Time is a Mother, Baby

Bolinas daze

Reasons for Staying

October leaves coming down, as if called.

Morning fog through the wildly beyond the train tracks.

A cigarette. A good sweater. On the sagging porch. While the family sleeps.

That I woke at all & the hawk up there though nothing of its wings.

That I snuck onto the page while the guards were shitfaced on codeine.

That I read my books by the light of riotfire.

That my best words came farthest from myself & it’s awesome.

—Ocean Vuong, from Time is a Mother, 2022

A few months ago I bought a copy of Ocean Vuong’s book Time is a Mother at a bookstore in downtown San Rafael. I was on my way out to the town of Bolinas, north of Stinson Beach, CA, during a short break on a somewhat grueling tour, where I had been offered a room to stay in at a farm where I could decompress and write songs until I had to get back on the road. I haven’t read anything else by Vuong, but I was really affected by his poetry. I feel like something about it crept into me; I resonated with his devastation and yearning. It’s really beautiful and deeply emotional and straight-shooting writing, sort of the only kind that matters to me.

It was nice to be a stranger in Bolinas, writing songs in a room filled with light and paintings, driving into town to use the tiny laundromat, eating from the Bolinas People’s Store, wandering the aisles of Bolinas Hardware and among the overgrown, salt-bleached graves of the Bolinas Cemetery. One night, there was a party downtown where one of the restaurants was giving away free supper to all, and there was a long line of Bolinas folks, all of whom seemed glad to be there holding sagging paper plates of food, dancing to the music of local bluegrass and mariachi bands in the creeping purple dusk.

[At Gospel Flat Farm]

[Bolinas Cemetary]

[Bolinas song habitat]

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I wrote a lot of songs this year. A few weeks ago, I gathered with my friends Josh Kaufman, Cameron Ralston, J.T. Bates and Chris Boerner near Woodstock, NY, to record a bunch of them—the strongest of them, I think, including some from Bolinas— for a new Hiss Golden Messenger record. I always say that whatever Hiss record I’m working on is the best one I’ve made, and it’s always true. But I really, really feel that way about the record we’re working on now in a way that feels deeper. Like maybe the emotional stakes of the universe have changed, and I’m trying to respond in kind. It feels like what I want to be doing, answering devastation and chaos with something to push back, to change darkness into some kind of light. I’m not saying that everything is going to be OK because I’m not sure it will be and I’m not trying to peddle false hope, but I am saying that poetry feels more valuable, not less, in crisis. So we keep moving onwards. Anyway, buy that Ocean Vuong book, it does everything I’m talking about here.

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A few quick orders of Hiss business. First of all, Hiss Golden Messenger is playing a full-band show at the Rialto in Raleigh this Saturday, May 3rd. This event is a fundraiser for Me Fine, an organization that provides financial and emotional support to families with children experiencing a medical crisis, and is open to all comers. I’m not totally certain, because things can always change, but as of now, this is the only hometown full-band Hiss show on the books for 2025. Please come join us. You can get your tickets HERE.

Secondly, a few weeks ago we announced the limited-edition vinyl version of Sanctuary Songs, a live album recorded in 2023 that we originally released as a fundraiser shortly after Hurricane Helene devastated the western part of North Carolina in September of 2024. We’ve partnered with the good and generous folks at Citizen Vinyl in Asheville, NC to release Sanctuary Songs as a double LP, each hand-numbered. Only 500 copies will be made, and all proceeds from the sale of these records will benefit Lamplight AVL, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that supports artists by providing space, time, and resources for the creation of innovative art that they share with the community. These LPs are going fast, so if you’d like your own copy, you can order one HERE.

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That’s all for now, folks. More to come soon.

Michael Crow Taylor

Durham, NC

29 Apr 2025