Mixtape Spells, gratitudes, thunderstorm reminders
Que Se Acabe Aquí (si no vas a cambiar)
Dear Ponies,
Thanks for being here! There’s a thunderstorm currently happening outside my house! It’s very exciting to hear a thunderstorm because they are pretty rare in southern california. It reminded me to step outside and breathe in the thick air and look at the sky and the plants all blowing around! And when I came back inside, it reminded me to light some cedar incense, and make some tea, and put on some soft music (Luminescent Creatures by Ichiko Aoba) before I dove back into computer work. Thank you Thunder Storm for those reminders to come back to my body! <3
Deep and wide Thank Yous to all the Ponies that came to Pony Prom! Thank you so much for gracing us with your energies and outfits and fundraiser contributions!! HUGE gratitude to Michella and Isabel for making it happen— we really put our petals to the medals and I feel proud of what we made! <3 Thank you dublab for supporting our Prom, and to Melody for bringing and running all the sound! Thank you to the band Ponies Unwed for making the dream come to life once again! Doing aerobics to their live renditions of Pony faves feels incredibly special and hilarious and tender and absurd and hugely spiritually-uplifting! Thank u to my dreamboat wife, Lisaida, for bartending and Optimist for providing us N/A spirits! Thank u supa DJ’s Earthalittt and Gay Felony for spinning your magic on the dance floor! Big love to Michella and Jason for making the gorgeous Moon Photo Booth!! And Ashley for helping get it there! And back!! And we couldn’t have done it without all the help from Karim and Ace and Bayani. <3 Thank you all!
Vids from Isabel of Ponies Unwed doing “Addicted to Love” and “Melt the World.” Ponies Unwed is Salo on synths, Amy on bass, Nick on drums, Ilya on guitar, + Karim, Anna, Isaac, and Krissy on vox!!
Mixtape making
Even aside from Prom, there has been A LOT happening behind-the-scenes in the Pony world this year! We have grown, and in that growth we’re trying out the systems we put into place, and developing new systems as unforeseen needs emerge! It’s been busy! 🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝 ← Us! One of the ways we envisioned having 3 teachers and more classes included each of us teachers making our own Monthly Mixtapes from all the songs and routines I’ve compiled over the last 10 years. Up until recently, those playlists lived only in my iTunes library (yes, originated in my iPod days) and the routines lived only in the spiral notebooks that I write all my choreo notes in. Many of those notebooks are barely holding it together from all the wear-and-tear of getting carried around to every class and thrown in my tote bag with my shoes and sweaty towels! At the end of last year, Michella made a beautiful database for all those songs, and I mean it is really a stunner, maybe someday we will show it off. Slowly but surely, based on Malia and Jaquita’s song-picks, she and I are recording the choreography so the routines can be shared and will no longer only live in my notebooks! It’s important to note that Malia and Jaq can of course choose songs outside the database if they want to, if they choose to! For example, last month Malia made her own routines to “There’s No Stopping Us” (still practicing my pas de bourree over here! Fuck the Moves!) and “Talk Talk”, and this month she’s doing squats to Lo Fidelity Allstars, a band that I didn’t know until I heard their song “Battleflag”!
This current vision for Pony Sweat took a long time to clarify. But taking time away last year to tend to my auto-immune diseases and work on less physical Pony Sweat tasks like writing my book helped me reach much-desired and sought-after clarity. Once I started to put into words what a Pony Sweat Mixtape is actually comprised of and how I make it, it stopped being this creative practice that I was prone to be kinda secretive and vague about. I didn’t know I was being that way, but in hindsight I think I was a little bit. And I think it’s totally ok and appropriate to be protective of the practices and/or rituals that are important to us! We don’t ever have to write about them, or share them with others if we don’t want to. But I will say that it feels so good to share this particular piece of making Pony Sweat ritual with Jaq and Malia, and I am extremely delighted and excited to witness this new part of Pony Sweat unfold. I hope that you are too! Thank you to Jaq and Malia for being on this ride, and for sharing their heartfelt mixtape spells with us!! It has been so fun to take class from you. I also wanna give a very big shout out to Michella for ideating this with me, and creating these systems to help Pony Sweat grow healthy and strong.
You can listen to all of our March Mixtapes here!
For all the Ponies Across Time + Space, we want to eventually make videos of Jaq and Malia’s Mixtape classes to share with you. As I mentioned, it’s been pretty busy over here, but making those vids is our goal and intention! In the meantime, Jaquita will be teaching again via livestream on April 5th, and Michella will be releasing new 30-Min Pony Vids from Jaq and Malia’s Feb Mixtapes later this month!
If you want to read more about how I think of mixtape-making as creative practice, you can read this first-draft excerpt from my book! That’s right, 1st draft with some very light grammatical edits! Fuck the Moves!!
Regardless of the medium– be it a tape, cd, or even a selection of songs shared digitally– I define a mixtape by its story-telling through the curation and order of beloved songs. A mixtape is the only container that can communicate the particular story I want to tell, in the way I want it to be received. When I make a mixtape, I enter a portal where I create an experience for someone to have in their future, through songs that have been performed and recorded in the past, that I’m now very intentionally choosing and copying in the present. That experience-curation/storytelling through favorite songs is the process of mixtape-making. It’s a creative practice where I lose sense of time and space in a pleasant way and surrender to imagination time/space. I enter the film I’m writing in my mind and simultaneously create the soundtrack. The movie is about love and longing, betrayal and heartbreak. It’s about triumph, celebration, transition, transformation, loss, death and rebirth!
I hope that in the listening of the songs I’ve selected, in the order I intuited, the recipient will know me better, and understand the depth of my feelings despite not having the words to describe them or the courage to speak those words aloud. Also though, more often than not, the Mixtape is actually made for myself.
A mixtape is a spell! I’m putting together songs like a potion that will invoke a particular emotional experience in the future. Mixtapes are also spells because they can open up brand new worlds to the listener. As a tween, I only knew punk to be Bad religion and the Misfits until my sister, Aleda, played me “Oh Bondage, Up Yours” by X-Ray Spex on her mixtape from Chris. What?! Wait… what?! An entirely NEW world opened up to me! A world of punk fashion and punk feminism and the most perfect, potent expressions of femme-punk rage!!
Because of the great power mixtapes can hold, I ask my guides to help me every time I sit to make one. My prayer goes something like “Help me find the songs to express what needs to be expressed during this time. Help me make choices that will help folks feel connected to themselves and each other. Show me the songs that will be a salve. Help me make brave choices and not let fear direct my decisions.” I light a candle. I burn cedar. And I enter the spiral!
I’m sure all of you that have your own mixtape-making practice already are aware that you get to take bigger risks with Side B. By then, the listener is already in the world of the mixtape. If they made it to Side B, they’ve made the decision to stay, clearly they like it or at least can bear it. They have been shaped in this container, immersed in the language of this soundscape, carried through the emotional arc. Now you can say the things that are maybe a little more tender to express. Songs like Smalltown Boy, Goodbye Horses, Father Figure, Damn I wish I was Your Lover, Hyper-ballad all do well on Side B. Also, any artist that you are an extreme fan of, and know it to be maybe slightly uncool to be such an extreme fan– throw your fave song of theirs on Side B!! Don’t forget the point of the spell. You MUST be rigorous and brave, sweet Pony! The potency of the spell relies upon us taking a leap of faith. Putting the song we feel scared to put on feels like crossing a creek of very cold water. Our curiosity and desire to see what is on the other side MUST be greater than our desire to stay warm and dry. We put the song we are scared to put on there and we write the title on the jacket cover. We know our feet are now fucking cold and wet and will be probably be very stinky in a few hours, but it doesn’t matter because there is relief in the immediate aftermath of choosing courageousness.
I remember a mixtape I made for a crush when I was 15. Side A, I kept it playful and fun with Opus III “It’s a Fine Day” and Bjork’s “Big Time Sensuality” to reflect “look how fun I am! See, I’m fun!”. This all laid the groundwork for Side B where I could really get to the point with Ani Difranco’s “Hell Yea” (it was 1998 people!!!) followed by the Cure’s “Catch.” Two songs that strongly reflected my intense yearning. I took the leap and let the songs speak for me. The mixtape was received and politely appreciated, AND I discovered that my crush was sadly very much unrequited. But it turned out that getting the person to like me back wasn’t what the mixtape spell was for! At its core, the spell of that mixtape was for me to come out of hiding. Sometimes the results of our magic are not what we hoped for, but that doesn’t mean the spell didn’t work!
Class Reminders
Livestream is every other Saturday at 2:45 pm PT. Our next one is 03/22 and I’m teaching! Can’t wait to dance with you Ponies Across Time + Space <3
This week’s Pony Sweat In-Person Classes at Pickle Factory:
Tonight! Thursday 7pm with Jaquita
Saturday 2:45 pm with Emilia
Monday 7 pm with Emilia COMMUNITY CLASS
Wednesday 10:15 am with Malia
ICYMI, Exercising + Listening to Records (EL2R) is now offered as a DROP-IN class! I teach a low-impact, strength-building class that is comprised of mat pilates and some trad-fitness stuff with light weights. It is a very fiercely noncompetitive, small group class, held at Pickle Factory on Wednesdays at 5:45 pm. Sign up, bring a mat, and a record to listen to if you want to share!
For Pony Pass and Across Time + Space Subscribers only! Online EL2R is every Thursday morning at 9:30 am PT. Today we listened to Depeche Mode, Fever Ray, and Pit Pony! Thanks for coming and bringing music to share! <3
daffodils!
One of my favorite things about this time of year are daffodils. I love seeing them all rolled up so snug and then blossom into these goofy blossoms!! I know that this is a real hard time of year for a lot of people and I really feel you. My hope for us all is that we can find some small moments of delight wherever we can, and I would strongly recommend a bunch of daffodils if you’re not sure where to start. If you’re allergic, I’m really sorry about that!! This photo will hopefully not make you sneeze <3
Sending you and your bods so much LOVE Ponies!
xxoo,
Emilia