THE BIRD CHRONICLES

The Bird Chronicles is a ten-year writing project—part memoir, part myth, part flight log—chronicling a life reclaimed through art. It traces the long arc of becoming the Angelbird and, later, the Shadow Bird, two guiding figures who emerge through devotion, rupture, and renewal. Born in motion, the Angelbird’s story unfolds along a flight path across Europe, performing in streets, squares, and liminal spaces, learning to listen to place, to strangers, and to the intelligence of the moving body—choosing creativity as a north star rather than an inherited script.

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The Shadow Bird arrives when I turn toward what I had long been circling: the destructive wake of my mother’s death, decades earlier. This descent into grief, memory, and unspoken lineage becomes a searching—through writing and movement—for what was lost and what must be remembered. In the Shadow Bird’s company, loss becomes a teacher, and the dark reveals its generative power.

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Threaded throughout the chronicles is a devotion to place: my birthplace and the freshwaters of Lake Michigan, whose vastness holds the earliest imprints of becoming; the cities and countrysides of Europe that shaped my voice as a street performer; and Berlin, where love enters the story—a meeting with a pastry chef and multi-instrumentalist composer, a partnership rooted in craft and shared creative life. Written for my nieces, Bird Chronicles is an offering across generations: a testament to turning toward grief, reclaiming creativity as compass, and the radical possibility of rebirth, again and again.