Welcome to the latest issue of the Fog Chaser newsletter, and the final song of Volume IV (desert songs).

This marks the end of the fourth year of sharing a new instrumental song every month. While I’ve released some of these 48 songs on streaming platforms, many I haven’t (and some I probably never will). Fog Chaser has just been this kind of direct-from-me-to-you thing, and I’ve loved doing it this way. Away from streaming services, away from algorithms, away from social media. And despite that (or maybe because of that) this has grown beyond my wildest dreams — from about 30 of my family and friends at the start to now over 8,000 kind and attentive listeners from all 50 U.S. states and 115 countries around the world. I’m truly humbled.

I wrote these songs for you; doing so has been one of the most creatively rewarding experiences of my life.1 Even so, I’ve realized it’s time for me to take a step back from the newsletter, to take a meaningful break. I’m not sure what shape this newsletter will take next, but I know this is a beginning, not an ending. I just need some time to refill my cup.

Thank you for all of your support, kindness, time, and attention. Some of you have been here since day one, and I can’t express how much that means to me. I’m so grateful to everyone who has listened.

🎵 This month’s piece is in C major.2

For the first two volumes of this newsletter, I wrote songs in all 24 musical keys, moving around the “circle of fifths” in music.3 It all began in C major with a song called “Flight”, so it feels full circle to end it in C major as well.4 Volume IV also began with a guitar song in an open tuning — my first and favorite instrument — so it feels fitting to end this volume like that, too.

Open tunings have felt appropriate for this series reflecting on open desert landscapes. Recently, I tuned my guitar to another open tuning I’d never used before — FACGCE, which is kind of a go-to tuning for the Midwest emo set (à la American Football). I’m not sure why I did it; sometimes you just need a change to help you find something new.

For the first couple of weeks, it didn’t yield anything. Luckily, my 3-year-old is not daunted by different tunings. I’ve been letting him crawl all over this guitar since he was a baby (I’ve never been precious about this or any instrument with him), so, as usual, he had the guitar on the floor, and he was strumming it (hitting it?) in this open tuning and it sounded quite beautiful. So I stole it. I sat down, copied exactly what he was doing, and just played the strings open for a bit (less hit, more strum). And that’s when this one finally started to emerge. It was all built on the open chord he was playing (which happened to be an FMaj9). I guess I’ll need to give him a songwriting credit on this one.

📷 This month’s photo was taken on film in Saguaro National Park.5

Desert light / moonlight / light leak.

If you’ve been here for a while, you know that the bulk of this newsletter has drawn inspiration from my home in the Pacific Northwest. Volume IV, on the other hand, has been a reflection on deserts — an homage of sorts to the geography of where I was born and lived most of my life.

Last year, we spent a large chunk of time in my hometown of Tucson, and, while we are now back in the PNW, I’m so grateful for the time we got in the desert with my family. The desert you see in today’s photo is something I carry with me always.

Beannacht / Blessing

by John O’Donohue6

For Josie, my mother

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets into you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green
and azure blue,
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

I invite you to sit with this month’s song, photo, and poem and make them a small part of your day, whether that’s your morning ritual, afternoon break, or your evening wind-down.

As always, if you feel like it, let me know what you think in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.

Leave a comment

Thank you for being here,
Matt

Spotify • Apple Music • Bandcamp • YouTube • Website

Apologies for not getting this First Friday playlist out on the first Friday. It was a hectic week last week! Without further ado…

Welcome to the latest First Friday Playlist: 30+ minutes of uninterru…

Read more

Welcome to the latest edition of the Fog Chaser newsletter—sharing a new original instrumental song & photos every month. (previous issue: what’s in front of me)

Hi there friends. How are you? Are you holding up okay? How is it March? What is happening? You know something, my kid turns 3 next month. Holy moly.

Anyway, turns out that this is the eleventh song of Volume IV, which means we’re very close to the end of this chapter. Four years of sharing a new piece of music with you every month — the songs, the photos, the poems and quiet mornings spent writing to you from wherever I happened to be.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately. What this project has given me. Where it started — someone trying to heal after two brain injuries and learning how to compose music, sharing what I learned with you along the way — and where it’s taken me.

Next month, two films I scored are premiering at festivals. I’m collaborating with writers and other artists. I couldn’t have imagined any of this when I sent that first newsletter in 2021.

I don’t want to get ahead of myself — I’ll share some more reflections next month. But I wanted to say: thank you. For being here. For listening. For making this quiet little corner of the internet feel like it matters. It has mattered so much to me, and I hope it has for you, too.

🎵 This month’s piece is in F-sharp major.1

This month’s song started differently than anything I’ve shared with you before.

I was collaborating with the writer — she had written a poem called “Choose Yourself, Again” and we decided to pair it with music. But rather than composing something separately and layering it in later, I sat down at the piano, pressed play on her reading of the poem, and just responded — to her cadence, her pauses, her emotion. I wrote as I listened.

What came out has these loose ebbs and flows that I never would have arrived at on my own. The structure follows her voice and words even though you won’t hear it here — this is the instrumental version, the music on its own. But her presence is all over it.

The whole process felt less like composing and more like painting — I had a palette of samples and sounds, and I’d add a texture here, a color there, the way you might with a brush or a palette knife. Piano as the foundation, with these little elements appearing and disappearing around it.

It’s a different way of working for me, and I loved it. Alex and I are planning to do more of these together down the road.

You can read Alex’s poem below, and hear the full poem + music version on her Substack here. Her new book, The Company We Keep, is also available for pre-order here.

Gratitude Journal

Poem 02: Choose Yourself, Again

Words cannot express how excited I am to share this piece. I collaborated with Matt of FogChaser to bring more life to this poem. Matt is an American composer, songwriter, and producer. Inspired by the forests and mountains of his home in the Pacific Northwest, Fog Chaser writes cinematic, neoclassical music that incorporates acoustic, orchestral, and electronic…

Read more

2 years ago · 504 likes · 64 comments · Alex Elle and Fog Chaser

📷 This month’s photo was taken in Big Bend National Park.2

Choose Yourself, Again

by Alex Elle3

One day, I woke up singing a song I didn’t know.
Saying prayer I never prayed.
Holding seeds I’d never sown.
Yet—the lyrics rolled off my lips like love,
like my mother tongue.

Like the first language I’d ever known.
It was all so strange.
Like a shadow in the sunlight,
like having two left feet...

Maybe the ancestors taught me in my dreams, I thought.
Because my voice wasn’t mine. I felt unfamiliar to myself.
My heart was heavy with a new type of wisdom—the wisdom of women
who chose themselves long before we knew how to call it by name.

Commit to yourself, I hummed—
the mantra slipping from my lips like honey from a spoon.
Slow. Heavy. Impatient on its descent.
Commit to the soft & sacred work of your joy.
It is your birthright to hold yourself,
to cradle who you’ve always wanted to be.
You are worthy of your own protection,
even in the face of your own rejection.

Stop looking away.
Learn to take yourself by the hand.
You aren’t out of reach.
Your healing is the rebellion.
Your joy is the freedom song.
You deserve every piece of liberation
that you ache for.

What you’re worth is no longer up for debate.
Carve your way out of your old ways.
Who you used to be is no longer a haven or a home.
Stand in the sunlight of your becoming,
where shadows dissolve, and your truth remains.
Hold every ache tenderly, but don’t let it anchor you.
Sow the seeds you hold.
Walk forward—one audacious step, then another.

This is the season of your blooming.
This is the season you claim as your own.
May it be so,
and may it always be.

One day, I woke up singing a song I didn’t know.
Saying prayer I never prayed.
Holding seeds I’d never sown.
Yet—the lyrics rolled off my lips like love,
like my mother tongue.
Like the first language I’d ever known.
It was all so strange.

To choose myself yet again.

I invite you to sit with this month’s song, photo, and poem and make them a small part of your day, whether that’s your morning ritual, afternoon break, or your evening wind-down.

As always, if you feel like it, let me know what you think in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.

Leave a comment

• Two films I scored are premiering at film festivals next month:

  • The Elk — dir. — Portland Panorama Film Festival, April 18 — More info + tickets.

  • The Seeds of Peace — dir. David-Paul Hedberg — Ashland Independent Film Festival — April 23-26. Exact date and time TBD. More info.

• April 3, 2026: First Friday Playlist (curated listening from my catalog)—check out March’s playlist here.

Thank you for being here,
Matt

Welcome to the latest First Friday Playlist: 30+ minutes of uninterrupted instrumental music from the Fog Chaser catalog, exclusively for FC+ members.

Just hit play, and come back whenever you want.

→

Read more

Welcome to the latest edition of the Fog Chaser newsletter—sharing a new original instrumental song & photos every month. (previous issue: sleeping flowers)

Our screens have a remarkable capacity for collapsing distance. This can be a good thing—I can connect with family and friends with ease, even though we live thousands of miles apart. I can reach you with these songs every month.

It can also be not so good—when the chaotic noise of the world reaches into our private lives and disrupts our peace of mind.

Many of us want to be connected, to be informed. I wonder: at what point does our intimate awareness of far-flung events become unhelpful, even harmful?

Just an endless scroll of things we can’t touch and can’t change.

But what’s actually in front of you?

The table. The window. A cold glass of water. The person across the room. The weather outside your door. The hint of woodsmoke carried across the night air. The neighbor you haven’t talked to in a while.

More and more, I’m finding that I can really only focus on and care about what’s in front of me—my community, what’s within my sphere of influence. Whether that’s taking my time when I’m making the morning coffee, or playing cars with my toddler.

This month’s song is a reminder—to myself as much as anyone—that the real world is still there, right in front of us, all the time.

🎵 This month’s piece is in G major(ish).1

📷 This month’s photos were taken in the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts.2

You Reading This, Be Ready

by William Stafford3

Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life –

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

I invite you to sit with this month’s song, photos, and poem and make them a small part of your day, whether that’s your morning ritual, afternoon break, or your evening wind-down.

As always, if you feel like it, let me know what you think in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.

Leave a comment

» Songs from other Februaries:

• March 6, 2026: First Friday Playlist (curated listening from my catalog)—check out February’s playlist here.

Thank you for being here,
Matt

Welcome to the latest First Friday Playlist: 30+ minutes of uninterrupted instrumental music from the Fog Chaser catalog, exclusively for FC+ members.

Just hit play, and come back whenever you want.

→

Read more

Welcome to the latest edition of the Fog Chaser newsletter—sharing a new original instrumental song & photos every month. (previous issue: reliquary)

I usually share one poem to accompany each song I send, but this month calls for two. Two poems — 63 years and a continent apart — that feel in conversation with one another.

Both center on the notion of nature as balm; I’d go as far as to say these are some OG “touching grass” poems, and I think they’re especially worth our attention now.1

They ask: “What do we do when it’s all too much?”

What do you do when you find the “world is too much” with you, as Wordsworth puts it? How do you find your footing and stay grounded?

I lifted the phrase ‘sleeping flowers’ out of that Wordsworth poem; I love what it evokes. Some flowers sleep at night, like daisies and tulips, and there are some that only open at night, like the night-blooming cereus (Queen of the Night) that you find in the desert.

But as I write to you during this particularly cold January, I’m also thinking of all the dormant bulbs and seeds hidden under meadows, the wildflowers sheltered and slumbering beneath my feet, waiting for those reliable cues from nature that will compel them to emerge again.

The sleeping flowers give me something to hold onto. Their need for rest gives me comfort, and encourages me to rest, too. They are all promise, all hope — and we need that now more than ever.

🎵 This month’s piece is in D major / B minor.2

For more piano songs from this volume, check out reliquary, woodsmoke, and shadow of a cloud.

📷 This month’s photo was taken in Big Bend National Park in West Texas.3

The World Is Too Much With Us

by William Wordsworth4

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer

by Walt Whitman5

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure
them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause
in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

I invite you to sit with this month’s song, photo, and poems and make them a small part of your day, whether that’s your morning ritual, afternoon break, or your evening wind-down.

As always, if you feel like it, let me know what you think in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.

Leave a comment

• February 6, 2026: First Friday Playlist (curated listening from my catalog)—check out January’s playlist here.

Thank you for being here,
Matt

Welcome to the latest First Friday Playlist: 30+ minutes of uninterrupted instrumental music from the Fog Chaser catalog, exclusively for FC+ members.

Just hit play, and come back whenever you want.

→

Read more

Welcome to the latest edition of the Fog Chaser newsletter—sharing a new original instrumental song & photos every month. (previous issue: woodsmoke)

The Sonoran Desert is full of relics: the bones of saguaros decaying in the sand, their wooden ribs bleached by decades of sun. Arrowheads unearthed in dry creek beds. Paths worn smooth into ancient rock by centuries of footsteps.

A reliquary is just a container for relics, those things that matter because of what they’ve held or who they’ve touched. The desert itself feels like one massive reliquary to me, holding so much of what came before.

I wrote this month’s piece originally for my friend ’s newsletter Death & Birds. Chloe is an end-of-life doula and writes about what she calls “life’s most significant transitions”—the liminal spaces between one state and another, the threshold where things change form but don’t quite disappear. Listening back as the year winds down, it felt like this song belonged here with you, too.

Maybe memory itself is a reliquary, a container for fragments of what once mattered, what still matters. Luminarias lining dirt roads on Christmas Eve. My brothers and I roaming the desert for hours. My mom baking pies or wrapping gifts in front of the fireplace. Hanging lights with my dad. Watching for my grandparents’ headlights through the fog on Christmas morning. Midnight mass at Saint Philip’s down the hill, that Spanish Colonial church on the corner of two (formerly) dirt roads, its bells ringing out across the basin. A full table when everyone was still here.

My dad. My grandparents. My mom’s brother. My dad’s brother. All gone now.

We carry these relics, sometimes without even knowing we’re doing it. The slowing down of the world in December. The gathering. The light through winter windows. Everything is transitory; we know that. But the relics, these reminders—whether physical or in memory only—give me comfort.

🎵 This month’s piece is in D minor.1

📷 This month’s photos were taken in the Sonoran Desert.2

Separation

by W.S. Merwin3

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.

I invite you to sit with this month’s song, photos, and poem and make them a small part of your day, whether that’s your morning ritual, afternoon break, or your evening wind-down.

As always, if you feel like it, let me know what you think in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.

Wishing you and yours a quiet solstice this weekend, and a peaceful holiday season. Thank you for being here this year.

Leave a comment

» Songs from Decembers past:

• January 2, 2026: First Friday Playlist (curated listening from my catalog)—check out December’s playlist here.

Thank you for being here,
Matt

Welcome to your (first) First Friday Playlist.

35+ minutes of uninterrupted instrumental music from the Fog Chaser catalog, exclusively for FC+ members.

Just hit play, and come back whenever you want.

Read more

In my efforts to pull my friend out of his continued sabbatical from filmmaking, he agreed to make this beautiful video for my song Downstream—I wanted to share it with you.

Watch on YouTube: Downstream - Official Video

Check out more of Taegan’s work: One Word

Thanks for watching—and thanks to Taegan for making this.

Best,
Matt

Welcome to the latest edition of the Fog Chaser newsletter—sharing a new original instrumental song & photos every month. (previous issue: weathering)

I’m not big on acknowledging my birthday, but it feels weird not to tell you that, yeah, today’s my birthday.

Okay, moving on.

Finishing another lap around the sun has me feeling reflective, and, honestly, very grateful.

November has always been my favorite month in the desert. The heat finally breaks and the hot, dry air gives way to a fresh crispness that reminds you of something you can’t quite put your finger on—another time, another place, a dream? It’s the time of year when the scent of woodsmoke carries on the air, when the shorter days settle a darkened hush over the landscape.

I grew up in the lower foothills of the Catalina Mountains in Tucson, Arizona. We were perched at a slight elevation, atop a hill—the sparkling town below, the bulky mountains behind. We were just high up enough to catch infrequent drifts of snow in the winter—very rare occasions, though I do remember one magical white Christmas morning, circa 1988—and high enough to wake up to a layer of frost on the ground most mornings, starting in November.

Even as a kid, I was very aware of the slowing of things around me. I relished that time of year and that feeling. I still do, though, frustratingly, the slowing seems harder to come by as an adult.

My brothers and I would roam the valley behind our house until dusk. We explored the open spaces around our house, ambling down hillsides, wandering through dry creek beds, marveling at the novelty of being able to see our breath. It felt like a storybook, but instead of the deep dark woods and foxes, we had towering cactus and javelinas.

We would return home to a warm meal and a crackling fire.

This was a sanctuary.

My dad passed away six years ago, but he’s everywhere in these memories. He never got to meet my son, or know me as a father myself, or hear the songs I would write. And that’s a heavy loss, for sure. But today I’m just grateful for the world my parents built for us—they gave us the feeling that our life was the world; that the world was our life. Does that make sense?

In the end, the scent of woodsmoke doesn’t stay long. You catch it on the air for a moment, and then it’s gone. But every November, when the cold comes back, so do the memories.

So yeah. Today I feel grateful for a lot of things and a lot of people. Like you, for example. I’m so happy that you’ve chosen to be here, and honored that you make space for these songs.

This month’s song is a thank you.

🎵 This month’s piece is in B major.1

A return to the piano this month. Sometimes I find a little motif that I just want to play over and over, which is what happened here, with a few variations.2 If you’ve been listening for a while, you’ll know how much I love this dang flute sound. I’ve used it so many times at this point, I think I might need to back away one of these days. But for now, here’s some more. I hope you enjoy.

For more piano songs from this volume, check out shadow of a cloud.

📷 This month’s photos were taken in the Sonoran Desert.3

Sonnet 73: That time of year thou mayst in me behold

by William Shakespeare

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

I invite you to sit with this month’s song, photos, and poem and make them a small part of your day, whether that’s your morning ritual, afternoon break, or your evening wind-down.

As always, if you feel like it, let me know what you think in the comments. I’d love to hear from you. Any other November birthdays here? Any other birthdays today?

Leave a comment

🎂 To mark another lap around the sun, I’m launching monthly curated playlists for FC+ members—on the first Friday of every month, paid subscribers will get a 30-60 minute playlist of seamless listening, carefully sequenced from my complete catalog of 50+ songs—including unreleased tracks you won’t find anywhere else.

• For current FC+ members: Your first playlist arrives Friday, December 5.

• Want in? $30 for your first year (reg. $45) — ends Sunday, November 23.

🎵 Downstream and Light Through The Valley are available now on all platforms.

Thank you for being here,
Matt

The premise of the newsletter is simple — once every month I email you an original instrumental song, paired with an accompanying visual of my own that inspired or complements the song (a photo, 35mm or digital, or a video).

That’s it. Since 2021, this simple format has reached hundreds of thousands of listeners worldwide.

My hope is that these monthly missives give you something that helps you pause for a moment. Fog Chaser is music for woods-wandering, couch-sitting, yoga-posing, computer-staring, dog-walking, art-making folks who are seeking a peaceful soundtrack amidst turbulent times. Not quite ambient, not quite classical or neoclassical. This music lives somewhere in between.

Subscribe now

how to listen.

12 months :: 12 songs :: every year

To start listening, the simplest thing to do is to head to one of my posts—each one has an audio player with that month’s song. All you need to do is hit play.

Here are some personal favorite posts/tracks from the archive:

• Weathering | Vol. IV, No. 6

• Turnings | Vol. III, No. 9

• Cathedral Hush | Vol. II, No. 11

• At Smith Creek | Vol. I, No. 6

The next thing to do is sign up so my next song lands in your inbox:

Subscribe now

extended listening.

Many subscribers want extended listening sessions for deep focus work, meditation, or winding down at the end of long days. That’s why paid subscribers get:

• MONTHLY PLAYLISTS: On the first Friday of each month, I curate and send a seamless listening experience drawn from my entire catalog – including unreleased tracks you won’t find anywhere else. Ad-free, carefully sequenced, delivered right to your inbox.

• FULL ARCHIVE ACCESS: Browse and download all 50+ songs from past newsletters, plus exclusive bonus content (videos, demos, behind-the-scenes posts).

Subscribe now

Alternatively, you can:

• Find some of my music on streaming platforms, like Spotify, Apple Music, or Amazon Music.

• Click around the newsletter archive to listen to individual songs.

• Explore my growing collection of curated playlists on YouTube.

For a complete catalog guide, visit the Listen page →

thank you.

My name is Matt, and I’m the composer/musician behind Fog Chaser. My subscribers get every song I write first, well before I release anything anywhere else (some songs never get released beyond the newsletter). Thanks for being here.

What started in 2021 as an email to friends with my latest musical dabblings now reaches hundreds of thousands of people worldwide through my film scores, media collaborations, and this monthly newsletter.

With 1M+ streams on Spotify alone, Fog Chaser has become a core part of my musical identity, and I’m so grateful to get the chance to write music and share it with you all here first. And while this project has grown beyond my wildest imagination over the years, it all started here, as a newsletter.

My hope is that these songs can accompany you however you need them, whether that’s to inspire or to soothe. I hope my songs can bring you some focus and calm and comfort in an increasingly chaotic world.

For more on why I started the newsletter and what I’m trying achieve, visit my ‘About’ page. To get a new song delivered to your inbox every month, subscribe below.

New songs are free for everyone. Paid subscribers get monthly curated playlists, full archive access to 50+ songs, exclusive bonus content, unlimited downloads, and my sincere gratitude for your support—thank you!

Subscribe now

Note: I’m not sure if I need to say this, but for what it’s worth, I never use AI to create my music or for anything related to my music or this newsletter. Everything here—every song, every image, every sentence—is human-made.

Welcome to the Wellspring, where I share a few of my recent inspirations. I hope you find something that inspires you, too. (click here for last month’s edition)

listening to.

Read more

Welcome to the latest edition of the Fog Chaser newsletter—sharing a new original instrumental song & photos every month. (previous issue: equinox)1

Speaking of music: A song I shared here last year, ‘Downstream’, is now streaming everywhere—give it a listen.

And mark your calendars: another of last year’s tracks, ‘Light Through The Valley’, drops on 11/6. You can pre-save it on Spotify now to hear it the moment it’s live, which really helps boost the release and support my work. Thank you!

October, Big Bend. Fog settles into the canyons and erases the trails ahead. You walk anyway, trusting (hoping?) the path will reveal itself.

Autumn in the desert is all weathering—wind carving stone, temperature swings cracking rock, everything made more beautiful because of what it endures, not in spite of it. According to National Geographic, “No rock on Earth is hard enough to resist the forces of weathering and erosion.” No human is, either.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how we weather the things we face, the things we endure. I’ve been thinking about my amazing wife as we weather a new chapter together as parents to our delightful 2.5 year old—the heart-stopping moments, the small wounds, the immense joys, the leaning on each other.

There’s a moment in this month’s song where you can hear her laughing, tucked quietly into the mix, from a recording I took of us sitting around a campfire (from our pre-kid era).

The love I feel in my heart these days overflows; sometimes it overwhelms. It’s deafening, and terrifying, and life-giving. Day-to-day it shows up in subtle, quiet ways: holding ice to a lip, kissing a scraped knee, crouching down for a close listen and eye contact, walking foggy trails together, trusting each other through what we can’t yet see.

Gregory Orr’s poem “Father’s Song,” below, captures this perfectly:

“Round and round; bow and kiss. I try to teach her caution; she tries to teach me risk.”

Parenthood. Partnership. The weathering of it all.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to send these songs to you every month. Thank you for being here today.

🎵 This month’s piece is in E major.2

Some guitar, winds, keys, and the laugh that has given me a reason for the last 15 years.

For more guitar songs from this volume, check out through the tall grass, a bright & shining place, and equinox.

📷 This month’s photos were taken in Big Bend National Park.3

Father’s Song

by Gregory Orr4

Yesterday, against admonishment,
my daughter balanced on the couch back,
fell and cut her mouth.

Because I saw it happen I knew
she was not hurt, and yet
a child’s blood’s so red
it stops a father’s heart.

My daughter cried her tears;
I held some ice
against her lip.
That was the end of it.

Round and round; bow and kiss.
I try to teach her caution;
she tries to teach me risk.

I invite you to sit with this month’s song, photos, and poem and make them a small part of your day, whether that’s your morning ritual, afternoon break, or your evening wind-down.

As always, if you feel like it, let me know what you think in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.

Leave a comment

🔒 For paid subscribers:

• Wed., Oct. 27: the wellspring, a monthly round-up of my inspirations (check out last month’s issue)

🎵 Official releases:

• In case you missed it, Downstream is available now on all platforms — listen here. Light Through The Valley comes out on 11/6 — help me out and pre-save it on Spotify.

📺 New On YouTube:

• I’ve been building something new on YouTube for extended listening—1-hour+ ambient versions perfect for focus and flow. This week: “Elysia” and “Wao,” two tracks from the Oblivion soundtrack I wrote for . Subscribe for more.

Until then, I’ll see you in the comments.

-Matt

Welcome to the Wellspring, where I share a few of my recent inspirations. I hope you find something that inspires you, too. (click here for last month’s edition)

listening to.

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Welcome to the latest edition of the Fog Chaser newsletter—sharing a new original instrumental song & photos every month. (previous issue: night sketch)

🎵 Speaking of music: A song I shared here last year, Downstream, will be released on streaming platforms on 10/2. If you have 30 seconds, pre-saving it on Spotify helps boost the release and support my work. Thank you!

Pre-save 'Downstream' on Spotify

🎵 This month’s piece is in E major.1

I've been carrying this song for over a decade, shelving and reworking it countless times. I wrote dozens of accompanying parts, sections with lyrics and vocals, elaborate arrangements—but could never figure out how I wanted it to go. Like so many creative projects, it became too precious in my head to ever feel like I could finish it.

But sometimes the best and most honest thing you can do is let something be what it wants to be. So here it is in its simplest form—just an A and B section in equal measure.2

In a couple of weeks we’ll experience the September equinox—one of only two times each year when the earth is tilted neither toward nor away from the sun. I’m no astronomer, but I like to think of these biannual shifts as brief moments of global equilibrium. Day and night all around the world will be more or less the same length before we tip into our respective seasonal shifts.

There’s something fitting about releasing this long-held song now, in equal parts like the balanced day and night of the approaching equinox. A moment of pause before we move toward new things.

For more guitar songs from this volume, see through the tall grass and a bright & shining place.

📷 This month’s photos were taken in the desert of West Texas.3

I invite you to sit with this month’s song, photos, and poem and make them a small part of your day, whether that’s your morning ritual, afternoon break, or your evening wind-down.

As always, if you feel like it, let me know what you think in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.

Thank you for being here.

Leave a comment

Listen to more Fog Chaser

Explore past issues

Complex Autumnal

by Carolyn Kizer4

I let the smoke out of the windows
And lift the hair from my ears.
A season of birds and reaping,
A level of light appears.

Sun lies in urns on the terrace
Like the cat on the chimney. Near
Fall stirs the curtains, narrow

Ribbons of air nip my fingers.
Warm under foot, the carpet
Reminds my skin I am here.

All things begin together:
Weather and love. The ear
Hears the earth turn; we make an adjustment

To that motion: the dip of the sphere
Into autumn, and rustling music
As the leaves are shaken away...

All things begin together,
Here, as I shake, at the day’s
Beginning, with pleasure and fear,

Numb with night's dip and turning
When I weathered love-in-a-sphere,
Like the siamese cat on the chimney

Mysterious, now, as a vessel,
An ark, or a precious container,
She is smoothing, sunning her fur.

I stand at the window and shiver
As the smoke wreathes out of my hair.
All things begin together:

Weather and love and fear
And the color of leaves, and pleasure.
The waxwings come to the ash trees
That rustle until they are bare.

The birds will wing from the weather,
While I stand, still as the harvest,
With the sound of the fall in the air.

🎵 Official releases:

• Downstream releases on 10/2—help me out and pre-save it on Spotify.

Pre-save 'Downstream' on Spotify

📺 YouTube updates:

I've been building out the FC YouTube channel with instrumental playlists of my work, like Creative Flow and Deep Focus, and extended versions of certain songs, like Foreign Morning. Upcoming additions include some “pomodoro” length playlists to help with shorter spurts of focus. Subscribe to the channel for these listening experiences you won't find anywhere else.

Visit Fog Chaser's YouTube Channel

🔒 For paid subscribers:

• Wed., September 27: the wellspring, a monthly round-up of my inspirations (check out last month’s issue)

• I’ll definitely record and share a performance video of this song at some point.

Subscribe now

Until then, I’ll see you in the comments.

Welcome to the Wellspring, where I share a few things that are inspiring me lately. I hope you find something that inspires you, too. (click here for last month’s edition of the Wellspring)

listening to.

Read more

Welcome to the latest edition of the Fog Chaser newsletter—sharing a new original instrumental song + photos every month. (previous issue: shadow of a cloud)

Hazy desert nights, soft with the dissipating heat. Creosote, wood smoke, and orange blossom float out across the wide desert basin. Late night drives through dark open spaces, a rush of unexpected cool air through the window as you dip into the interrupted path of a death-dry creek bed, staring out into headlighted horizons underneath a canopy of stars. Looming mountains like islands in the sky. Expanse. Only expanse.

A couple of weeks ago I found out that an old friend of mine was in the hospital and that the prognosis wasn’t good.

It had probably been 20 years since I had last spoken with John; I didn’t even have his number. I got it from another friend and texted him. He called me immediately. The gap fell away.

There was a pivotal time in both of our lives when we were inseparable, bound together by a love of music, weed, and a general post-high school malaise that we really didn’t understand but were navigating together. Jobs, responsibilities, ambitions, aspirations, confusions, frustrations, fears, failures.

We spoke briefly on the phone, he animatedly from his hospital bed, telling me he felt great. I didn’t know what was wrong with him — I still don’t know what ailed him. We didn’t get into it. We reminisced. “Remember the time we crashed right into the back of that car?” Of course, I said.

He told me how many of our old friends had been reaching out to him, visiting him, and how happy he was to hear from so many people. I was glad, but it also broke my heart. Where had we all gone? Scattered to the wind like dandelion seeds. The call was short. He had to go, the doctor had come.

I didn’t hear from John again after we spoke. He passed away just two weeks later. He was 41 years old.

Even though John and I had lost touch over the years, as happens, I often wondered how he was; did he ever get out of the fog and dark that shrouded us those years we spent wandering, aimless, stumbling through Tucson, lost. Stoned. Alone, but together. We turned inward, each of us for different reasons, but we knew the other was right there. Our paths ran parallel at this crucial time, until they veered and took us our different ways.

John was hilarious, smart. He was such a good hang. He loved music, especially hip hop, was a good rapper himself, and we’d spend hours listening to rap together. Mind you, this was the era of Eminem’s rise, which, for a white kid from nowhere who was also an aspiring rapper as he was, was a promising time. John loved Slim Shady, and he loved diving into the lyrical gymnastics of the great rappers of that era. He appreciated a smart turn of phrase, a witty remark, a razor-sharp dis. I also remember him having an absurdly extensive DVD collection. He was enthusiastic, always up for an adventure. He helped get me one of my first jobs as a dishwasher at an assisted living place where he was a cook. A lot of our friends worked there as servers, but I chose to work in the back washing dishes because I could have a radio and be left alone. No one bothered the dishwasher.

There was a stretch of time where I started referring to him as the “Boss” — he just had this way about him. We all sort of orbited around his aura, his charisma. John had a way of making you feel good about who you were; he made you feel like your jokes were funny, your insights deep.

For a time, he and our friend Addam had a house together, which, since we were all just out of high school, gave us a lot of freedom we had previously lacked. I think we spent more time in that house than anywhere else. Fittingly, their house was on a street called Pastime; it certainly became mine. Those days are a bit of a blur now, but I can easily cast my mind’s eye back to those long desert nights that felt like they’d never end; the endless parade of all my favorite people circulating through that house: Damon, Tyndall, Mikey, Thanh, Noah, Griff, Nate, Brian, Jon, Evan, Jenna, Chelsea, Jamie, Shelby, Jodi, Crystal. So many others, pulled into this orbit. Too many to name. It was a revolving door. A party on what seemed like almost every night. Memory is so unreliable — was this a summer? A whole year? I may have been in a dark place personally, but those people kept me going. Especially John.

🎵 This month’s piece is in D major.1

I wrote this one for JDeezy and for what he gave me all those years ago: friendship, companionship, a shoulder to lean on, someone to look up to. In some ways, I miss those days. From here I can see that it was only a moment in time, a fragment, and we can’t go back. None of us can. But lately I find myself dipping into these memories like that road through the creek bed, feeling the temperature change ever so slightly.

John, I hope you like this little groove and, wherever you are, get to lay down a little flow. RIP my friend.

📷 This month’s photo was taken at dusk in the Sonoran Desert.2

I invite you to sit with this month’s song, photo, and poem and make them a small part of your day, whether that’s your morning ritual, afternoon break, or your evening wind-down.

As always, if you feel like it, let me know what you think in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.

Thank you for being here.

Leave a comment

Listen to more Fog Chaser

Explore past issues

blessing the boats

by Lucille Clifton

(at St. Mary’s)

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

🔒 For paid subscribers:

• Wed., August 27: the wellspring, a monthly round-up of my inspirations (check out last month’s issue)

• Maybe another video at some point

Subscribe now

Until then, I’ll see you in the comments.

Welcome to the Wellspring, where I share the things that are filling my cup lately. I love sharing my sources of inspiration with you and I hope you find something that inspires you, too. (click here for last month’s edition of the Wellspring)

▹ listening to.

Read more