secret lentil: protective gear for your internal revolution.

Dear reader,

A few months ago I dreamed I was traveling by train with Neil Young and Crazy Horse and their road crew.  We stopped in Kearney Nebraska. Townspeople there had set up a large pen so his pet rabbits could run around. It seemed that Neil Young raised rabbits - big ones and plenty of them - and of course, they went on tour with him. While I scratched a large gray one behind the ears Neil chatted quietly with a local couple who also kept rabbits. I wasn't quite sure why I was there with them but it felt like a good thing. Everything was peaceful.

I told someone my dream (I know, I know - who wants to hear that?) and they pointed at this: Just the week before, Neil Young had been part of a hosted conversation with Patti Smith, who said of his songs "even ones produced from pain ...  seem so effortless, like they just came out of the wind ..."  Neil replied:

“Well, they do come that way. I don’t try to think of them. I wait till they come. A metaphor may be that if you’re trying to catch a rabbit, you don’t wait right by the hole ...  and then the rabbit comes out of the hole, he looks around. You start talking to the rabbit, but you’re not looking at it. Ultimately, the rabbit is friendly and the song is born.

The idea is, he’s free to come, free to go. Who would want to intimidate or disrespect the source of the rabbit? And in that way if the song happens, it happens. If it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. It doesn’t matter.

That’s why I’ll write a lot of material and why I’ll suddenly not write any material. There’s no reason to write, it has to come to me, if it doesn’t come to me, I don’t want to have anything to do with it, I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to look for it. I really hate things that people work on. There’s nothing about music that should be working on it.

There’s no reason to be something you’re not. Or trying to be somebody that you think is good."

So. I spend my time making clothes for you. When I'm not making them I'm waiting - but not by the rabbit hole, and certainly not looking at said animal, though sometimes I do want to sneak a furtive glance. I try not to disrespect the source of the rabbit. And when I'm doing it right I'm not trying to be somebody whom I think is good, I'm just making clothes. And I hope you like them.

Welcome to Secret Lentil.
best wishes, helen

p.s. "No one reads long passages of text on websites."