Ava M. 𓇢𓆸

So far we’ve raised $1,700 for the Red Crescent. 🌙 The tapes themselves have raised $700 (after bandcamp fees). I personally matched the first $500 (which I doubled through my job’s match guarantee), adding 1k to the pot. Maybe an unrealistic goal but I’d really really love to reach $3,100 by the end of the month since I turn 31 on the 31st so please order a tape or dm me to get one if you’re local. The digital album is also there if you’d like to donate but don’t want a tape! ~Link in bio~

Saw an older woman holding this sign as I left work yesterday and cried.

There’s an Imogen Heap lyric I think about a lot where she says “music is worthless unless it can make a complete stranger break down and cry.” Last night’s ‘For the Light’ tape release show did just that, over and over again with every set. It will forever be etched in my mind as a perfect show. 🫀🌧️ Thankful to the incredible songwriters who shared a bill with me and made me weep. (@ther_ther_ther , @novaone_ , and @soupy_xo .) Thank you @greenhaus.phl for the soft landing spot and @senstive_plant for making us sound like magic. Thanks @_jasoncalhoun for helping me make tapes in time for the show and for helping me pull myself together. Lastly, thanks to anyone who came or bought a tape or felt things with us.

‘For the Light’ is out in the world today. 🪽 This is the most prepared I’ve felt going into a Mother’s Day since she died. Maybe it’s because for a few weeks my mind has taken a break from bearing witness to the destruction of my ancestral homeland and instead has been pre-occupied with crafting a physical artifact to honor her or because her presence is deeply ingrained into these songs or perhaps it’s the maternal energy I’m getting from the intergenerational friendships in my life. It could just as easily be the way that everything has seemed to line up as it was meant to, even when I felt like I had completely fallen off my path, as though a hand is reaching out to pull me in the right direction when I feel most lost. Yesterday I called my dad to ask about the photograph he’d taken that I’m using for this album cover. I was wondering when he took it and whether I existed yet. He couldn’t quite place it until I sent him the full image, including the light coming through the wide vertical blinds in the background. He said it had been taken in their first apartment, before Raha or I had even taken form as a thought in their minds. There’s something about the idea of who she was before me that I think I’ll always be drawn to. So much of our understanding of our mothers is in the context to how we moved in relation to one another, but the way I know her now will always be in her absence. Her before me is almost like a mirror to me after her, if that makes any sense at all. Anyway, we watched Contact last night, are assembling the tapes today, and I will be playing a release show tonight singing these songs. @greenhaus.phl with @novaone_ , @ther_ther_ther , and @soupy_xo —all of whom have made music that has held me together the past few years. Music starts at 7 pm, is $10-20, and is down a flight of stairs. I’ll try to have tapes made in time to sell tonight but if not you can order them on Bandcamp. Album proceeds will go to the Red Crescent—the sister to the Red Cross in SWANA countries facing the obliteration of their entire lives. I hope these songs remind you of the magnitude of needless loss and remind you to look for the light in everyone.

Looking for the light in everything today and feeling like myself again. 🕊️ Also feeling silly asking anyone to pay attention to the work I’m going to put out in a few days. Posting feels cheap and useless, like a highway billboard nobody gets enough time to read. But I really want you to hear these songs and I don’t want to have to advertise or look pretty for you. I want the work to stand on its own. I want to raise money for the Red Crescent. I want to let go of wanting everything to be perfect. I want to feel small in the right ways and to feel woven into the big. Hopefully it finds you if you’re meant to find it.

Thank you @varioussmallflames (and @jon.e.doyle ) for somehow always understanding my musical inclinations and words better than I do. Having anything I make mirrored back to me through your perspective helps me remember why I love to create and sing and write and share🪞 ‘For the Light’ will come out on May 10th on @vitalrcrds All proceeds will go to the Red Crescent to help care for those who have lost everything to the whims of warmongers

Sunday, May 10th at @greenhaus.phl : @novaone_ (PVD, LP Release) @tinyduststar (LP Release) @soupy_xo @ther_ther_ther @avabookingshows x @fm.phl Celebrate Mother’s Day the right way at @greenhaus.phl with some beautiful music! Providence’s @novaone_ are coming down in celebration of their new record “How to Kiss” to deliver their resolute rock with aplomb! Local legend @tinyduststar is also sharing her breathtaking new album “For The Light”, @ther_ther_ther is going to serenade us, and we shall bear witness to the triumphant return of Sadurn’s @soupy_xo !! Truly a magical evening so throw on your pink wig, bring a pal, and join the group hug that is this wonderful show! Rad flyer by @puppy__problems Doors at 6, Music at 7, $10-20, Msg for address Plz respect the space and each other 🪆

On Tuesday I uploaded a song about losing my mother while fearing the loss of the country in which my mother, and her mother before her, were born. It felt like the only thing I could do to keep from drowning in hopelessness and to remind myself that no matter whatever darkness came at nightfall, I will always carry their life light within me. The song is called “Pavement” and has been the song I’ve started most of my live sets with for many years, since as a frequent opener I’m usually waiting for people to arrive. I often sing with my eyes closed as I start with the lines “in this empty room, I can feel you.” Humming until I can feel my voice settle in to the point of not sounding afraid. So far, in the past 3 days, we’ve raised more than $300 for the Red Crescent—an org providing life-saving care and rescuing people from the rubble across many countries in the region. If you have the means and would like to help us raise funds, I hope the songs can feel like a proper thank you ♥️☪️ ‘For the Light’ will be released on Mother’s Day on @vitalrcrds - an imprint I named after the agency in charge of maintaining our birth and death records, archiving how we lived and how we belong to one another. It will be run by myself and J. 🌙🌙🌙 On Sunday, I will be playing a live set at the Perch with my Team Love label mate @jacobaugustinemusic and dear friend @milkocromlom (ft @margauxtosleep ) 4/12 @ 7 pm Photo of me by @_jasoncalhoun Photo of my mom by my dad Poster by @milkocromlom

Sharing this song as an offering to anyone who may need it. We are on the precipice of global catastrophe and I am a total wreck. I don’t know if I feel alive or dead or somewhere in between, but I do want to remind myself that I exist, that my people exist, and to hold hope for humanity somehow through it all. Keeping my palms open to receive and give care (or as my grandmother likes to remind me: “Begeer-o-bedeh” / بگیر و بده). 🪬🤲🏼 The President of the United States has threatened complete ruin for Iran and stated that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” The civilization he speaks of is my ancestral homeland, the one whose blood runs through my veins, the one I am always trying to find my way back to through traditions, language, poetry, and song. I started working on this record 6 years ago and never finished it, but the more I’ve sat with it the more it’s felt like a time capsule that I’d like to share anyway. It feels like an accurate representation of grief and of self—a true work in progress. It’s about losing my mom and losing a part of myself with her, though I have started to feel more like her by the day. When my mom died, it was the worst pain I’d ever experienced. It collapsed my world entirely and tore my heart out of my chest. Experiencing that changed me and gave me context for what is repeating by the millions, in every number reported in a death count. Every mourner’s pain is the worst pain; every martyr is a universe. I hope you listen to this and it helps you see us as human. I hope you speak up before we’re all gone. Cassette and digi pre-order available now on Bandcamp. All proceeds will be donated to the Red Crescent. 🌙 Produced and engineered by @umareyougonnafinishthat & @carlostruly Mastered by @so.big.auditory

Here’s my face. I hope you think it’s pretty and human and worth protecting. It looks just like the people who came before me for thousands of years and the people abroad at this very moment who the world has seemingly forsaken. I watched ‘Damnation’ by Béla Tarr on Easter in an old repurposed high school theatre. The room, like the subjects of the vagrants in the film who frequent Titanic Bar, felt suspended in time. I left wondering if humanity is doomed beyond repair, set to chase its own tail for all eternity, as I walked by an old catholic school with a Fallout Shelter sign. God help us all. I am very scared and hope that something changes before it’s too late.

I bought this antique Persian miniature mirror on a live internet auction while living halfway across the world in a country that doesn’t want my people to flourish without it being profitable to them. This object, the means of obtaining it, and its way of making my home here more hospitable to me feel tied to my lived reality. I’m trying as hard as I can to hold space for hope but instead I’m dealt the reality that life is much like an online auction—part luck and part resources (read: also luck). I really tried to feel joyful today but Nowruz feels unbearably heavy this year. While I am grateful to live in relative safety, that safety is slipping by the moment. And while I am desperately hoping for a reason to believe that goodness will prevail, all I can see is the world falling flat over and over. Maybe for now all I can hold onto are the comforts of my grandmother’s cooking or the wallpaper in my childhood home or the objects I’ve collected along the way before they, too, are one day gone. Ending the night with a prayer and with the intention of trying again tomorrow.

To me, the lives of innocent young girls lost will never be an acceptable bargain for the life of one man. I will not delude myself into celebrating today alongside much of the Iranian diaspora. I will continue to grieve the ruination of my ancestral homeland at the hands of men in power—whether those hands are internal or external makes no difference if the result is still continued oppression. There is no hope or peace to be found in the childish war games of men, only death and destruction. Holding my breath as I watch the world burn.