Poly at the holidays

One of the adorkable Polyamorous Platypus cards and items

It's that jumping time of year when multi-partnershipping often means exponential multi-scheduling and family-of-origin drama management. And every year, up comes lots of good advice about all this from the polyam community.

But first, a heart-warmer: 

●  I wasn’t allowed to celebrate holidays growing up. Now, I revel in hosting my queer, polyamorous family. This appeared in The Lily ("stories central to the everyday lives of millennial women"), the Washington Post's reimagining of the 19th-century feminist paper of the same name. (Nov. 23, 2021)

By Patricia Fancher

I’m preparing to celebrate Thanksgiving as I have for the past several years, with my extended queer, polyamorous family. My husband will make Norwegian cardamom buns, and his girlfriend wants to try a new Brussels sprouts recipe. My husband’s girlfriend’s boyfriend is committed to roasting a duck and making eggnog that no one else will drink. Her husband isn’t going to cook. We’ll make him wash the dishes.

The Lily

...Polyamory is a nontraditional relationship structure where people have multiple relationships that can be sexual, romantic, casual, platonic or some mixture of all of these things. Each person practices polyam differently. My polyamory takes the word rather literally. I have many loves. While my entire polyam family celebrates our togetherness in nontraditional ways, for me, holidays are especially unconventional because I was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness growing up in the 1990s in South Carolina.

...When I was 20, I was excommunicated and completely cut off from my family. The command to “quit touching the unclean thing” extends to people, even family. When I had sex, I became the unclean thing that my community, even my mother, refused to touch. The part of me that was broken when my family of origin rejected me gets a little closer to being whole each time I celebrate holidays with my chosen family.

This year, my crush of more than a year is bringing the cranberry sauce. They are now my dear friend, writing partner and occasionally more than a friend. Last year, I found joy during the pandemic when I fell in love with a nurse, and I celebrated all the locked-down holidays with him and his wife. Our romantic relationship ended as the world shifted toward normal, but our love still brings me joy. His wife will make multiple pies in my kitchen on Thursday....

The value of our polyam family isn’t in its stability, but rather that we choose each other even when we change, relationships change, feelings change. The power is in the choosing. There’s no obligation. I can only offer invitation and acceptance.

Next year, our Thanksgiving guests may be different. My ex, the nurse, and his wife may choose to visit family in Colorado. My husband’s girlfriend may prioritize another partner or her family. These choices are ours to make. For me, the beauty is in making space for us to gather and also making space for each person to make their own choices.

Polyam family is like any family. We get our hearts broken. We have petty fights and legitimate conflicts. We complain about one another from time to time. We don’t choose one another because we’re perfect. Chosen family means choosing complex humans, including our faults and struggles. It’s vulnerable to build a family with deeply flawed humans. But there’s no other option.

After a childhood spent learning to say no, deny pleasure and abstain from anything possibly unholy, I’ve learned to revel in life’s abundant pleasures. My polyam family amazes me with each of their capacities for love. It’s not easy to be vulnerable. We open ourselves, share love, swim in pleasure, sometimes get hurt.

...My community reminds me that the scarcity mind-set that tells us we can only have one love, that we must compete for our lover’s attention, is a lie. There’s always an abundance of love if you have the courage to be vulnerable. And the courage to share.

●  These people know what they're doing: My husband, partner, and I are polyamorous and live with our 2 kids. Holiday scheduling with all our families can be hectic, but we make it work. (Insider, Dec. 5).

Ty, Jennifer, Daniel

By Jennifer Martin

I'm polyamorous, and I live with my two partners, Daniel and Ty, and our two kids, D and H. When it comes to the holidays, we try to take a fair and equitable position and see as many relatives as possible. It takes some finesse and a lot of scheduling, but we do it.

With two partners, you have two sets of in-laws, which means instead of juggling two places to go for holidays, we have to consider three places — or more, depending on how those relatives are dispersed. ... I luckily enjoy planning. We try to ensure that our holidays go as smoothly as possible, especially for our children. But we have limited space, limited time, and limited income. So how do we do it?

Our holiday schedule.... 

Read on.

 

●  Navigating Holiday Events with Multiple Partners is a practical step-by-step from Dee Morgan of the PolyamProud group (Oct. 17):

...For all the many holiday movies, there’s not a lot that deals with this particular scenario: talking to whomever’s hosting that big meal about how to bring not just partner A, but also partners B and C (and possibly partner A’s other partner as well…). Or how to gracefully decline seeing family, because they were rude and unwelcoming last time. Or how to arrange your own celebration with all the people you love, and that they love. Or how to navigate a celebration day alone, as your partner has prior obligations with their other partner…

For many polyamorous people, or those in open relationships/ consensually non-monogamous, the lack of models and stories that aren’t couple- or monogamy-oriented has meant working all this out for the first time.... What’s suggested here may provide a starting point for things to consider and to discuss.

1: What do you want? Given an ideal world, what would you like to do on the holiday days? Are there people you’d like to have a meal with – or spend time with at an event? Would you prefer to hang out at home and play boardgames and read books, or to go to the beach and surf? Is it important to you to see your partners on particular days, or simply at some point? Consider this, and then…

2: Talk to your partners. Do any of them have plans already? ....This is where shared calendars can come in handy, as people try to mesh their desires with the practicalities of time limitations.

3: Are there any potential conflict areas? This could be wanting (and able) to take multiple partners to a family event, but the family not being aware of the importance of each person to you. Consider if this is a situation where it’s worth being upfront and bearing the possible judgement, or if you can stand a day where yourself or a partner is considered ‘just a flatmate’ or ‘just a friend’. There’s no right or wrong answer here; it’s about what’s the least stressful for those involved. ...

Even if everyone in the family knows that you’re polyam, and who your partners are, there can still be awkwardness. Are you comfortable holding two partners’ hands on the sofa? Is your great-grandmother comfortable with it? ... (This is an ongoing issue for queer people as well, with actions that are ‘fine’ for a heteronormative couple taking on more ‘sexualised’ overtones, even when functionally identical.)

Another potential conflict area is a partner or metamour feeling unacknowledged during discussions, or that their plans aren’t considered as important as your own. ... If you’re in a hierarchical relationship, make sure your secondary’s plans aren’t subsumed into your own – they have rights and needs as well.

4: Consider your budget. ... Different people and households have different discretionary spending, and this can be brought into sharp relief when exchanging gifts. 

5: Alone for the holidays? ...Perhaps a phone call or video chat can be arranged. If you’re seeing family or friends, you can make note of funny or memorable experiences that you can share with your partners later (as they can share theirs with you). If you’re staying home, be gentle with yourself, and remember you’re loved and cared for – these are people who appreciate having you in their life. ...

Morgan includes quite a bibliography of further articles. Go browse 'em:

●  Family Holidays for Non-Anchor Partners, by Phoebe Philips

Give your Relatives the Benefit of the Doubt. If your dad has to ask you yet again who this new person is – even though you have been dating them for the past three years and your dad just met for the fourth time at your birthday party a couple of months ago -- try to stifle the dramatic sigh and explain kindly that you are dating this person, and yes, your/their spouse knows about it. Polyamory can be a foreign and confusing concept for many people....

Unless they are obviously trying to be rude or hurtful, try to cultivate patience and forgiveness for family members who are slow to grasp the true nature of your relationships.

Have an Escape Plan. When the benefit of the doubt has been stretched to its breaking point... be sure you can get away. Whether it is taking a walk, making a grocery store run, or returning to the sanctuary of a hotel room....

●  Poly Survival Guide for the Holidays, by Kathy Labriola

...Tip Five: Whatever amount of holiday events and activities you THINK you can do, decide to do LESS than that! ...

Tip Six: Don’t make the holidays into a test, because if you do, your partners will fail that test. ...

●  All I Want for Christmas… Is You, You, You, and You, by Marianna Zelichenko

Step 1 or I should say Step 0, in making holidays work in a polyamorous constellation, is to get all expectations out in the open....

●  Polyamory at the Holidays, by Laura Boyle

...How comfortable is your polycule spending time together? If you’re a very kitchen-table oriented polycule, some holiday questions will be simpler. If everyone is comfortable being in the same spaces, and there are multiple options of spaces, it opens planning way up....

●  In Polyamorous holidays: When you’re the secondary, Noël Figart takes a reader's letter:

...He’s told at least his mother that he’s dating someone, but she has essentially bent over backwards to ignore our relationship. Although we don’t subscribe to an emotional hierarchy, there’s still the functional/social hierarchy of him living with her, being accepted by his family, etc., and holidays really seem to heighten that glitch in the matrix.

My own biological family lives too far away for me to spend time with. ...

●  Ideas for Polyamory Holidays, by Jess Mahler

...Host the Party Yourself. First heard this idea from a friend on a polyamory forum and couldn’t believe it never occurred to me. ...

Rotate Holidays...

Each Visit Your Own Family...

Create Your Own Thing...

●  Here's What Thanksgiving Is Really Like When You're Polyamorous: Kae Burdo collects people's stories. For instance,

...We are also a divorced family, with the child's birthday falling on or around Thanksgiving every year. Every year, our polycule decides on 'what to do' by throwing out ideas and seeing what we all like. Sometimes the fall and winter have already been so stressful that the idea of hosting ourselves is daunting.

When we do host, we give priority to guests who have no other place to go, and extra priority to Trans/NB, to POC and to the city's youth. reating an environment of warmth and support for our partners and the folks they know is important. It's equally as important to create an environment where people feel safe to speak on any topic, and in giving priority as we have, we have avoided a lot of drama. We find this collaborative process to be gentle and soothing. We can't control much of the holidays, but how we communicate and flow together is the gift we give each other...

●  Poly for the Holidays, by Elisabeth Sheff

Give your Relatives the Benefit of the Doubt

If your dad has to ask you yet again who this new person is – even though you have been dating them for the past three years and your dad just met for the fourth time at your birthday party a couple of months ago -- try to stifle the dramatic sigh and explain kindly that you are dating this person, and yes, your/their spouse knows about it. Polyamory can be a foreign and confusing concept for many people....

Unless they are obviously trying to be rude or hurtful, try to cultivate patience and forgiveness for family members who are slow to grasp the true nature of your relationships.

Have an Escape Plan

 

When the benefit of the doubt has been stretched to its breaking point... be sure you can get away. Whether it is taking a walk, making a grocery store run, or returning to the sanctuary of a hotel room....

●  And this from Polyfulcrum does need saying again:

...I am strongly in favor of not coming out at major family events!!! There is a certain sick draw toward dropping the poly nuclear bomb at such occasions. Resist the temptation! ...Tell people in smaller groups. Answer the questions, deal with the shock and awe, and be prepared to have people tell you that they always knew there was something different about you/ going on. Then, by the time the next family gathering comes along it's part of the family fabric; weird fabric, but hey, there's always got to be an eccentric, right?

...We finished [Thanksgiving] weekend by hosting a meal here that was open to our friends in the poly community, as they often stand in as our family of choice (particularly for me, as I don't have relations close by). It was much more satisfying than the mandatory family event, because it was a conscious choice.

BTW, among all the authors above, women outnumber men 13 to 0. Not too unusual for poly writers and public figures, but on the holidays topic, a stronger tilt than the average of about 3 or 4 to 1.

● Not the first poly holiday bingo card and not the last. This one's from attorney Stacey McClarty of ChosenFamilyLawTX.

And a couple old faves of the season:

●  Sometimes you can't tell if Kimchi Cuddles is being her usually bubbly, helpful self or sliding a sly knife of snark  — in this case, regarding secondary-stranding:

● When Bone Poets Orchestra played the Poly Living West convention in Seattle a dozen years ago, lead singer Chris Bingham declared from the stage that any band hoping for commercial success (something that has eluded BPO) must do a Christmas song. Here are Chris and life partner Sue Tinney...

...from a video directed by Terisa Greenan, with "Christmas Down South (of your Mason-Dixon Line)". Also starring um-friends indoors. 

Bone Poets Orchestra and its previous incarnation as Gaia Consort produced some poly-themed songs across many years. These deserve to be heard. To listen to a selection, see Footnote 1 below.

●  And it wouldn't be the season without another reprise of....

Anne Hunter (in hat) and partners, of PolyVic in Australia, made this Christmas classic in 2007. The final verse:

On the Twelfth Day of Christmas my true loves gave to me
Twelve minutes alone (sigh)--
Eleven Christmas dinners
Ten jealousy cures
Nine long discussions
Eight dozen condoms
Seven Google Calendars
Six-handed mas-sage
Five, Ethical, Sluts!

Four sandwich hugs
Three-way snogs
Too much attention
And a quick course in polyamor-ee!

 

Again from Polyamorous Platypus

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1.  Some poly songs from Bone Poets Orchestra / Gaia Consort:

● Their devotional Three [lyrics] [mp3] was an informal theme song of the annual Loving More East retreats.

● Family [lyrics] [mp3] was used in the soundtrack of the poly documentary "When Two Won't Do" (2002) and later became the theme song of "Family" the poly-household web TV series (2008-09).

● Move to the Country [lyrics] [mp3] is a friendly self-satire.

● Another satire: Perils of Poly [lyrics] [mp3] "Oh, if we all dream together/ Can we nightmare too?"

● Moving and deep: Goodnight [lyrics] [mp3].

● Yes! [lyrics] [mp3].

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And now,

“This struggle will define in what world our children and grandchildren will live, and then their children and grandchildren. It will define whether it will be a democracy for Ukrainians and for Americans.”

—Volodymyr Zelensky to the U.S. Congress a few minutes ago (Dec. 21).

Why have I been ending posts to this polyamory news site with Ukraine?

Because I've seen many good progressive movements become irrelevant and die out by failing to scan the wider world correctly and understand their position in it strategically.

We polyamorous people are a small, weird minority of social-rule breakers. Increasingly powerful people call us a threat to society — because by living successfully outside their worldview, we expose its incompleteness. Our freedom to choose our relationship structures, and to speak up for ourselves about the truth of ourselves, is just one way we depend totally on a free and pluralistic society that respects people's dignity to create their own lives, to access facts, and to speak of what they know.

The Russian family-cartoon series Masyanya
turned dissident. Watch. The cartoonist has fled.
Update: a brilliant sequel of turnabout, and a
coda of empathy in wartime. 
 

Such a society is only possible where people have power to govern themselves, combined with legal structures that are at least supposed to guarantee the rights of all.

People, communities, and societies who create their own lives, and who insist on the democratic structures and legal rights that enable them to do so safely, infuriate and terrify the authoritarians who are growing in power around the world and in our own United States.

Such rulers and would-be rulers seek to stamp out other people's freedom to choose their lives — by intimidation, repressive laws, inflammatory disinformation and public incitement, abusive police powers, or eventually, artillery and terror.

For what it's worth, this site has received more pagereads from Ukraine over the years (56,400) than from any other country in eastern Europe.

For now, you can donate to Ukraine relief through this list of vetted organizations or many others. We're giving to a big one, Razom, and to a little one, Pizza for Ukraine in Kharkiv, a project of an old friend of my wife (story).

But that is only the start. For those of us born since World War II, we unexpectedly find ourselves witnessing the most consequential war of our lifetimes. Because we have entered another time when calculating fascism, at home and abroad, is rising and sees freedom and liberalism and social tolerance as weak, delusional — inviting easy pushovers. As Russia thought it saw in Ukraine.

The coming times are going to require hard things of us. We don't get to choose the time and place in history we find ourselves born into. We do get to choose how we respond to it. Buck up and be ready.

Need a little help bucking up? Play this. Another version, on the streets of Kherson the night after its liberation November 11. More? Just some guys in Kharkiv (our Pizza for Ukraine town) helping to hold onto a free and open society, a shrinking thing in the world. The tossed grenade seems to have saved them. Maybe your granddad did this across a trench from Hitler's troops — for you, and for us, because a world fascist movement was successfully defeated that time, opening the way for the rest of the 2oth century. Although the outcome didn't look good for a couple of years there.

Remember, these people say they're doing it for us too. They are correct.  The global struggle between a free, open future and a fearful revival of the dark past that's shaping up, including in our own country, is still in its early stages. It's likely to get worse before it gets better. The outcome is again uncertain, and it will determine the 21st century and the handling of all its other problems.

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PS: Ukraine should not be idealized as the paragon of an open democratic society. For instance, see If Ukraine Wants To Stand for Liberty and Democracy, It Should Rethink Some of Its Wartime Policies. And it has quite the history of being run by corrupt oligarchs — until the Maidan Uprising of 2013, the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, and Zelensky's overwhelming election in 2019 as the anti-corruption candidate. So they're working on that.

Now, writes US war correspondent George Packer in The Atlantic (Sept. 7), 

Here was a country with a tragic history that had at last begun to build, with great effort, a better society. What made Ukraine different from any other country I had ever seen—certainly from my own—was its spirit of constant self-improvement, which included frank self-criticism. For example, there’s no cult of Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine—a number of Ukrainians told me that he had made mistakes, that they’d vote against him after the war was won. Maxim Prykupenko, a hospital director in Lviv, called Ukraine “a free country aspiring to be better all the time.” The Russians, he added, “are destroying a beautiful country for no logical reason to do it. Maybe they are destroying us just because we have a better life.”

They have a word there, with a deep history, for the horizontal, self-organized mutual get-it-done that grows from community social trust: hromada. Learn that word. It's getting them through as well as they've been able. We polyfolks often dream of creating something like that community spirit in miniature, in our polycules and networks. Occasionally we succeed.

Social attitudes in Ukraine are generally traditional, but not bitterly so like often in the US; the ideal of modern European civil society is widely treasured, and social progressivism has room to thrive. Some 57,000 women volunteer in all roles in the armed forces, flooding a traditionally male bastion, including as combat officers, platoon leaders, artillery gunners, tankers, and snipers. LGBT folx in the armed forces openly wear symbols of LGBT pride on their uniforms, whereas in Russia it's a crime for even a civilian to show a rainbow pin or "say gay."

And in November, Russia made it a crime not just to speak for LGBT recognition, but for "non-traditional sexual relations." Just recently Russia had a lively polyamory education and awareness movement.

Polyfolks are like one ten-thousandth of what's at stake globally. Ukraine must receive our steady support. Speak up and demand it.

"Defenders of Bakhmut," the city where Zelensky spoke to soldiers near the front line a day before he spoke to Congress. They gave him a battle flag that they signed, which he presented to Nancy Pelosi. Art by Natasha Le in Mikolaiv, who reinterprets traditional guardian angels as riot grrls for an upcoming generation.

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Ruban Nielson's album *Multi-Love* continues making waves

Ruban Neilson continues to draw attention with his album Multi-Love, which, he says, grew from his awe-inspiring, scary year in a triad. On Wednesday night (August 12-13) he appeared on NBC's Late Night with Seth Meyers (heir to David Letterman) and sang the title track. As Consequences of Sound described,

Polyamory is an uneasy topic for some folks, but not so much for Ruban Nielson of Unknown Mortal Orchestra. He made it a key topic in the band’s latest release, Multi-Love. Last night, he brought the topic to a national audience with a performance on Seth Meyers. Nielson tried to make the crowd as comfortable as possible by taking a relaxed position up on a giant white piano while he sang the album’s title track.

Lyrics. Musically, I don't think it's the most interesting song on the album.

------------------------------

Here's a selection from the many reviews, interviews and stories since my last roundup.

● In The Guardian: 'I can't tell what I'm supposed to keep private now' (June 9, 2015)

Not long ago, New Zealand-born Nielson embarked on a three-way relationship between himself, his wife Jenny and a young woman whom the music website dubbed “Laura”. The couple and their two children had moved out of a yurt and into a permanent residence and invited Laura to stay with them after a period of exchanging increasingly romantic emails. The three had a polyamorous love-in for the next year, until visa issues prevented Laura from extending her stay.

...Despite his laidback demeanor, his complicated love life looms like the elephant in the room. I want to ask more about what happened, how he fell in love with two women at the same time and, I’ll be honest, who slept where. To the cynical it sounds like life imitating Portlandia. But Nielson is still dealing with the very real emotional fallout.

“It’s hard …”, he begins, half-tired of fielding questions about it, half-nervous about what he might answer. Laura isn’t talking to him after the article was published last month. “It’s in a weird space at the moment,” he says of how they left things. “She’s really pissed at me right now; she’s never really had to deal with media [before].” Despite shooting the album’s cover, a shot of Nielson’s studio with a distinctive pink glow, Nielson suggests that Laura was taken aback by how, as a line of the titular track goes: “It’s not that this song’s about her / most songs are about her”. “I think she was just a bit shocked at how much of ...” – he catches himself and changes tack – “how important the album was to me”.

...Is she annoyed that he’s exploited their anomalous experiences for his own creative ends? “Yeah, maybe,” says Nielson, tentatively. “The way things happened might have made her feel that way, but that’s not really what happened. Maybe it’s a betrayal that I’m still talking about it to the press, I don’t know. I can’t tell what I’m supposed to keep private now, or what’s my responsibility to the people who listen to my records.”

...Nielson liked the idea of “a hip-hop DJ being able to play Kanye and then my song without it feeling like a total seismic shift”, but the truth is that UMO’s music has its own wooze-vision. And not just because Nielson tends to spiral off into theories about the universe and holograms. Multi-Love’s production is dense, burbling with an unhinged, squelchy pressure that could only come from escaping the stress of a three-way relationship in a basement studio stacked with old synths in the middle of the night. Multi-coloured parts bound in and out of focus like neon flubber, or else are muffled like a dusty, well-loved Otis Redding record lurking at the back of your bookcase. His style has caught the ear of Frank Ocean and Chet Faker, both of whom Nielson is said to be working with.

For now, however, Nielson is content to be UMO’s ringleader and shape them into one of the must-see live acts this summer.

The whole article (June 9, 2015).


● From a long interview in Australia's FasterLouder: Unknown Mortal Orchestra on Prince, Pitchfork and polyamory (June 2)

...That is a very personal thing to talk about and try to represent in a record — were you ready to talk about all this publicly?

...I wasn’t going to talk about it. And then when David — the journalist who wrote the Pitchfork piece — came out and hung at my house for three days. At one point he laid it out that he had figured it out, because he had got so deep into the record and he had done some research he had figured it out on his own and he was basically like, “Let me tell the story because if you trust me and think I’m a good journalist it will be better if I present it than if it ends up on Tumblr”.... It kind of forced my hand a little to be honest. But David was so respectful about it....

It was always going to become increasingly difficult not to talk about it – because you could already see people picking apart the lyrics and pushing you to give a reason for what this record is about.

Yeah that’s the other thing about it. The record becomes sort of confusing and unnecessarily obscure if you don’t know some of the things that went into it.

● In the New Zealand Herald, where Ruban is from: Album review: Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Multi-Love (June 4).

Once you know the story about Unknown Mortal Orchestra frontman Ruban Nielson's experience with polyamory while this album was in creation, it's hard to forget. Except if you'd never heard about it, it's entirely possible that you could listen to Multi-Love and never have any inkling of that story, because though that experience infused Nielson's outlook and writing, and gave the album its title, this isn't an album about polyamory.

It's an album about the confusion of love and life, of emotions, endless questions, and a search for contentment....

● When it was released on May 26, Spin made it their album of the week.

● In The 405 (May 28):

The glimpse into Ruban Nielson's studio that adorns the cover of Unknown Mortal Orchestra's third record, speaks volumes about what is contained within the album. Analog consoles and tape reels stand out among a variety of instruments and knick-knacks, but all of it is cast in darkness.... But this gloomy chamber of reflection is being invaded by an amorphous, psychedelic blob coming out of the ceiling. Its purple-orange hue is cast across the room, providing relief to the melancholic spirit of the room. It is this feeling that Nielson uses to set the stage of Multi-Love's cathartic and complex examination of polyamory.

● In Flavorwire: An Unflinchingly Honest Account of a Polyamorous Relationship (May 26)

In addition to being one of the year’s best psychedelic records, Multi-Love may just be the first album to honestly explore the complications of an increasingly common relationship arrangement that remains both fetishized and taboo....

As Pitchfork notes in a recent profile, Nielson said one pal responded to his admittance of the three-way relationship with the following comment: “That’s rad, man. Maybe you can go to bed with both of them.” Instead, Nielson bristled and told his friend, “I wish I wasn’t in this emotionally terrifying situation.”

“Think about the two most serious relationships in your life so far, and then experiencing them simultaneously,” Nielson offered as an explanation. “It makes you wonder: How much can a human being deal with emotionally? How well-adjusted are you?”

● Interview in Coolhunting (June 23).

Q: The album art for Multi-Love is a photo of your pink-lit basement — I wanted to know the story behind the two skulls on the shelf.

A: The gold one and the crystal one — one was a gift from my wife and one was a gift from my girlfriend.

● In the Salt Lake Tribune, while on tour: Unknown Mortal Orchestra grapples with overwhelming weight of love (July 26).

● In the Phoenix New Times: Unknown Moral Orchestra Details Singer's Polyamorous Relationship (I wouldn't say so). (July 29.)

● Lots more, currently.

● The Multi-Love official video (4:15):




New video for the album's "Ur Life One Night":



...and Rolling Stone's article about it (August 13).


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*Multi-Love:* album inspired by an awestruck triad will be released next week

Pitchfork

Portland musician Ruban Nielson, leader of Unknown Mortal Orchestra, releases his third album on May 26th. It's Multi-Love, about the unexpectedly dazzling live-in triad that he found himself in with his wife and her girlfriend. Nielson and the story behind Multi-Love are featured in a long profile in Pitchfork, "the leading voice in independent music and beyond." Pitchfork claims "a fiercely loyal audience of more than 5 million unique visitors each month."

Update later in the morning: This is getting bigger — Multi-Love is reviewed on National Public Radio and is written up in The Guardian. More to come soon....

Ruban Nielson of Unknown Mortal Orchestra, performing in Spain in 2013.

Love Is Strange: The multitudes of Unknown Mortal Orchestra's Ruban Nielson

By David Bevan

...While Multi-Love, UMO’s third full-length [album], marks a thrilling departure from the bedroom psychedelia that has earned Nielson an unexpected following, it’s also an album whose backstory speaks to the manner in which he views his art, his life, and the connection between the two — a leap of faith and a leap forward. It teems with lush synths and futurist textures, hallucinogenic funk and R&B, but emotionally and lyrically, Nielson needed a light....

After touring behind his first two albums for nearly three years, Nielson arranged to take a year off, so that he could write, record, and spend more time at home with his family. But as work on Multi-Love began in earnest last year, Nielson and his wife found themselves reconsidering the outlines of their relationship. As we eat and laugh at their tiny wooden dinner table, I’m sitting in a seat that, up until very recently, was occupied by someone else, someone whose absence is palpable and whose influence can be felt throughout the record she helped shape. “It’s not that this song is about her,” Nielson sings in the album’s hypnotic title cut. “All songs are about her.”



“I’d never heard of polyamory before and I wasn’t interested in the idea of it,” Nielson tells me after dinner, during a long walk through his neighborhood. “I just wanted to pretend that no one had ever thought of it before, to stumble into it blindly.” He scratches nervously at his chest, over a tattoo of an open eye etched between his collarbones. “I feel like I’m gonna spend the rest of my life trying to live last year down. It was such a beautiful time.”

In February 2013, while exploring Tokyo on a day off from touring, Nielson wandered into a club. From across the room, he remembers spotting a strange, singularly beautiful 18-year-old woman [Laura] and then awkwardly and inexplicably waving to her the moment they made eye contact....

After taking repeated notice of their blossoming friendship, Jenny asked her husband to have Laura send along a selfie. “Wow,” she told him when it arrived. “Let me talk to her.” Nielson introduced them. Before long, Jenny and Laura started corresponding on their own — online at first, and later, through handwritten and increasingly intimate letters. It was at this point that Nielson began to worry. “They had turned into love letters,” he says. “[Jenny] told me that I could read them if I wanted to, but I didn’t and I still don’t. It’s kind of terrifying to think that she was being intimate with another person. I didn’t get angry or upset. I just thought, ‘Oh, what have I done?’”

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...Jenny approached him with a plan: Laura was going to come to stay with them for a while, and the five of them [including their two kids] would try living together.

“I had two thoughts,” Nielson says, revisiting that moment. “The first was, ‘Holy shit, I I’m fucked. I’m no match for this girl.’” His second: “‘This is fate. This is what I’m supposed to be doing. If this is the end of my marriage, then this will be the album that documents it. There are a million ways for this to go wrong for my life — but there’s no way for this to go wrong for me artistically, as long as I keep my eyes open and I’m brave.”

Nielson says what followed was like “a crazy awesome dream.” The three of them bonded almost immediately, and the kids, whose response was always a major concern, took to Laura just as quickly. “‘Let’s do this forever, this is the ultimate state of being,’” he remembers thinking, that first week they were all together.

Ruban Nielson in his basement studio in Portland. (Photo by Leah Nash).

...After those first few weeks together last May, the relationship between Jenny, Laura, and Nielson began to show signs of strain. As a relative newcomer, Laura couldn’t help but feel excluded when faced with the history and understanding that Nielson and his wife had developed over more than a decade together. But some mornings, Jenny would wake up to the sound of her husband and Laura on the couch, laughing and binge-watching a television show that they started without her. Talking about his own insecurities, Nielson says, “They would discuss something feminist, and I would just sit there, like, ‘Well, I think men are shit, too, but I’m the man in the room.’” For days, he would sulk around the house while Jenny and Laura carried on, toiling in the basement rather than confronting them both with his feelings. “Think about the two most serious relationships in your life so far, and then experiencing them simultaneously,” he tells me. “It makes you wonder: How much can a human being deal with emotionally? How well-adjusted are you?”

All of it made its way into the music, just as he had planned. In August, Laura’s tourist visa expired and she was forced to leave the States until she could obtain another. For six weeks, Nielson and his wife pined for Laura as she worked on a project in the Peruvian rainforest, while also trying to carry on with their lives....

When Laura returned in September, unannounced, Nielson was committed to the idea of continuing the relationship. They all took trips together and celebrated Halloween with the kids. They told their neighbors and close friends in Portland, a few of which reacted unfavorably, out of fear....

Shortly after last Christmas, as Laura’s visa expired again, her attempts to renew it were denied and she was forced to leave once more — this time indefinitely....

When the kids ask about Laura now, Nielson and Jenny tell them that she was forced to leave. “It just got suspended in no man’s land,” Nielson says of the relationship. “It’s brutal. The reason why she’s not here is out of our control, but we’re trying not to be maudlin about it. It’s hard to say that you’re sad because there are only two people in love now instead of three. But we were all in love. It was a real thing. It worked. I’m more alive now because of it.”...

Read the whole article (May 12, 2015), with links to more of Nielson's music.

The article got him a short writeup in newspapers in New Zealand, where he grew up and used to play in the Mint Chicks.

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"Love the Ones You're With"

iAfrica (South Africa)

I adored Stephen Still's tune Love the One You're With when it came out in 1970, and it's had staying power.

Enough that this morning, 43 years later, the South African news-and-features portal iAfrica used its name to title a Poly 101 article.

The piece draws heavily on longtime Cape Town poly organizer Melanie:

Love the ones you're with

By Bryony Whitehead

Could you be in a relationship with more than one person at the same time? It's a question that a small percentage of people can answer in the affirmative because they've tried it, openly and honestly.

They know that having successful romantic relationships with two or more people is about hard work, honest communication and transparency – just as it is with one person.

..."It has added to my life significantly and takes the stress off one person to interact with all my needs and desires," says Melanie, a South African polyamorist.

The official term for it is polyamory and it's one that is often met with derision and distaste by those who are monogamous. While many reject the idea for religious or cultural reasons, there are those who believe that loving two or more people at a time is not only possible, but a fulfilling and wonderful experience.

"More love is the greatest part of it, my love for others and their love me has really helped me grow and feel secure," Melanie adds.

"I have never been a natural monogamist, but the very idea of cheating is anathema to me."

...Coming from a liberal family, Melanie and her partners are able to live fairly openly, but she is aware that many in the polyamorist community in South Africa don’t have this privilege. She hopes that through careful education polyamorists could one day become more widely accepted.

When asked if she thinks polyamory could become more popular, Melanie says: “There will always be […] those who will continue to disapprove but I think that as long as everyone remembers that this is our choice and we do not impose it on others, it will grow."...

Learn more at www.polyamory.co.za

Read the whole article (Sept. 20, 2013).

There's been other poly in the South African media in the last few months. (Click on "media" at the link. The list, compiled by Greenfizzpops, goes back to 2003.)

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Songs of Polyamory

Any number of pop songs have poly overtones (big list, scroll down). But here are some that address our lives consciously and face-on.

1. Folk guitarist and singer-songwriter Penelope Swales has just released a CD of songs of polyamory: Skin:Deep — Polymorphous Love Songs (2007). Based in Australia, she occasionally tours the U.S. She sounds impressively good. This is from a letter she posted to the Chesapeake Polyamory Network:

Myself and one of my partners are going to be traveling through the US in September-October [2007]. We would love to catch up with any [polyamory] groups that we might be passing.

I recently released an album of poly love songs which has gone well. I've traveled around to several poly meets here in Australia and given small informal concerts, either at meetups or at "potlucks" in people's homes. We would love the opportunity to do the same over there....

Penelope
penelope (at) penelopeswales (dot) com

www.penelopeswales.com
(you can hear some of her songs here)

From a promo blurb:

"Her latest album Skin:Deep — Polymorphous Love Songs (2007) explores the uncharted territory of human relationships that most mark with the words, 'here be dragons'. Skin:Deep distills the sexual and romantic experiences of twenty years of unconventional loving into 14 songs that range from affectionately playful to darkly erotic."


2. Gaia Consort is the first poly-music group that pops to many people's minds. Their devotional "Three" [lyrics] [mp3] [streaming audio] became the informal theme song of the last two Loving More East retreats. It's still running through my ears. Their "Family" [lyrics] [mp3] was used in the soundtrack of the poly documentary "When Two Won't Do". They've also done "Move to the Country" [lyrics] [mp3] and others.

Gaia Consort is probably best known for their songs to the neopagan community, but their newest album, Vitus Dance, includes the awesome poly tune "Goodnight" [lyrics] [mp3] and the pointedly satirical "Perils of Poly" [lyrics] [mp3] ("Oh, if we all dream together/ Can we nightmare too?").

Gaia Consort has played at various poly venues, including PolyCamp Northwest.

Update March 2009: Christopher Bingham's song "Family" is now also the theme song of "Family" the web TV show. He's offering free downloads of his re-recorded version on his new Bone Poets Orchestra site.

Update November 2010: Renamed Bone Poets Orchestra, the group has just released its new album Belladonna Smiles, including Bingham singing the thoroughly poly song "Yes!"; lyrics (scroll down); listen. They played the Poly Living conference in Seattle in November 2010, and I finally got to hear them live.


3. Don't miss "My Boyfriend's Girlfriend (Isn't Me)" [mp3] by Must be Tuesday (Nancy Price). Another sweet funny one. YouTube video version.

4. The granddaddy of the genre is "Triad" [lyrics] [song on YouTube]. It was written by David Crosby when he was in the Byrds but was first released by the Jefferson Airplane on their Crown of Creation album (1968), Grace Slick singing. I first heard it that year in the hallway of my freshman dorm — and it stopped me dead in my tracks.

As far as I know, this song started the word "triad" being used for a family of three lovers. (Otherwise it might be called a "triple," by extension of "couple"). Unless someone knows an earlier use of the word this way? Please write me if you do.

Update March 2008: I just discovered David Rovics, progressive activist and poly folksinger from Portland, Oregon, and his "Polyamory Song" (2001). The song is now the background music for a sweet educational video "Boyfriend(s)", from Robert Anthony Hubbell and Think Films (2007). Thanks to Minx at the Polyamory Weekly podcast for the tip. Update April 2010: More about Rovics.

Update February 2009: "Three Days" by Jane's Addiction: (lyrics; YouTube video of live concert.)

Update April 2011: On a less sentimental note: "Poly" by Bobby Joe Ebola and the Children MacNuggits. (Video NSFW.)

Update June 2012: "Unconditional" by RockSolomon. (Click "Show more" for lyrics.)

Update February 2013: "Amu Rin", a polyamorous love song in Esperanto from France (translation and link).

Update July 2013: It's actually about geometry, but James Blunt's haunting Sesame Street performance of My Triangle might also be for all the triads and threesomes out there. It's based on his hit song "You're Beautiful" and aired August 31, 2007.

Update August 2013: Can't Help But Fly (The Poly Song), musical, uplifting female rap by Naima Infinity and Be Steady.


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