This week we are listening to plants and synthesizers. And we are calling back our power. One self-prescription for this season is to luxuriate in fruit. Let yourself be seduced by colour, generous sweetness, and the way fruit makes itself desirable and delicious so that animals will seek it out and spread its seeds. Ease your beloved bones on a velvet chaise lounge (or similar) and feed yourself grapes, berries, persimmons... dare to eat a peach! Know that you are tending to your wisest future crone self, and thereby to a profound source of no-fucks given power in the universe. Music from Mort Garson suggests that every cell has a soul. Can synthesizers connect us to our cellular spirituality? Do each of our senses have a seed where love has been planted? Can we see our world, our bodies, our gardens as a Cathedral of Pleasure? We think so! https://www.missingwitches.com/rx-sing-the-body-electric/
https://www.missingwitches.com/rx-sing-the-body-electric/
Risa: May's teacher was like, May's been really tired lately, which of course sent us both on a spiral of, what are we doing wrong?
Of course. But also like the larger answer is like, who isn't?
Of course she's tired. They fucked with time last week. And also we've been partying. And Mae loves to party, and then she's tired. She parties on the weekend, and she's tired at school.
Amy: This feels like part of the prescription. Are we rolling? Let's do it.
Risa: Someday we'll share the video for these Rx's. We know we should. We know there's so many more things we should be doing. We're just two tired people.
Amy: Yes, we're just two people and we're just too tired.
Risa: Um, but uh, when we do share the video, I look forward to you seeing our silent, it kind of looks like a scream face right before we're about to start, but it's like waiting in anticipation with a joyful silent scream for one of us to say...Something. Hi, witches. Welcome. Like, it's our transition. Yeah.
Amy: Yes. It's very cartoonish.
Yeah. Scream face. Joyful scream. Yeah. Yeah.
Amy: It's definitely a smile. It's not like a terror scream. It's
exciting,
Amy: yeah, it's the best sound that I can come up with to describe, to describe the face we make is,
ayyyy!
Welcome witches. Hi, Amy.
Amy: Hi, Risa. Hi, Coven.
Risa: How's everybody holding up? I'm gonna tell you some of the things I'm doing to hold up. Leaves do. We took last week off the prescription, that's one of the things we're doing. It's like, sometimes it's okay to just lie down. Um, Mark and I are both in therapy.
Risa: Therapy's amazing. It's a slow build. He's very, like, maybe this is gendered, maybe not, but he's very much of the type that's like, I don't know if this is going to work for me, but I'll do it because we said we would do it. I'm very good at talking about my feelings, I don't know, but if you, as someone watching someone else go through therapy over weeks, you do see things slowly kind of settling in, like, like sediment or something, or like seeds sort of slowly taking root.
Risa: And that's a real pleasure for both of us. And one of them for him recently was like, he really keeps the list. In his head of everything that needs to happen all the time. It's a constant list. And, uh, and she told him, the list never goes away. So you need to rest, even though the list is still there. You will never reach the end of the list because the list regenerates like you.
Risa: Yes. You have to shovel again. The snow falls again.
Amy: Yeah. A friend, I, I think of this all the time when I feel overwhelmed is that a friend of mine, her folks like live in a farm that her. stepdad inherited from generations. And he said to me one time, you know, Amy, this farm has been in my family for 250 years and we haven't run out of things to do yet.
Amy: Right? Yeah.
That is real. And you know, he was talking about how he struggles to do things like read or carve spoons or like things that he likes that rest his brain because he just falls asleep. And she was like, maybe you just need to sleep then.
Like maybe your rest time can't be productive yet. Maybe it's just rest time for now, you know. That's been something for me, and this is part of my, my Hydra headed prediction of how I'm like, Prediction? Mmm, prescription. Of how I'm surviving right now. One of them has been, uh, meditation app. Making myself lie down, and, I find it incredibly hard to be like, I'm just going to lie down for 20 minutes and take a nap, like my grind culture, hustle culture brain, or I'm just like waiting for someone to tell me I'm not allowed.
I don't know. I don't know what happens. But. If I have, like, an app that's gonna talk at me about how I should love myself for 13. 5 minutes, somehow I feel like that's okay. Like, I can be like, Mommy needs to meditate.
Amy: Right, because it's still, like, something on your list that you are accomplishing, right?
Risa: Right, right. It's so interesting, there's all of this, uh, there's all this cultural stuff around, like, how we, uh, the self optimization sort of stuff that's so much a part of like tech culture, Silicon Valley culture. Stuff came out about that guy from Hooberman Labs this week, I guess his wife filed a bunch of things against him for being like wildly controlling.
Risa: And it's like, I don't know if that's true, but I wouldn't. Be fucking surprised that someone who tries to control every aspect of what they consume and how they move and how they breathe to be the most optimized possible is maybe a controlling spouse. Like, that doesn't seem like a big stretch. And yes, and I'm still interested in so many of these things.
Risa: So my sister sent me. Another one of these guys, he's sort of an ultra marathoner. The podcast is like, probably not my thing, uh, it's called Ritual, but he has on the podcast in this one episode, this neurologist. Who is named Lisa Mosconi. I don't know if you've run into her in your research about menopause at all But she's kind of the leading researcher on menopause and brain chemistry.
Risa: And so I'll include the link to this conversation with her in the show notes and in the Rx this week. But there's so many beautiful things in her. First of all, she's like an angry feminist, which, you know, you love, you love a angry feminist that's well armed with like deep neuroscience. Yeah. As opposed to my just sort of like, wordless rage sometimes.
Amy: Yeah. Generalized outrage. Yeah.
Risa: She comes with the brain scans, like the, the tens of thousands of brain scans. One of the pieces I love talking about menopause is she sort of points to how this, you know, It's the hormones in women's brains are absolutely the drivers and that for men, it's like quite a straight line.
Risa: Like it just sort of just tapers off as they age. And for us, it's really not like having kids completely changes our brain chemistry. We become, she says, we become like mind readers. Like we absolutely become so attuned to nonverbal cues, especially to this one being. And it makes us fuzzy on other things.
Risa: Like that's not something we imagine. That's really a thing that happens. And then in menopause. It kind of is like at this meeting point of us getting really kind of tapped out like women experience so much more stress and anxiety than men and we have much higher rates of dementia than men and it's in part because our brain is, is taking estrogen or taking hormones from other places, because we're, we're stressed so it's kind of taking it out of our brain.
Risa: That's not the science way to explain it but that's sort of the gist of it I think. Um, and so A lot of what I'm thinking about this week is calling my power back and like calling my energy back or like raising my energy back up and so partially that is like lying in the dark listening to a gentle voice tell me that I'm loved and part of it is like feeding my brain beautiful, luscious fruits.
Risa: Like I also kind of got into this like denial thing where like the kid loves fruit so the fruit in the house is for the kid. But your brain needs it! It desperately, desperately needs it. It's not an indulgence. Fruit is not dessert. Fruit is like the number one, it can be the like fruit and grains. Can be like the, one of the biggest differentiators on whether you're going to get dementia or not.
Risa: So start feeding your brain that stuff, like loving, like lie back on a velvet chaise lounge and have someone feed you grapes because you need it for your brain. And then after menopause, when the brain chemistry gets sorted, and if you can be really. tender and rest yourself and feed yourself through that process.
Risa: What happens in the brain chemistry can be one, like she calls it like a giving of less fucks, which herefore could use fewer. And, um, also like a more deeper sense of community connection than instead of connection to immediate family, which is what makes a post menopausal person incredibly powerful.
Risa: And that's, that's why those women were leaders in the fight for universal healthcare. Elderly women, that's why elderly women were targeted by the witch hunts, because they were leading resistance to the land grabs of early stage capitalism. So part of us being our best fucking witch selves is tending to this transition in our brain, how long it takes.
Risa: Um, and then that brings me to my, my last bit of what I've been thinking about. It's another like nerdy podcast that goes into a dance track. So I'm listening to this other podcast series. I think it came out late last year, um, called The Body Electric. It's from NPR. Some episodes are too NPR y for me. If you know what I mean, it's a little bit too, Amy's nodding like she knows exactly what I mean.
Risa: I mean, I love NPR, but some of the episodes are a little heavy on the NPR vibes for me. But what's interesting is, um, they kind of did a large scale study with listeners of NPR with these, uh, neuroscientists who are looking at like how A lot of people maybe will exercise like once in a day or whatever, but it doesn't really seem like it has the effect that would counteract how much time we spend in front of screens.
Risa: And so the series goes back and forth on how the electricity in our bodies and the shape of our bodies and our brains and the way our nervous system functions is being changed by our relationships with technology. And it goes back and forth. It goes back a really long way and then it goes like kind of more in detail in the 90s and smartphones and, and each episode has a bunch of different really, really interesting scientists on it anyway, but the larger study or like the body electric challenge is to take a break every 25 minutes.
Risa: Or you can do an hour or two hours. But the, the like most intense one is every 25 minutes. So I've been setting like a timer on my phone every 25 minutes and to like, walk gently or dance for five. And the results that people experienced are super, super joyful and interesting. People feeling like they got, there's less depression, you know, they got their energy back.
Risa: They got their kind of that out of that brain fog. They were way more happy and joyful and also to not term it. In the language of productivity, like, I'm not taking these breaks so that I can be a more effective producer. I'm taking these breaks so that I can fucking be happier and that I can make space in my moments, in my life, in my brain.
Risa: To hear what my body is really saying, to hear what my heart is saying, to hear what the leaves are saying, to hear what the wind is saying, to hear what needs to change. So, I'm taking these five minute breaks. I've been making this playlist of five minute songs to make me dance for the full five minutes.
Risa: And the best one so far And so this is my, this is my prescription for all of us, is, okay, take five minute breaks with whatever feels good for you. Maybe you want to walk on a treadmill, maybe you circle your apartment, maybe you dance it out to something that I, my brain wouldn't even be able to wrap its head around musically, or whatever.
Risa: Bye. You can just do Donna Summers, I Feel Love.
Amy: Oh, this track is one of the greatest of all times. Yeah. Honestly. Yeah.
Risa: It is. It's like, it's in all kinds of, of the, you know, the archives, the library of Congress, it's in all of these incredible moments. They tried to make a sound of what the future sounded like.
Risa: It's Giorgio Morador who did, who created the whole soundscape. It's almost entirely made with Moog synthesizers. It's. What? You're
Amy: laughing. I'm laughing because I brought like a Moog enthusiast as my prescription. So there's a lot of tie in. I do want to say he worked with Britney Spears in later times, like Daft Punk, like this is like, Giorgio Moroder is like, if you're looking to get into, like, what can be done with synthesizers, we'll get to Mort Garson in a minute, but we'll start with Giorgio Moroder.
Risa: I think I'm done. That's my, that's my long awaited prescription. I'll just say, like, I am in a place, and you can borrow this energy too, if it's useful to you, where I am going to take extreme care of myself and my loved ones. And my brain, and my body, I'm going to care for it with. Fruit and rest and kindness and dance and I am going to use all of those things to continue to fuel my resistance and to continue to fuel my Creativity and to continue to fuel my life and it's slow and my my rest is part of that Of my resistance.
Risa: And I offer that to you too, that this is how we're calling our power
Amy: back. And we can be like Donna Summer and sing like, Ooh, I feel love. I feel love. I feel like those are most of the lyrics are just like, Ooh, I feel love. I feel love. I feel love. I have to mention, you know, you talk about this podcast, the body electric.
Amy: So I can't let that pass without bringing one of my favorite poets, queer icon, Walt Whitman. Um, as a surprise to me and to ourselves. But, um, his poem I Sing the Body Electric begins, um, I sing the body electric. The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them. And I'll leave it at that, but I do want to, like, bring attention to the armies of those that we love, because we are out there, and sometimes it doesn't feel like it.
Amy: It feels like the only armies in existence are the armies of war. Uh, we have armies of love, too, and we can, you know, battle, um, by resting, just like you say, Risa. Like, this is part of our battle cry, like, to upend late stage capitalism and, and to, and to resist it is to You know, not have that feeling like if we take 20 minutes that we're like letting the economy down.
Amy: But back to Moog synthesizers. Most importantly, um, I went to my stacks this week because I am Feeling kind of like, I need a little break from human people. And luckily, like, Risa, you and I are working on our kinship season right now. Like, those of you who are listening probably heard Risa's Beautiful Lichen episode the other day.
Amy: So it's good for me to sort of, like, take myself out of this, like, you know, human supremacist idea that we're, we're the only creatures that are existing on this earth, and it's all about whether humans survive this, and what humans do with this. So I turn to Mort Garson, Risa, I brought my stack to show you, but I'll put some pictures in the newsletter, um, because there is one particular album cover that I want you to see, but I want to start with Mother Earth's Plantasia.
Amy: This album is subtitled Warm Earth Music for Plants and the People Who Love Them, and conceptually, The album is meant to be played for your plants. When you're growing your plants, you put this album on and it will encourage them. And it became kind of a hipster darling, um, which for me is great. I don't mind that, you know, when I was like a young angry punk, I would have been like, oh, you know, whatever the mainstreaming of the cool shit that I like.
Amy: But now I love it. I'm like, great. They reissued that on vinyl. I can finally get a copy. It was like kind of impossible to find before. So. Thank you hipsters for , you know, getting into Mort Garon and, and making the record industry rele re release or re-release a bunch of his stuff. Um, this album comes with like a booklet that includes like little bits of plant poetry, but also like, um, if your plant is like wilty, what's wrong with it?
Amy: Well, it's probably being over watered, like it really is. This whole compendium, and this particular, I think this re release came out in 2020, it comes with a little download card, a lot of vinyl records do these days, they'll come with a little code. But this one is a little bit of paper with the download code printed on it, but it's also embedded with wildflower seeds, so you can actually plant your download code card in there.
Amy: So, yeah. Bye. Once you've finished and the music sounds like the only way I can describe it like other than saying like he was Mort Garson met Mr. Moog at, like, a conference and was one of the first people to use this instrument, um, and experiment with it. I would say it sounds like elevator music if the elevator was, like, taking you to fairyland or something like that, you know?
Amy: So it's, like, Fairyland elevator music. Ooh, yes it is. It's adorable. It's very, it's very Dr. Snuggles.
Amy: So if you are like me, and you're feeling more into plants than people these days, then you can listen to the whole album on YouTube. It's really, like I say, easy to find nowadays, but I also, and he, okay, so Mortgarson, ha ha ha ha, this is my fractal thinking again. He must have been an occultist. Tons of his music is around these themes.
Amy: He did pieces of music for each of the signs of the zodiac, but I can't find anything about his actual practice. Like, he's just like some old Canadian You know, I think he's from Nova Scotia or New Brunswick, like some, you know, and I don't know what his practice actually looked like. Everything that I know about his practice comes from the music that he made.
Amy: He made one record called The Unexplained Electronic Musical Impressions of the Occult. And it's got songs like Tarot, Astral Projection, I Ching, um. And so, yeah, I don't know what he was doing. What are you doing? But I do want to end this Mort Garson section on a bit of a high note, a hopeful note. This album that I'm holding up, I will definitely put a picture of this in the newsletter because I'm going to describe the album cover to you.
Amy: So it's, it's a pentagram that is made of like flowery vines. And the circle around the pentagram is like the circle of the zodiac with all the zodiac signs. And then. There are little patch cords. Um, if you're not a musician, a patch cord is just like the cable that you use to like plug your guitar into your amp or your, you know, whatever into your whatever.
Amy: Patch cords are just things that you use to plug instruments into amps or pedals or whatever. So coming out of the flowery pentagram are all these little patch cords that are each plugged into One of the signs of the Zodiac and it's obviously occult y, but it's also adorable Like it's really cute to look at so I wanted to bring most of his music is instrumental But this one is called Cathedral of Pleasure
Amy: And I want to read some of the lyrics To again, sort of bring me back into my, to my own body and, you know, Risa, you're eating fruit. This is a relationship with plants. If you're sitting there thinking you have no, listeners, that you have no relationship with plants, like, do you eat food? Even if you don't ever eat a vegetable, like, probably the animals that you were eating were eating, like, you have a relationship with plants.
Amy: And it's up to you whether or not you want to foster that relationship. But also, we all have relationships with our bodies, and ourselves, and, you know, we are sort of forced to exist in this world. We don't, we don't have another world we can live in. This is the one that we've got, you know? And so I really want to get back into my body, Not as, like, a weight, but as a cathedral of pleasure.
Amy: Here are some of the lyrics. Through the stained glass windows of my eyes The wonders of my world come pouring in I feel life singing through me With all the music of the heaven that there's ever been And later, in every cell I have a soul And every nerve I have in need, each of my senses has a seed, where love has been planted, and you, dear, will grow.
Amy: On the sacred altar of my skin, the candles are your hands, which give me light. The simple words of love are prayers I offer to the spirit of my holy love. My body is a cathedral of pleasure. I believe in the colour of eyes, the wild whisper of hair, the honeyed flavour of a mouth. I believe that love is the one answer worth receiving.
Amy: So listeners, as you know, Risa and I don't tell each other what Songs or materials we are bringing, but this time it's Moog love. The theme today is songs of love as told through Moog synthesizers. And I couldn't be happier.
Risa: It's like, it's, I mean, I'm beaming because I want you to dance around your house.
Risa: And listen to that song and then listen to I feel love and sing it over and over and over again. I feel love. I feel love. I feel love. Call it back to yourself. Demand it. Demand it. Insist upon it and listen to the person inside of you. That needs to hear that they're loved and tell them they are, you know, they are loved.
Risa: I feel love.
Amy: And if you're like me this week and you're kind of over people then love plants. Yeah, love plants. It's spring. It's happening. Yeah,
Risa: it's great. Just go out and look at the tiny little lichen. They're so sweet. They're holding water. They're having faith. Their lichen is a love between a fungus and an algae, you know, it's a love story.
Risa: So just go out and be with those guys. And also Amy, what you just read. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm certain was inspired by the body electric. I have the last couple lines of I sing the body electric that I had prepared to pull up for the end.
Amy: We truly are witches. Are we not?
Risa: Oh, because, you know, You can see, you can call it divinity, you know, you call it nature, call it God, that science calls nature, that religion calls God, as Margaret Murray put it, I don't mind, you know, truly, whatever, whatever, whatever framework works for you.
Risa: But this poem, and these songs are really about noticing, noticing, and appreciating. And I guess even these podcasts I've been listening to are really about noticing that when we are alive, there is an electrical pulse within us that is beautiful and unknown. There is something in the beauty of how we move and breathe that is Thanks.
Risa: A mystery, a beautiful electric mystery. And I honor the love that that makes me feel when I look at all different bodies that are lit up by that. And I believe as witches and as people, whatever you want to call yourself, that we can reach out with that love and draw more love. and more peace into the world.
Risa: It is my stubborn optimism that insists upon believing that that is what we do with our stories, and our music, and our care work, and our fucking social work, and our tech administration, all the shit we do, you know? That we pour love into the world, and we draw the future towards us. It doesn't have to be so ragey, but sometimes it is.
Risa: Okay, here's the end bits of the body electric, of I Sing the Body Electric. The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud, food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming, poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm curving and tightening. The continual changes of the flex of the mouth and around the eyes.
Risa: The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair. The curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the naked meat of the body. The circling rivers, the breath, and breathing it in and out. The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward toward the knees. The thin red jellies within you or within me.
Risa: The bones and the marrow in the bones. The exquisite realization of health. Oh, I say, these are not the parts and poems of the body only. But of the soul, oh, I say now these are the soul.
Amy: And blessed fucking be.
Risa: Blessed fucking beeeee.
Amy: If you want to support the Missing Witches project, join the coven. Find out how at missingwitches. com