Change, Minimal Change, etc

There is (for me) big news to share. I start writing to you on a flight back to New York.

(The clouds are magic, per usual)
(I will never stop questioning when/why we all decided to keep the shades drawn on planes)
(To sit in darkness as a literal earth miracle occurs a couple of inches from our bodies)

In any event. I start writing to you on a flight back to New York.

Five days on the West Coast, a show in the Bay Area, some treasure time with my family in The Bay. And then the completely nuts reality of walking the red carpet and celebrating José’s brilliant singing at the premiere of Nobody 2.

(It was at the Chinese Theatre in LA and was very cool!)
(Issey Miyake dressed us?!)
(At the last minute the very nice handler told me to walk the red carpet and I fully panicked/froze/didn’t)
(You get it)
(But we did get some excellent photos of us when I was feeling less shy)

I start writing to you on a flight back to New York.

(The film btw, if you’re down for a lot of violence, is hilarious and delightful and great for popcorn)

I start writing to you on a flight back to New York.

I’ve always seen clouds as freedom. Every day miracles we can access at any point. Figures, like smoke, that never show up the same again.

(Proof that the earth knows how to change every minute, minute to minute)
(I remind myself that I can, too)

I continue writing to you once I land back in the forest.

A lot has changed at our house in five days. Our peach tree has started bearing fruit. The squirrels have gotten a lot of it, a veritable cemetery of pits, but I retain my optimism that we might yet get one delightful fruit straight from our own house farm.

(Maybe even enough for a pie?!)

I continue writing to you once I land back in the forest.

Change is wild, change is terrifying. Change has been the driving force, whether I’ve liked it or not, of the last five years. At some point I stopped fighting. The relief ever since feels powerful enough to merit its own new project, with its own new name.

(!!!)

I like to think you’ve been here every step of the way as I’ve gotten to this point.

(Helping me, holding me, bearing witness, sending comments, literally supporting us through the GoFundMe, giving me laughs, etc)

Change is wild, change is terrifying, change can be powerful.

(Powerful enough to merit its own new project, with its own new name)

I continue writing to you once I land back in the forest.

Change is powerful, sure. But how tf do you approach this kind of thing? I’m 37 fracking years old. I’ve been doing this since I was a wee lass at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. My first album, not great/naive as it was, came out in 2012.

(I. Am. Elderly. For. This. Line. Of. Work!)
(How do you approach yet another change?!)

I don’t know, really. I think you just do it.

(Right now?)

Probably. I continue writing to you from the forest.

(Hi!)

Today is (one of) the big day(s) (for me).

(Hi again!)

For years you’ve known these weekly letters as Taalitalk, and you’ve known me as Taali. Most of you met me that way. A few of you knew me before.

(I only started going by Taali, after all, in 2019)
(One reason I chose the name was because, among other things, my actual last name means [!] cheap in German)
(A whole other hilarious future piece I’ll have to write, about that story/fact)

I created Taali to build something new, to try and give myself courage to finally release my own things, separate from “Talia Billig” who wrote the songs for everyone. But if there’s anything I’ve learned in the five years you and I have been together it’s that life changes.

(In small ways, in big ways)

And this next chapter has a new name.

Welcome to Minimal Change.

(!)

Ever since my diagnosis a year and a half ago I’ve wanted to do something excellent with this EXTREMELY RUDE but also delightfully poetic disease name.

(Here it is)

Taali Talk has been a beautiful ride and I’m so grateful you’ve been on it with me. It is now called Minimal Change.

I’m also now just going to go by my born name, Talia Billig.

Taali has been a beautiful experience and I’m so grateful you’ve listened to the music with me under that name.

I’ve thought about this for years (did you know, for example, that my last headlining show was two and a half years ago already?!), as I continue to explore how best to move forward in a creative world that doesn’t always feel right for me.

(If only because it feels, so often these days, so divorced from actual art)
(It’s not news that social media and I have never been the best of friends)
(Thank God the label we’ve built has been able to financially sustain me while I navel gazed about these issues)

But I feel ready now, largely because there is new music that is coming, and I want it to exist honestly, organically, and alongside me.

I want to explore the idea of coming home.
I want to return.
I want to talk to you about it.

(I wonder how many of you made it to the bottom of these meander-y 900 or so words)
(Or if next week there’ll be lots of confusion)
(If you did make it to the bottom of these meander-y 900 or so words, I remain ever so grateful that you’re reading here with me)
(Either way, I can tell my little nervous self that I did it finally)

And I did it with you, like always.

More next week. (From “Talia Billig” and under “Minimal Change,” in case your spam filter goes ham!) (I kept it as Taali this week so your spam filter wouldn’t go ham)
t

ps: The name “taali” was always chosen because my second dad Chalo and many of my family use it as a nickname, so. You can always keep using it if we run into each other
pps: I love you.