Woodpecker drums up
thin mist and scattered birdsong.
Sudden patch of ice.

Early March in Oslo, and here I am again longing for spring. I can feel it creaking and rumbling under the ice and lingering desperations of winter. Ceramic spring - still cold and fragile, a bit chipped in places, but with its own brittle beauty.

The magpies have started chattering and rasping about the repairs they are making to their big nest in the birch. The sun has returned with a mix of gentle warmth and brutal honesty. I feel shabby and worn, then energized and inspired, then anxious and tired - and curious about how my experience of different seasons has stayed the same over time yet is also changing subtly as I age. Life always both cyclical and spiraling.

For the past few years I have become a part of queer-centric micropublisher Mohini Books. I have had the great pleasure and frustration of trying my hand at co-editing an anthology of queer perspectives on the Covid-19 pandemic, and now "Queers In Quarantine" is finally in print and we will officially launch it on March 11th. May it find its way to everyone who needs to discover it, and may it be shared in all sorts of likely and unlikely places! I am very proud to have helped to make it happen. I have learned a lot from the process and collaboration of co-creating it, and I got to slip one of my own poems in among all the other juicy queer richness.

A big project this year is the latest project and performance with 71bodies, called "A True Story". It premiers in Bergen in June 2023. Once again we invite you to join us in exploring and celebrating trans lives and the many forms of loving, learning connections and family we are part of. Creating and performing with 71bodies is always transformative for me, and we do our best to invite and hold transformative space for our audience too.

Last and not least I am inching towards new recordings and releases of my own songs and poetry. More on that later. I give myself permission to deeply want to share my words and voice, and to often be scared, slow and distracted along the way. Oh look, the magpies have brought a new stick to add to the nest! I trust they have their own system of what goes where and how. I practice extending that trust to myself.

Now it's time to do some singing for my house plants, and hear what feedback they may have. Other than the amazingly resilient Monstera who is saying "Yes, yes, decent song, but just fucking re-pot me already!" - it will happen this weekend, you have my word!

Hey Cosmonauts, I hope this finds you well, and if not I send you gentle thoughts and extra supportive wags.

High summer is sliding into late summer and we've finally had some much needed rain. You can feel the trees and grass eagerly reaching for every drop. Today everyone and everything is being shaken and stirred by huge gusts of wind, a wild dancing in the branches sings of a different season on its way. Soft dark has crept in under the boughs and eaves again at night, and a few evenings ago I met a family of badgers rootling and munching around in the brush by the roadside.

I have started a little experimental project where I am sharing rough little live recordings from my weekly music practice by posting them on my YouTube channel. Sometimes songs, sometimes poetry, musings, whatnot. We'll see where it goes.

If you find something you like and think someone else you know might like it to, please point them at it - I'll be sending you grateful wags!

Right, I just posted all the songs from Trojan Gift Horse (2010) under "listen". Not downloads so far, but I hear there is a CD you can get that has the songs, the lyrics, the credits, the cover art and everything...

If I may say so myself (which I shamelessly may), I really like that album. It sort of surprises me every time I listen to it (don't listen to my own records that often), in a good way. I might have made different choices on some songs were I to record them now, but mostly, listening to it today while uploading the tracks, it makes me want to play them live with a couple of other people adding instrumentation and harmonies. Maybe make a live set of the whole record, or at least most of it, plus a few newer songs. That could be a lot of fun!

Especially if I could recruit some friendly ravens to croak on "Fragments" - I could pay them in cubes of cheese. We could arrive in town in a zeppelin shaped like a Trojan horse, that when you land it, has a small fold out stage. At the end of our set we would toss a golden apple to the most bearded lady in the audience - unless she would prefer to be tossed a pair of our well-worn long johns, with extra holes in for your viewing pleasure, in which case the band would have to draw straws on who had to strip down. You would come to that show, right?

You can now download mp3 files of all the songs from Joyful Distortion.

Go and look under "listen" (weird as that may sound), then click on "Joyful Distortion", and then on "downloads" under the list of songs. Then you can right click on each track/title and "save link as...".

And if you are feeling generous, and you haven't already bought the vinyl, you might consider donating a small sum towards future recordings, new strings, guitar repairs etc... At any rate I hope you enjoy the songs and share them with others who might enjoy them too!

I should probably get better at actually writing about gigs and such here on my webpage BEFORE they happen, rather than telling you about them after the fact. But hey, I am practicing this wandering minstrel and occasional poet business, and at least nowadays I usually manage to post something on Facecrack(book) a few days before. Also, I have stopped actively keeping it a secret that I will be playing somewhere, for fear that people might actually show up to listen. Grand improvements and massive steps, in other words!

So, anyway, on May 16th I had the great pleasure of warming up a crowd of lovely people for Drømmedolker, Bård Tjelta's (of La Casa Fantom) solo/side/singer-songwriter project. Thank you, everyone, who made that such a perfect evening! Including those of you who were walking by, but stopped to stare in through the large window at the weird person performing in a floor length dress, fairy wings and pointy ears, with a bushy tail, bushy legs and a guitar.

Bård and I were playing at Sound of Mu, one of my favourite little neighbourhood places in Oslo. The evening was in celebration of the release of Fredløs nr 5: The Wall - his latest collection of drawings. It's a story about a clever man and a gang of demons who one day experience a profound transformation. He was also exhibiting and selling some of his other drawings and prints. You can contact him via email (bard at lacasa.com) if you want to buy an issue (or several) of Fredløs, his records, or an original drawing or limited print. I highly recommend it. My personal collection of his art is starting to become limited by an imminent lack of wall space - it will just have to become a "rotating" exhibition.

Speaking of performances and gigs, earlier this week I sat in awe at the National theatre as Marte (a.k.a. Sheman) and I experienced Thea Stabell perform "Babettes gjestebud" by Karen Blixen as an 80 min long monologue - with the audience hanging on her every word. Very, very, very good.

Then I went to the best concert I have been to in ages - thanks to the hard working FemmeBrutal crew. They had managed to lure Little Annie and Baby Dee, and their excellent violinist, to Oslo and Mir - and thank all the great trickster spirits for that. Holy fuck, what a concert. My face hurt afterwards from smiling so much. Bloody brilliant. Go to their gigs, buy their record, but most of all GO TO THEIR GIGS. Impressive and inspiring.

Oh yeah, and this Saturday I will be serenading the good people and dogs of Oslo's friendly wagon place, Brakkebygrenda, and hopefully you too! You can look forward to an acoustic orgy starting at 18.00, featuring Koyote (yeah, me), Drømmedolker, Redwood, The Muerto, Freaky Oscar... and God(dess) knows what/who else. Come and spread the lurve. Wags!

In case you don't already know: I will be bringing copies of the vinyl of Joyful Distortion on tour... and also copies of the first volume of "Spiral Tails", a series of illustrated stories I am releasing in collaboration with talented friends - this one is called "Koyote and the missing verse". Story by me, artwork by the lovely Mr. Bård Tjelta (of La Casa Fantom and Drømmedolker).

Did I mention I have also recorded a new song cycle/record/whatever you want to call it? It is being mixed and mastered in the forest as we speak. I hope to have the cover art with me on tour, in a nifty format I think you will enjoy. I will also probably make some cds, and then post the songs online for "suggested donation" when I get home - can't afford to print it on vinyl before I've sold enough of Joyful Distortion, Spiral Tails, previous cds & merch...