AWMI Wayfinder: The One Who Rises Up
a live, immersive show of sound, light and story
Every song is hiding a story.
Beneath it all, our story and nature’s story await.
Come find yours.
The blue light runs the feed. The feed runs the island. AWMI, an old junkyard wayfinder with a boombox for a heart, only plays when she catches a hidden frequency from nature. She has forgotten why. And Fern, a girl with specks of light on her skin, is starting to listen.
Flip the tape, and the songs carry us beneath the headlines: into the heart, out into the stories the land and the animals have always told, and on into breath and stillness. From point of view to point of being. Finding nature is finding our true nature.
Meet the travelers ↓AWMI Wayfinder: The One Who Rises Up
A junkyard wayfinder with a boombox for a heart, a girl with specks of light on her skin, and the songs that wake them both.
It begins in the head: the headlines, the worry, the endless blue glow, and the old stories we carry about who we are. Then a cassette clicks into an old boombox, and the songs carry us down into the heart, out into the stories the land and the animals have always told, the ancient myths of sea and sky, suns and seasons, and on into breath and stillness, where no story is needed. Then, gently, we return, carrying a little of it home.
Listen closely. Every song is hiding a place.
Water always finds its way down to the sea. Fern finds her way back up, against the current, to where it all begins.
It began on Nantucket, in Head, Hand & Heart, my sound walk co-created with Cinema Wood. Learn more
On the surfaceBeneath it
Everyone starts out living the story the feed tells them.Turn the tape over, and every one of them is changed.
- the headlines
- the land’s story, told through myth
- spirit, no story at all
- the cosmos
Told by Curious Lightning.
Track one
A song from AWMI's boombox, still on the workbench. Catchy as a kitchen radio, with something wild tucked inside.
Turned over: every sound, and the wild place it came from.
- Hear the low tone· · ·
- See a peak in time-lapse· · ·
- Feel the breath, in your body· · ·
Side A, liveSide B, live
From the noise of the headlines, to the voice in our heads, down into the heart, out to the oldest stories the land and the animals tell, and into the quiet where no story is needed.
About twelve minutes. Real cassettes, light spilling across dancers and steam, a whole room breathing at once. The place itself is always in the cast, and everyone goes home with a cassette in their pocket.
Halfway through, the tape turns over and the show goes beneath the headlines. Curious Lightning becomes MC Eco Freq, drops the needle, and each guest artist steps out from behind their song: how it was made, the place that shaped them, the sound that was hiding inside. Concert, conversation and campfire, all at once.
Now building the first piece of it: one song, one place, and its B-side. Help it happen on the request line below, or see the whole creative act.
Field notes
Every place has a frequency. Folded inside the cassette: where each sound was found, and what it seemed to hold. Lately, the summits of the Adirondack High Peaks. Before that, a long walk north and the pages of an old typewriter.
An old map
No blue dot. A compass, a few marks, and the places where something answered.
Find your way by these stars
AWMI Wayfinder is my latest creative act as a story wayfinder. The rest of the sky is still up there.
A space that keeps calling
A cranberry bog. A beehive at dawn. A fire lookout. The corner of a city where a thrush once stopped you mid-sentence.
Every mark on the map began as a space someone couldn't stop thinking about. There is room for yours, and for the song it might become.
Come find me in it
Somewhere between the front porch and the far ridge, a space becomes a place. I've watched it happen on a ten-month walk, in a valley's old voices, on an island where the past still walks the lanes, and with a microphone on the road. It never happens the way I plan. That's the good part.
Every place is humming something. Come wander with me: first with a head full of plans, then with tired legs, then with nothing left to say. If something sings, it might land on Side A of AWMI's mixtape, the song you can't stop humming, and ride along with her into the show. And what's underneath it? Flip the tape.
No map. Leave it on the tape, and we'll see what wants to be made.
Leave something on the tape
A place that keeps calling you. A song you'd like to make outside. A town, a school or a shoreline that should hear this. Or simply a hello, and the next field note when it's ready.
Where does a question go, if you let it walk?
For me it started with a long walk. In 2001 I walked from Key West to the Gaspé, and a scruffy brown dog named Stinky decided to come along for part of the way. The questions kept walking after that: into radio and podcasts, fire lookouts and old film reels, a sound walk on Nantucket with a robot for a narrator, and now the high peaks of the Adirondacks.
AWMI Wayfinder is where those roads meet, and where the grown-ups finally get to play.