to it is this: “keep going.” Thank you to all who have spent time with it, and thank you to all who have revitalized me with your kindness and encouragement. We are keeping on! And if you, too, have an important endeavor at any stage of development, let this be a sign not to give up.
If you haven’t heard it yet, Desert Brigids is available on most streaming platforms. Here is the youtube link.
To provide more lyrical context and celebrate its release, I will be publishing a zine slated to drop on November 10th.
An excerpt from the zine:
Who is Brigid?
Brigid (also called Brigantia, Brid, Bríg, Bride, Briginda, Brigdu, and Brigit) is a goddess of the pre-Christian Celtic nations. As with any deity, her lore is layered and complex, but she is broadly considered a patron of poets, healers, women, smiths, fire, and livestock.
She is also the namesake of canonized Catholic saint, Brigid of Kildare. Born in the mid-5th century, this Brigid is known for her position as a powerful abbess in Kildare, Ireland. Saints—especially those beloved by indigenous nations under Catholic purview—often serve as palimpsests: the old mythologies remain subtly visible under the white gauze of Christian worship. So it is with the saint Brigid, who is similarly known as a patron of poets, healers, women, smiths, and livestock.
What is a Desert Brigid?
Often, the main characters in my work find themselves teetering between extremes: belonging and isolation, docility and ferocity, the magical and the mundane, and self-acceptance and self-denial. Because of Saint Brigid’s legacy as a bridge between pagan Ireland and Christian Ireland, I see her as a keeper of opposites. As such, the characters experiencing opposites in their own stories serve as analogs to the saint/goddess.
The project of this EP and of the forthcoming album is to re-plant my family’s European ancestral mythologies in the Utah landscape of my birth. I am interested in disrupting narratives of white settler nativism--or the purposeful obfuscation of settler violence via claims to symbolic or literal Indigenous heritage--while holding the reality of my family’s irrevocable tie of kinship and responsibility to this place. This threshold of here-ness and other-ness strikes me as particularly Brigidine.
I also look to the women who served as guides for my artistic process: Christine Christensen, who inspired the song “Orderville,” Mary Susannah Fowler, who inspired “October’s Daughter,” and the mentors and musical influences who guided me through my transition out of Mormonism. These, too, are Brigids.
Until the 11th, I will be offering the zine for free to any newsletter subscribers who request it. After that, I will be selling copies for $5. If you want a printable pdf of the zine, please email me at camillamqw@gmail.com or message me on Substack!
Performances!
In other news, I will be playing a set at the Museum and Gallery of Misfit Art in Provo, UT, on Friday, November 15th from 8-9PM. The event is free to the public, and I will be selling copies of the Desert Brigids zine. Please come through if you can! For Utah Valley / Salt Lake City locals who have not yet checked out Misfit Art Gallery, I recommend it in general. The owner and painter of most displayed works, Sage, is an absolute delight, and the paintings are gorgeous. The address is 211 500 N, Provo.
Wishing everyone warmth during this election season,
Camilla