Welcome to Endless Thread!

Life is Music is Art is Life

Hello All!

Welcome to Endless Thread, my new monthly Substack newsletter.

I’m Alela Diane, a singer/songwriter/recording artist who has been in the music industry for the better part of two decades. My husband, two daughters, two white cats, very small dog and I live in an enchanted money pit-of-a Victorian in Portland, Oregon.

It’s a weird time in the world right now, and a super strange landscape on the internet. I know we’re all burnt out on social media and horrified by the news. It feels chaotic like a constantly changing channel on the TV when someone else is holding the remote. But, here we are — it’s 2025, and these are the tools we have to stay connected. I miss the days of hanging a concert poster on a telephone pole and calling it good, but I also value the ability to share my music and words in the quick as a flash ways of the modern world. I am grateful for the opportunity to begin sharing here.

We got a landline for our kids. Bought CD players for their rooms so they can enjoy music while avoiding the perils of screen time. I hear David Bowie, Cat Power, Laura Gibson or The Beach Boys echo down the hallway while they get ready for school in the morning, and it brings a deep resonant joy to my being. I highly recommend both the landline, and the CD player if you have kids. Total game changers.

We settled into a truly wild house almost 4 years ago. It’s an 1892 Victorian on a large wooded lot that was built by an eccentric Postmaster, and came with the gift and burden of historic home stewardship. It looks like it belongs to some bygone Captain on the East Coast, with a Widow’s Watch tower that stares out over some distant fog encased sea. But here it stands: in Portland, Oregon, home to my family and I. There is no ocean out the window, but sometimes, on a particularly grey morning, we can pretend that the city beyond the trees is just that. I haven’t met any ghosts yet, but you’ll be the first to know, if I do.

All of which is to say: We have created a life that in some ways is a strange combination of 1890 and 1990. The fact that our children are learning to knit and write in cursive at Waldorf School confirms this juxtaposition. It is a good life, and I am beyond grateful to be here, living it. A gratitude I feel every single morning as the sun pours through the wavy glass of our historic window panes.

So, what does any of this have to do with music? Or with this newsletter? That part is a work in progress that will unfold along the way. It has always been the case that my music is inherently interwoven with my life and who I am as a person. So, that is always where I begin.

Endless Thread will hold reflections on past works, memories and the ways they weave into the creative musings of life and music that I live today. I have piles of incredible old photographs from tours past and many related stories to tell. I have a lot of thoughts about the ever changing and broken state of the music industry, which has left artists like me without a real viable product to sell. I recently set up a home recording studio which will enable me to create more sound recordings that I would love to share. Every song I have written has a story. I want to make playlists.

Moving forward through this era of sharing and social media (which many of us are still bound to) it is my hope and aspiration to find more ways to connect offline, while using these platforms as a facilitator.

Sending love and ease to all out there trying to find a corner of peace during this wildly corrupt and broken time in the world.

xo

Alela

(And for those wondering, the epic song Oona is dancing to is “Better Change Your Mind” from the 1978 album titled Atomic Bomb by William Onyeabor - look it up.)