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Emily Pothast

@emilypothast

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In early 2006, just a few weeks after I lost my parents, I dreamed that I was walking down the street in what I understood to be Everett, Washington (a town I had never visited at the time). In the dream, I turned to check out my reflection in a plate glass window and a fluffy adult tuxedo cat meowed at me from behind the glass. In the morning I told my partner at the time that I felt like I should go to Everett and look for the cat from my dream. We looked at all the cats in the shelter and didn't see the dream cat, but we did see two sleeping black and white kittens cuddled up to each other that I wouldn't have wanted to separate. As we were leaving, I took one more pass through and saw that someone else had taken one of the kittens, and the other one was startled, sniffling, and alone. That was my Ella.

I do not know how causality functions in this story, nor do I particularly care. I just know that I was there just moments after she was separated from her sibling to be her new family. When I moved out on my own a few months later, Ella came with me. When I met David a few months after that, he became her family, too. The Classic Lineup. Since then, she has moved with us to the Central District, then to Berkeley, and finally to be the tiger queen of our backyard in Oakland.

For more than seventeen years, Ella has been my best friend; sweeter, softer, and more loving than any other creature I've encountered in this life. Over the past few months, her health has been declining, but she loved chilling outdoors, spying on the neighbors through holes in the fence, being on David's jeans, demolishing cat grass, and drinking out of a human water glass until the end. A couple of weeks ago, we drove to Los Angeles and took her with us; she was a true road warrior.

We said goodbye to our best friend on Friday under a tree in what will now forever be her memorial garden. The first two days of waking up without her paws on my chest and her little face in my face have been almost unbearably sad. I will probably have other animals in my life someday but there will never be another Ella. Truly the all-time best buddy. 💐 🐾

photo #3 by @__kayak__
#ellatines taken in Oakland, California by @emilypothast

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3 years ago

We're celebrating the equinox by dropping this new @hairandspacemuseum tape on @beacon_sound! Although HaSM has been popping up in various contexts for over a decade, our recorded output has thus far been highly elusive. Human Presence is a document of two long-form pieces recorded at home with no overdubs back in 2012. Link in bio. by @emilypothast

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2 years ago

by @emilypothast

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25 days ago

On Sunday, September 27 I will be back in Seattle to lead a workshop at The Apocalypse School — a one-day series of immersive writing workshops organized by the incomparable Natasha Marin.

This event is timely for a number of reasons. This spring I received my PhD in Art and Religion from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Using an interdisciplinary approach to art history, religious studies, and film and media theory, my dissertation examines the reception history of the Book of Revelation and other ancient works of (so-called) apocalyptic literature through a framework drawn from the structure of apocalyptic narrative itself—an ‘unveiling’ in which a vision is disclosed to a seer by a mediating figure.

While I was working on my PhD, many of my creative activities had to go into cold storage. This summer I have been working toward coming out of hibernation on multiple fronts. So while I will be conducting this workshop in my capacity as a newly minted Doctor of Apocalypse, I will also be re-affirming the transformative urgency of creative labor, in particular that of witness — to “write in a book what you see,” as the angel commands John of Patmos. 👁️ 📖 🕯️

My workshop will meet at 3 pm, and space is limited. Registration link in my bio; I also have a limited number of scholarship codes available while they last. ✨ by @emilypothast

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a month ago

Many years ago, I read a book called The Death and Resurrection Show. The author makes the claim that the entire enterprise we know as show business has its origins in the performative poetics of shamans and healers whose mastery of stagecraft lends a spectacular dimension to the communal work of bridging heaven and earth. I am less interested in the historical claims of this argument than I am in its power to evoke the strange magic of ritual.

These photos were taken by @photografos at our wedding, which took place in our Seattle backyard in 2019. The ceremony was designed and officiated by @timothy.whiteeagle, who embodied the role of sacred showman more fully than anyone I have ever had the privilege of knowing.

Today, I join those who grieve because our dear White Eagle, who always had a foot in both worlds, now belongs wholly to the realm of ancestors. I am forever grateful to have known him in this life.
🤍🦅🔥 by @emilypothast

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a month ago

officially entering my barbiton lyre era by @emilypothast

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3 months ago

In 2022, @davigoli and I were invited to contribute to a memorial service for our friend @normchamber at the Chapel Performance Space, a place where we had played together many times. We were unable to attend in person, but David set to work arranging one of Norm's songs, "Veil" from the album Pavilion, for solo piano, and I made a video for his recording, which we sent in our stead. For the video, I watched the clouds and rain roll over our backyard with Ella (who is no longer with us) by my side.

The process of arranging and recording this piece led David down a path of composing and recording a new set of solo piano pieces. Tonight he is back in Seattle to perform them at the Chapel, bringing this work full circle.

For reasons beyond my control, I cannot be at this show in Seattle this evening. If you can, then I hope that you can go for me, and experience what I won't experience. Let us be each other's eyes and ears in a world where our personal physical presence is never a given. 🤍 by @emilypothast

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3 months ago

'Communitas' is a sense of togetherness that arises from collective ritual. In that spirit, we are delighted to offer our first ever physical release as an imprint.

David Wesley Golightly's Seven Songs for Solo Piano is a collection of music rooted in the "simple, immediate joy of making sound" and sharing it with others. The album was recorded at home by David on a 19th century piano he restored by hand and mixed and mastered by @chuckjohnsonmusic . The artwork and layout were designed by @opticalsoundexperience, J-cards were riso printed by @ohchute and cassettes were produced by @crypticcarousel. They just arrived yesterday and they look and sound beautiful.

Limited run of 100 copies. Bandcamp link in bio; preorders ship soon. You can also get a copy from David during his upcoming performances in Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco! 🍃 by @emilypothast

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3 months ago

Looking forward to playing at @theestorkcluboakland on August 23 with @dewmah_fuzzwah and @tessellations.band! taken in Thee Stork Club by @emilypothast

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3 months ago

As a kid I was endlessly fascinated by vintage TV shows: the way they held a warped mirror to an everyday world which was already no longer with us. My parents would always say that they wished we could watch 'Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman' together, but at the time there wasn’t a way to do so. This year I finally gave it a go.

MHMH was a "satirical soap opera" that aired (nearly) every weekday from Jan. 1976 to July 1977, which means there are 325 episodes. Co-created by Gail Parent and Ann Marcus with Norman Lear, the show’s title character was brought to life by the brilliant Louise Lasser, who happened to pass away just as we were finishing the series.

MHMH is a brutally banal send-up of every mid-late 20th c. American institution. The decline of union jobs and the rise of women’s lib. Mass marketing, televangelism, and extramarital desire. Husbands outraged by the female orgasm; white supremacists outraged by Alex Haley's 'Roots' (& scapegoating the town's sole Black resident & silencing journalists & gaining political control through blackmail & ...) A surprisingly brazen amount of queerness. Hospitals. Mental institutions. America’s bicentennial. Bigfoot. Dabney Coleman and Marian Mercer, who would go on to play a couple in the 1980 film '9 to 5' (which in retrospect seems plucked from the MHMH extended universe). The series is the surreal link that bridges Donna Reed and Twin Peaks; the libidinous camp of Douglas Sirk melodramas and the conceptual feminist cinema of Martha Rosler, Laura Mulvey, and Chantal Ackerman. It is the awkwardly horny middle sibling of I Love Lucy and The Golden Girls; of vaudeville and Natasha Lyonne. Gore Vidal plays himself until he has to go to Rome for the filming of 'Caligula.'

There is so much more that I want to write about this zany show (and if you want to commission a paper or chapter from me, please get in touch...the show turns 50 this year!) but for now I will just say that Ms. Lasser was the very best to ever do a thing that only she could do, and it’s so fitting that for me, Mary disappeared from her kitchen at almost the exact moment Louise Lasser disappeared from our world.
🧹🧳🎈 by @emilypothast

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3 months ago

a dumpster covered with colorful graffiti, against the dappled backdrop of a setting sun in a redwood forest taken in Joaquin Miller Park by @emilypothast

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3 months ago

Had a nice visit today with @garymgoldberg at his studio in Berkeley. Gary was my undergraduate photography professor at @msutexas, which means that he has known me longer than anyone else in the Bay Area! He even met my parents. Gary retired from teaching a few years ago and now he splits his time between Berkeley and Oaxaca, where he works with local textile artisans to produce big felted pieces based on his photographs of the accidental beauty of peeling paint. We also spent some time looking through his book and art collection, admiring the offset shadows made by ghost flowers. by @emilypothast

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4 months ago