Sanguinaria, by Avi C. Engel

Sanguinaria by Avi C. Engel, released 16 June 2023 1. Sing in Our Chains 2. Poisonous Fruit 3. The Snake in the Mirror 4. Deathless 5. I Died Again 6. Extasis Boogie (Interlude) 7. A Silver Thread 8. Personne 9. Bridge Behind the Sun 10. Larvae CASSETTE AVAILABLE AT: https://cruelnaturerecordings.bandcamp.com/album/sanguinaria SANGUINARIA REFLECTION When I started writing this collection of songs it was spring of 2022, and bloodroot was blooming in the ravine near where I live. These flowers are spring ephemerals; they burst out of the ground with bright white petals that open, drop, disperse, and seem to be absorbed back into the earth within the span of less than a week. When I looked up bloodroot, I learned that its Latin name is "sanguinaria canadensis" and that the juice from the root is very potent, poisonous in large doses, and can scar the skin. The toxin is most concentrated in the thick bulbous rhizome of the plant, which is bright red if you slice it open. I read also that bloodroot has a long history of medicinal use in several different Indigenous cultures. The name "sanguinaria" sounded familiar to me, and then I realized that on an album I own by Hildegard von Bingen there is a piece called "O Cruor Sanguinis/Cum Vox Sanguinis." I read the text, which speaks to the sacrifice of St Ursula as well as the sacrifice of a calf. Raised with no religion, I come to these texts as an outsider. As a young person I briefly studied religion, and I was very drawn to the Gospel of Thomas and the book of Revelation - drawn to the poetry of the language and to the startling imagery that seemed to reach beyond itself. I am still drawn to them, but my interest is complicated by a deep distrust in dogma, and in any claims to spiritual authority or power. The stain of patriarchy and of human-centric brutality often taints the poetry of religious texts (and the religious impulse itself). I'm increasingly drawn to stories that de-centre the human being, but that perhaps have a religious bent in the sense that they reach for transcendence. Utterances that reach beyond the bounds of utterance: I can sing it better than I will ever be able to explain it, and if I could explain it I wouldn’t be moved to sing it. A plant whose juices can maim and whose physical beauty is only a small aspect of its being is a more potent and mysterious image to me than so many of our old human tales of blood sacrifice and other brutalities that disproportionally wound voiceless and socially subordinate beings. The non-human world is awesomely heedless of, and dispassionate towards, human codes of meaning and morality. To be burned by bloodroot or blinded by hogweed does not make you a martyr or a sacrifice to a great green god (though this is beginning to sound like an interesting B-movie plot). Our small blood-soaked fables are drowned out by the immeasurably intricate polyphony of the natural world. I also read the word sanguinaria as a fusion of "sanguine" and "aria." Sanguine means both optimistic (especially in the face of a challenge) and "blood-red." I would not describe my songs as optimistic or blood-red, but I do find something profoundly life-affirming in my practice of making art and music. The simplest translation of "aria" is just "song" or "melody" and all of these ten songs are centred around my voice. A question that pulses insistently in these songs, but that I struggle to articulate outside the realm of music: I am and will only be (as far as I know) a human being, with all of the tragic and absurd baggage it entails. How can I live without falling prey to despair and misanthropy, and also reckon meaningfully with my own part in the destruction of the non-human world? Captain Beefheart has a song called "My Human Gets Me Blues," and that title has stayed with me despite the fact that I haven't listened to Trout Mask Replica in many years. Skip James sings "I would rather be a little catfish/So I could swim way down in the sea." And there is the famous old song I first heard on the Anthology of American Folk Music, "I Wish I was a Mole in the Ground." I don't have a name for this genre of song, but I'm inclined to call it a music of transfiguration, and I would say this album falls somewhere in that tradition. Songs that reach beyond themselves, with a longing to be transformed, reabsorbed, to transcend the boundaries of self, social order, interpersonal pain, and become part of a more boundless and mysterious whole. Avi C. Engel 2023