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Death Café
Death is the only certainty in life. Someday we will die and there’s nothing we can do about it. All of us know that, but few of us are aware of it. It may seem grim to talk about death, but what I’ve found after hosting a few of these events is that talking about death makes people more enthusiastic about living.
What is a Death Café?
It is a space for people to come together and talk about death, usually, over a cup of tea and a slice of cake. These are guided discussions with no agenda that are meant to serve as a discussion group rather than grief support or counseling. The first one was held in 2011 in Jon Underwood’s home with the help of his Psychotherapist mom Sue Barsky Reid, but they have been held in all sorts of spaces including grave yards, yurts, and cafés. There are hundreds of Death Cafés held across 91 countries and after reading this you’ll know most ofwhat you need to know to start your own.
Am I Qualified to Do This?
Yes! Anyone can host a Death Café. The only real requirement to host this event is patience and willingness to do a little research and planning.
How Do I Get Started?
First, find a day and place to gather. I recommend a public space, especially if you’re meeting with strangers, but any residence will work. If you’re in the Salt Lake City area I recommend Salt Lake Coffee Break and Kahve Café. They have a great selection of teas, treats, and places to sit. I also encourage you to reach out to your local library about using their space.
Lastly, gather! Invite your friends, family, hang up posters and give out leaflets. I will say, it is best to keep the group small (5-6 people is plenty), but if you end up with a large group, there’s no shame in splitting up into two smaller groups and having two mediators.
Anything Else I Should Know?
I’ve found older generations struggle the most to talk about their own death and will often try to redirect the conversation to be about someone else’s death. I feel like that defeats the purpose of this event, but it isn’t wrong. Again, we don’t have an agenda here. For more info visit DeathCafe.com
Featured Artist
Via Love
It’s April of 2025, my band just wrapped up rehearsal and we’re talking logistics for our next show. We need an opener. Evelyn, My band’s bassist’s, pitched her teenage little sister, Via, to open for us. I was skeptical at first, given that Via was only 16 at the time, but after just five seconds of listening to her song “Glue” I was sold.
I was immediately captivated by her vibrant singing and subsequently blown away by her songwriting. She writes like a modern Joan Baez and her music belongs on a playlist with Mitski, Phoebe Bridgers, and Adrianne Lenker.
Now 17 years old, Via is about to release her first single, Paper Boats, and was kind enough to share a few words about her background as a songwriter and her new song. Make sure to follow her on social media and keep an eye on The Stray to see where she’ll be playing next.
“When I was a little girl I would walk around the house singing 24/7. That would often include these little songs I came up with. When I was seven, my siblings got so sick of one of the songs, but I remember hearing them sing it and laughing to myself because it was stuck in their heads regardless of their negative feelings towards it.
I was 11 when I started getting seriously into songwriting. It was during the pandemic. I would record voice notes on my iPad and plan out concept albums in my mind. I would write silly pre-teen songs about heartbreak and love that I couldn’t even relate to myself, but I loved it more than anything. This song is about my experience struggling to love myself and trying to change for others. It has come a long way and I love it dearly.”
AI Is Making You Look Bad
An open letter to“Artists” who embrace AI
By Mel Oaks
There are plenty of other articles and essays that detail why AI is morally reprehensible and bad for the planet, but that’s hardly a deterrent to many of you so I don’t see a need to address that aspect of the discussion in this letter. Instead, I’d like to address the issue as a musician who understands that this is an industry and that we need to make money. I need all of you to understand that, despite what the billionaires might tell you, AI is making you look bad and taking away from your ability to build a career.
First and foremost, it is important to recognize that the music industry has changed a lot in the last decade. Consumer trends have forced us to fill the roles of marketing agents and influencers in order to get ourselves in front of an audience. Understandably, most of you don’t want to do that. AI promises to be a wonder tool that can do that part of the work for you. So, at a glance it seems like fully embracing it is the obvious and easy choice. However, if we look closer at how the relationship between listeners and artists has changed, we can see that people crave the artist as much as the artist’s work. It’s no longer enough to have good music because it has become impossible to separate the art from the artist.
Think of it like this: There are over 100 million tracks on Spotify and a nearly endless stream of new music being uploaded every day. Recording equipment is cheaper than ever. Anything you could possibly want to know about recording techniques, mixing, and mastering is available somewhere on the internet. Some of that information exists behind a paywall but most of it is free. The barrier to producing a track that sounds good is almost entirely gone. The only things that set you apart from everyone else are your approach to music as an art form and your ability to tell people who you are.
Now, I want to delineate some distinctions between art and self expression and how it ties into our careers.
Our careers are built around music. Music is art. Art is a form of self-expression, but not all self expression is art. For example cursing out a politician, telling your mother you love her, and a break up text are all forms of self expression, but none of them are art; At least not on their own.
In order for something to be art it has to be made with the intent of expressing or preserving an idea, it must incorporate deliberate choices in regards to how it is presented, and it must challenge the status quo of the context it was created in. A wealthy middle aged woman in an American suburb doing a paint-by-numbers is not creating art; She is assembling a product. But the portrait of a family drawn on the back of a scrap of paper done by a child in Gaza is a work of art.
Moreover, GenAI is incapable of making something new. By virtue of its inner mechanisms, it can only make you a collage of work that already exists. In other words, when you use AI to generate an album cover, or merch, or a flyer, you are not only relinquishing your ability to be deliberate and, therefore, forfeiting your right to call your work art, but you’re also telling every potential listener that you are nothing and nobody. But what do I mean by “nothing and nobody”? Plainly, you aren’t telling people who you are.
As a matter of fact, you’re signaling to a potential audience that you’re lazy, uninspired, and that you have nothing to say. You’re telling them, “I care so little about my craft that I’m willing to destroy the environment just to save myself a couple of bucks and get out of having a conversation with a real person.” Using AI is taking a red hot brand to your face that says, “I don’t care about you.”
As I mentioned previously, it has become impossible to separate the art from the artist. Who you are is a crucial part of your branding and, clear, consistent branding is indispensable to success in the industry as it stands today. How you go about making art and telling people about it speaks volumes about you.
People turn to art as a way to find comfort, understanding, and community. We like music that sounds like us. We want to go to shows where we feel like we’re part of something. We want to see a stage full of passion. As artists, we have a responsibility to put on a show, and foster those feelings.
To that end, I invite you to be human.