The Weekly Croissant: Attempting Self Care
Gratitude / Massage / Harmonicas / NYC Photography
Hello Croissants,
George and I have been getting by, recently, with a LOTTA help from our friends. My friend Erin Rae (sublime singer/songwriter), in addition to showing up at the hospital with bagels and coffee on the morning of Odelle’s surgery, gifted George and me massages from local massage hero Grace Wilkins. This is just one of the many kindnesses we’ve received from our community these past months. I could never say enough how grateful we are for the support we’ve had from friends and family.
My self-care practices are typically in the realm of running laps or tearing up flooring and painting walls. I always struggle to calm down enough for more passive “relaxation” activities. I’ve never had a professional massage before, except for the free ones that are sometimes offered at music festivals backstage.
One thing I’m always nervous about is the music involved in spa-adjacent treatments. I find that the instructor is always either blasting terrible top 40 club remixes or, on the other end of the spectrum, some kind of AI-created “meditation” music with gong sounds.
Anyway, I should always trust in my Nashville network, because as I was lying there getting an (already amazing) massage, Grace was playing relaxing, yet interesting instrumental music with a bunch of… harmonica?!?!. And I started thinking, “wow this spa music is actually kind of good.. and then I was like, OK this spa music is really good!” Finally, I asked Grace about the music and she said, “Oh it’s Bill Frisell.” That’s the kind of massage therapist you get in Nashville.
Not being a huge jazz listener, I know of Bill Frisell mainly because of his work on albums by trad-adjacent artists like Sam Amidon and Eli West. But now I am a huge fan of the perfect massage album Americana, which is a collaboration between harmonica player Gregoire Maret, pianist Romain Collin, and Frisell.
The album description reads “Upon meeting each other in New York, the two musicians (Maret and Collins) bonded over a shared love of jazz, song and pure melody. Together they embarked on a project which would explore the musical depths of the American soul. They turned to the uniquely great Bill Frisell to help forge a connection between American songwriting and the high art of instrumental playing. In this musical world, vast soundscapes co-exist with epic stories.”
To me, the idea of “pure melody” comes through in this album via the harmonica, and as somebody who needs a throughline of melody to attach to, it’s probably why I’m more drawn to this project than I am to a lot of jazz.
Speaking of Americana, I loved this article in The New Yorker about Singaporean photographer Nguan, who took a series of photos on the Staten Island ferries over years. In the article Nguan says “It was impossible to improve upon the Coney Island pictures of Diane Arbus or Bruce Davidson, for instance, but Nguan committed himself to shooting and reshooting the beach, the boardwalk, the swimmers, the Ferris wheel. “It’s interesting to be able to measure yourself against all the great photographers,” he said. “I think of the work I make in New York as cover songs.”
I’m such a sucker for inter-medium artistic metaphor.
I hope that you can find some relaxation this week and that you get a much-deserved massage (professional or amateur, even one of those chairs at the nail salon or the airport counts!)
-Rachel