Hello Folks, and happy Friday,
I write to you from the edges of Hurricane Helene, which is currently moving over Western North Carolina and the Appalachian Mountains that have been home to my family for generations. I spent my teenage years on the South Carolina coast, and I am thinking today of all the communities that never planned for the type of flooding those of us on the coast know well.
I am staring out my windows at the rain pouring down in wild sheets and listening to Peter Stone, today’s guest, sing against a melodic guitar. It feels like a perfect soundtrack for this weather and a gentle reminder to never take anything as a given—and to find comfort in the continual shifting.
Today’s conversation is one about worship: what altars we find ourselves at, the different places we choose to spread our devotion. For many listeners of this podcast—myself included—that altar connects deeply to place. What is home but a sacred thing? And like many sacred things, where does worship fall on the line between love and hate? These are the questions I am still working through; but I know that I will always fall at the altar of a pine tree, an oak lined path, the swirl of a raging storm.
Others, like today’s guest, musician Peter Stone, find altars in different, more ephemeral, places: a sea breeze, a relationship, a deep green pool. Things that can be found in a variety of places. But both Peter and I believe in the worship of the everyday—of the importance of seeking out the transcendent all around us.
This is a conversation about love and belief and artistry and boredom. It is about how to find transcendence in the practice, how to look for meaning in the drudgery of artistic creation. How to parse out your own voice among the many. These are not simple tasks, and there is much to be said about creative practice. Let this conversation serve not as a guide but as an invitation to explore the deep space within.
Peter Stone is an independent musician and a writer of songs that are equal parts intimate and cinematic, energetic and evocative, familiar and haunted. It’s easy to imagine any of Peter’s songs playing over the final shot of a film about love and loss, giving your tears just enough time to dry while the credits roll before you leave the theater. With a voice like warm evening sunlight creeping in through a ranch homestead’s western windows, it does not come as a surprise that they have lived all across the United States, and recently here in our own North Carolina, acquiring dust and stories along the road.
Thank you to Peter for sharing some of those stories with us here today. I hope you enjoy this conversation.
North Carolina Folks: Join us on October 6th (next weekend!) for the first iteration of LANDMARKS, a live folk music series in collaboration with WXYC and Fatwood. We’ll be hanging out with Nathan Bowles of the Nathan Bowles trio for a special solo acoustic set on a lovely fall evening. Learn more and reserve your spot!
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