Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast. I'm Emanuel Vaughn Lee, executive editor of Emergence

Magazine, located on the unseated ancestral lands of the Coast Mewalk people of present-day

Marin County. Each week, we feature a new interview, narrated essay, or story, exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality.

For those of you who have picked up a copy of our latest print edition, exploring the theme

of Living with the Unknown, or checked out the online release, you may have noticed a unique

companion to these stories, something a bit different than what we've offered in the past.

For this year's edition, we wanted the stories to have a companion soundtrack, something

cinematic and introspective that would create a compelling sonic counterpart with a

journey into the unknown.

For this special offering, we invited one of my favorite composers, the Oscar-nominated

Volker Bertelmann, also known as Haushka, to create a four-part musical exploration

on the issue's chapters of initiation, ashes, roots, and futures.

When I first spoke to Volker about this edition's focus on living with the unknown and the themes

we would be exploring, he said he felt like they

were describing a life circle and the course of creativity, and that deep crises and collapses

are necessary steps in evolution. To me, his score evokes this circle, taking the listener on a journey

into the questions of transformation, we're exploring both in this issue, taking the listener on a journey into the questions of transformation,

we're exploring both in this issue and more broadly as a magazine.

He wrote the score before the commission stories in this edition were completed,

responding only to the issue's questions and themes.

But even so, I find them deeply connected

as if they had been co-created

...