The past week I didn’t get to stay in Seattle as long as I would have liked, but I also didn’t plan on going at all in the first place. This first week I thought I would only be able to do some reading and studying and that I wouldn’t start making my weekly trips down till the following week, however, I went down to visit and have dinner with my family. My sister live on Queen Anne hill not far from Kerry Park, there are amazing views around there and just as amazing soundscapes. It is almost as if you can look at the water and hear it then look at the city and hear it as well, like your eyes are shooting targets for your ears. I took particular notice of the street drumming while i was driving around Seattle this week, it really is just all around. I’m not sure I ever really notice how prominent it is, probably because when something never stops you start to stop hearing it. When I started to listen more intently on the drumming I felt like I was listening to little themes or heartbeats from different parts of the city. While driving through downtown there was many drummers and it was fast and seemed hectic, when I got to the U-District I felt like it started to single out into one drummer and the pace slowed, and then when I got up the hill to Queen Anne I felt like I left the chaos down below and it turned into a calming murmur.

This week I read Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia. It is a fiction book about northern California, Oregon, and Washington succeeding from the United States and becoming their own nation. It reads as a journalist’s diary/column that he writes as he is there. It was an enjoyable read, and I started to really romanticize the idea of this actually happening. The link between these places is made by a bioregion, that is a way of distinguishing an area by is environmental traits. In the real world this area would also include some parts of Canada, Idaho, and Alaska. Prior to this book a professor at Seattle University named this bioregion Cascadia, obviously because of the cascade mountain range. When I think of Cascadia the first thing that comes to mind is actually soccer and a type of beer. This is because there is a strong rivalry between the Seattle Sounders, the Portland Timbers, and the Vancouver (Canada) Whitecaps; they compete for the a trophy called Cascadia Cup. The idea of Cascadia goes far beyond just soccer and beer though, some people really do want to succeed from the United States and form their own country (and they have a pretty good argument on why it would be possible), but I honestly am far less interested in succession as I am the idea of Cascadia having its own people and culture. There is an idea that people from this region should be active in it and stay working for it, this is called bioregionalism. Bioregionalism would include things like eating locally, using local materials, keeping native plants, and using energy you can harness from the environment you live in. The site cascadianow.org has a good definition Cascadia:

“A much more common definition of Cascadia instead seeks simply to help further local autonomy, empower individuals and communities to better represent their own needs, as well as push or environmental and economic responsibility, and increased dynamic, transparent and open governance. The Cascadia movement encourages people to re engage with their local communities, develop local and personal resilience (community gardens, disaster preparedness, etc.), and create alternate lines of regional communication, politics, and interdependence that better represent the social, cultural and political boundaries that define our region.”

The idea of Cascadia is also useful to my field study, because I am looking for what makes influences on Seattle music, I’m sure the environment and the people who live there will be large parts of it. Also when looking at the bioregional map of Cascadia I realized I haven’t really traveled much out of it, I think this would make it particularly hard to see things as being different from or original to Seattle when I know so little about what the opposition would look like. I know what going to a show, hearing music on the streets, or making music with friends is like here in Seattle; but, I could not speak to what that is like in other places. However, I am lucky enough that I will be able to tag along on a road trip to New Orleans and Alabama. I will be gone for around eight days and I’m hoping this will provide me with great contrast to my home.