Update: Fire

Hi folks. It’s been a rough week, and I’m only now getting my brain together enough to write this. As many of you know, my partner and I officially moved to Pasadena earlier this month, but aside from our crazy timing we have been exceptionally lucky. We are okay, and so is our house, which only needs to be cleaned and rid of smoke and ash before it is habitable. Remarkably, we had yet to move all of our possessions into it (our moving day was supposed to be Thursday) which will make the cleanup much easier. Thank you so much to all who have reached out and in particular to a handful of dear friends who have offered direct support while we are navigating this; I am so grateful to you all. Rest assured that we are okay and being well cared for.

With that said, my heart is beyond broken for the wider community and for all who lost so much more than we did—many I know personally, many thousands more I do not. I’ve seen many people eager to downplay their own personal impact; goodness knows I’ve done it myself—and that is a good impulse. A friend caught me in the act of doing so the other day and reminded me that an important part of avoiding complex PTSD is talking about your experience—so please remember that sharing your grief is in no way detracting from the losses that others have suffered. There’s room for all of us to talk about what we’ve been through and, of course, support each other in the process.

Over the past few years I’ve spent several short stretches living in Altadena and in the process fell totally in love with it, and my love of the area was a big part of what inspired me to take a big, scary leap and make our cross-country move official. Ultimately, although we looked for a place further north, we settled in Pasadena, roughly a mile from where the fire line stopped. But Altadena was the first part of LA that had started to feel like home, a place around which I based many of my emerging daily routines. Obviously, we are relatively new in town, and the truth is that there is a big part of me that feels that this loss is not mine to ‘claim’—that I hadn’t spent enough time, put down enough roots, to warrant such an acute sense of loss. Of course there are so many people who have spent whole lifetimes in this place, who have lost so much more. Still, my heart aches for what was, and what could have been.

It’s too early to know what this means for our future here—we’ve made a big leap into an ecosystem that is unknowable, and shifting quickly under our feet. It’s beautiful to see people showing up and supporting each other directly; the ugly part of all of this being that those with the most social and cultural capital (I count myself a part of that group) will have the easiest access to aid, while so many others will struggle to get enough visibility to get their needs met. I encourage everyone who reads this to dig deep and find a family to support that really needs it. Here is a link to a list I saw of vetted fundraisers that are less than 20% funded.

For those curious about my own experience, I wrote a little about it below. This is mostly because I thought it would be healing to write it all down, so feel no pressure to read it unless you really want to. I don’t think I’ll have much to offer here beyond that until I’m a bit more settled. I hope you’ll be patient with me. There’s nothing I want to do more than make music right now, but it won’t be possible for me for a little while longer.

As always, if you’d like to support me the best way to do so is to subscribe to my Patreon, but please feel no pressure to do so if it is any financial hardship for you. And if it’s a choice between this and one of the many other deeply worthy causes in the list I linked to above, please, direct your funds to them.

The above photo was taken on a particularly beautiful evening hike in Eaton Canyon this past September.

Thanks for reading, and for all of the support, it means a lot.

JW

On Tuesday January 7th I was woken up by the sound of the wind. My partner and I were sleeping on a futon mattress in the middle of the floor of our new, empty house. We had been paying rent on the house since October, a house we were thrilled to finally get a chance to really, actually live in. It was two days before our scheduled move-in day, when our possessions, including our real bed and real mattress, would arrive on a truck. We had spent the months of November and December navigating a gauntlet of logistics—a long list of hurdles too boring to actually list, work-related and tour-related, mostly—that prevented us from being able to complete the move. Our plans were made and re-made, and the final result required a four day solo cross-country drive for me, in order to arrive just in time for a six day session at Altamira Studios in Alhambra. It was an exhausting stretch, but I was thrilled to have the work, paying work doing exactly what I came here to do—make records with friends.

On that morning I noticed the wind, in part because it hissed through the palms with a particular intensity I hadn’t heard before, and because I had already seen a few warnings being circulated. I texted a few friends nervously: “help an east coaster understand the actual threat level I’m dealing with here.” Responses were lighthearted. I still felt nervous, but I didn’t want to seem like I was overreacting, and it was my last day in the studio, so I ignored my instincts and went to work. Disappearing into the work, I forgot everything on the outside. By the end of the day, we started smelling smoke. I gathered my gear and said my goodbyes.

When I got in my car and started the drive home, things escalated quickly. I have never experienced wind like I experienced that night. I was instantly inside of a hurricane made of dust. I could barely see the traffic lights, so it took me a minute to realize that they were all out. Downed limbs from trees flew by at frightening speeds. Distracted, I saw a couple of texts from my partner come through on my phone:

are you aware of this fire near Altadena?

we just lost power

Just as I was finally turning onto our street, I saw it: way too bright, way too close. My phone erupted with a screeching evacuation warning and I jumped. Panicked, I got out of the car. The wind whipped dust and ash into my mouth. There were so many things I didn’t know yet, things that I am now expert in, have spent countless hours reading about. I didn’t know how bad the smoke is for you, that you aren’t supposed to breathe the air.

My partner and I spent a handful of tense minutes evaluating the situation in the dark, headlamps on. As the minutes passed, the house smelled more and more like smoke. The choice between staying (too risky!) and heading back out into the terrifying landscape I had just managed to escape from (unthinkable!) felt impossible. I wandered around the house in the dark, in circles, trying to figure out what to pack. Fortunately, I had been essentially living out of a suitcase since September, so I had it fairly easy. At one point I saw one of my neighbors through the window, loading a suitcase into their trunk. We locked eyes for a few seconds, stunned, our headlamps shining directly into each others’ faces.

As we were walking out of the door, arms full, a friend called. There was space for us at her place, so we went. I left my car. I left a lot of things, including many of my most treasured instruments, the ones I had just shuttled across the country so carefully, bringing each of them inside every single night. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I left them.

Our drive was harrowing, but short. Bizarrely, just a few miles away in Highland Park, there was nothing. Barely any wind, just the mildest of breezes. Sitting in my friend’s living room, I shoved a protein bar into my face; I hadn’t eaten dinner. Eventually I slept, fitfully. I woke up too early to the sound of another (false?) evacuation alarm on my phone, and approximately two hundred individual texts. Now, this part—this part was actually kind of nice. Nice to feel cared for, and to have a task that continually required my attention:

yes, we are safe

we evacuated last night

house should be okay? don’t know yet honestly

thank you so much for checking in on me!

Later that morning, we got hungry. The sky was ochre in color, filthy. We walked to a cafe—outside, no masks. So foolish. I didn’t know! We ran into a friend, someone I know well, but didn’t recognize at first—my overtaxed brain sifting too slowly through its internal rolodex. At the cafe, they took our order, but soon after, something shifted and they started closing up. An employee must have seen the looks on our faces and offered us a second round of coffees, on the house. It was the first time I cried—briefly, just a few sobs, before the self-numbing fog resettled. There was a strange, communal sweetness to it all. People can be so kind.

Our landlord texted. He had stayed on the block overnight, garden hose at the ready. Incredible. According to him, the winds had died down, so we decided to make a run for the rest of our stuff, the important things we had left. The house was dirty, and reeked of smoke, but otherwise fine. We wore masks this time. We had learned by then. I got my guitars, my bass, my pedals. My car, full of ash I didn't know yet was probably toxic.

The rest of this story is a blur, and I’m still inside of it. We’ve slept in a handful of different places this week, shuttling around what possessions we have on our persons according to our instincts and wild guesses at where might be the least risky. But we are the lucky ones, we have so much support, so many different places to go. Today we heard there would be more wind, and I got scared, so I drove to the desert. I looked at the map and found the first place I could find that wasn’t pink on the map (red flag warning!) and I drove there. Tomorrow I will look at the news, and I will look at the fire map, and the air quality map, and I will go to the next place. Eventually, hopefully, I will go home.