Hello to Friends, Family, Comrades and People I have met out there on Bike Tours!

(Please forward this message to other bike/gardener activist-music-lovers you know.)

Announcing the release of my new album, "animal dreams", a collection of original songs meant to honor ecstatic experience that will inspire us towards Love, wonder, enjoyment and solidarity in our resistance to empire and insanity. This disc will propel you to consider leaving car-culture behind and riding your bike into Our Future. The hope is that through dance, community-building, bicycles, gardens and movement, we can free ourselves and become who we need to be to survive the chaos of the collapsing oil and gas economy. But not without the beauty of life spiraling out into the ether, making everything worthwhile, Fun and amazing.

For those of you in Madison, I will perform with bass player Ken Keeley and cellist James Waldo on June 14th at 7 p.m. at Jewel In the Lotus Yoga Studio at 821 E. Johnson to celebrate the release of this project. The address matches my birthday 8/21, and June 14th is my parents' wedding anniversary. They met at Berkeley in the 1960's before I was born, which
is exciting b/c I've been getting into the whole "recreate '68" theme coming out of Denver this (election) year. There will be wine selected from the cellars of my Dad, a local foods mandala crafted by Andy Hands, as well as candles, fresh garden green salad, and delicious little cakes. Bring your appetite! The performance space is imbued with the Ecstatic Dance that a group of us have been doing every Sunday since the beginning of April.

go here: http://www.thistlespace.org to donate and get the album sent to you by cdbaby.com. (will be possible in the next few weeks--I am still assembling the zines to accompany the discs) OR, you can just send well-hidden cash (or check) to:

Kristine Pettersen
2849 Oregon Rd.
Fitchburg, WI
53713

and I will mail you a copy. Let's say $10-$12 per copy (each one cost me about $8 to make) and/or what you can afford. There are 500 total. Each one comes with a zine illustrated by Claire Stigliani and is hand-painted.
The money you give me will go to cover costs of production and I will not make a profit unless someone out there really feels like donating to the cause, because it cost quite a bit ($4,000+)to make this thing. Plus all the assembling and painting. Thank you Grace for suggesting we have a painting party coming up! The first fifty will be hand-painted by me for the release party, but the rest will be painted by friends and comrades.

For those of you in California who pre-paid, let me know if your addresses have changed, otherwise, I will send you a copy to the address you gave me before and try to contact you individually to see if I am sending it to the right place.

Some friends were talking to me today about the politics of making art and money. I was arguing that art should be free and accessible to anyone who appreciates it so I am going to give a disc and a zine to whoever asks me for one. But they were arguing that working musicians should make at least a little bit from their labor and that making art, just because it is
enjoyable, is actually a form of work that should be recognized and rewarded as such. I won't turn away larger donations to reimburse or reward me for this work, but I will give one copy to people for free if they really want it and can't afford it.

DESCRIPTION OF THIS PROJECT

The album begins with the song "resistance", a tribute to our global movements for creative and spirited bike transportation. "Beneath the pavement lies the beach" said the Situationists in Paris of 1968, and so it is with this song. The beach and a glimpse of real Romantic Love beneath the pavement of Western Civilization. I write about it from the perspective of innocence, a state that knows no shame in passion, and frolics in the joy one feels upon finding a friend who is dedicated to
resisting car culture through tumbling fun down by the sea. (sigh) Feel free to ride the edge of this one. My heart rises and sinks at the thought of deep physical and spiritual contact, the intimate dance that brings forth the life that we are living."...the cliches that i wrack up when i write down these songs, could fill a great big trunk" There is an internal and external struggle and
freedom in this song. Derrick Jensen says he likes it.

Then, it's off to the mystical land of dreaming on the side of the road while on the Cycles of Uprising tour, next to all the dead animals, their bones lying in the dirt. The tour had six members organized in a collective called "cycles of uprising." We were five women and trans and one guy in a skirt doing most of the bike mechanics ( : We rode from St. Louis to New Orleans the Fall of 2006, some of you may remember. The song explores our collective in the context of movements for grassroots
cultural and physical/social change. We have a loud collective voice, and this song is my helmet off to the cycles of uprising crew, our voices calling out for justice, personal growth, compassion, fun and thoughtfulness.

The rest of the album follows from here, "listening to dreams", as if they are divine callings to rise up in intimate solidarity to end the concept of sin and return to the garden, growing even in the rubble and devastation.

It is hard to describe how I have changed over the past five years since I gave up my job, car and stable lifestyle in favor of a nomadic life on a bicycle. I feel this choice opened up so many doors, some of which cannot be shut. Many of the ways I have changed have been good, more community-building and steady. Other changes have left me scared of people and our
capacity to hurt each other. This album is an honest reflection on the good and bad aspects of my experiences out there on the road on my bike.

The lyrics are rooted in the ground, in the earth, the place we all come from and are all one human family dwelling upon.
 
The song "corpse" is an refers to Armageddon, complete with horn section in the middle eight and dramatic sequencing, followed by cello replying to the voice of the songwriter, who speaks of a great fall and crash of the beast of civilization...death to middle class lifestyles is a big part of that crash, and takes many casualties with it. It is a voice in the wilderness, alarmed by our current situation and warning us of tragedies yet to come.

MY PERSONAL NEWS

I am living in Madison on a community farm on the edge of town. We are a diverse community working together to stop the Alexander company (our landlords) from paving over the community garden and gentrifying the neighborhood. We grow our own food, offer others the opportunity to grow food and intentionally work together in cooperation and respect in our
neighborhood. Check out our web site: http://drumlingarden.org/ !Ninguna verdura es ilegal! (we are growing a
few vegetables in areas the development company has told us we are not allowed to).

I just took a job with Planned Parenthood on the South side of Madison. I speak in Spanish all day long helping women get access to birth control, cervical cancer screenings and health care in general. So far, adjusting to the 40 hours-a-week work schedule has not been too hard for me and I like the people I work with.

There is a "mobile village of resistance" traveling from Madison to St. Paul this Summer for the RNC protests. Check out: http://www.pnc2rnc.org to learn more about that project. It will be a bicycle village of bilingual puppet shows, acrobats from Quito, various Madisonians and a smattering of others from all over the place. I am really encouraged that it is going to be bilingual and is emphasizing immigrant rights and cultural exchange in the face of the Republicans emphasizing, their
achievements, their wars and their economic privilege. Yep, another (s)election year. ho-hum, dumb, dumb, drum...drum... Drum in the streets!

I hope you enjoy this album. If you were on the DNC2RNC march of 2004, the song "sticky red egg" is for you. It's a women's action fantasy that I had as we were marching into New York City. It praises the womb and its ability to give life. It turns the uniquely "sticky red egg" of female power into an act of surprise, captivating an American public on national
television. Also, I put "bella ciao" on there (an early Italian folk song, pronounced "bayla chow"), from the Spanish version that Cory showed us.

I was graced by the presence of many musicians from around Madison who played on the album too. James Waldo and Steve Pingry on cello, Donald W. Plautz on flute, Matthew Sanborn on every instrument and Scott Caldwell on drums. I was especially blessed to work with Matt Sanborn who has a delicate, well-tuned, and delightful ear for sounds and musings. We are both Beatles fans and I looked forward to going to his studio every week where he has a painting of the Fab Four looking out at you as you record, complete with deep red background and black and white features. He paintedit as a teenager in Madison.

So some things change, and some things stay amazingly the same. I find comfort in those things that stay the same and that root us in our communities and in ourselves.

and with that! I bid you farewell and off into cyberspace I send these words to your Inboxes. I would love to hear news from Austin and California, two places I really miss since leaving them to come back to Wisconsin. I think of you often! Especially the gardeners, tree-sitters, FNB crew at the yellow house, the kids at the Rhizome collective, ppl who lived at bio-squat and hung out and drank beer on the porch. mucho porchamos amigos mios. Fare you well!

Love, Thistle (Kristine)