it was late night on the train platform. though we had walked from the station when we arrived, our boys dropped us off for the way back home. the train was a wee bit late and there were a few people on the platform waiting, some a bit impatiently. we were tired but not impatient, grateful to not be driving home from the city.
the clouds and the moon got together, plotting a bit of choreography. nearly full, this waxing gibbous was extraordinarily bright, backlighting the cotton balls of clouds passing in front of it. with wildfire smoke particles catching the light, an orange glow encircled the white moon peeking out, the glow much like the salt lamp emits in my studio. we stood on the platform, waiting for the train, completely captivated by the sky above us.
in recent days i have been reading old journals. journals almost fifty years old. these were the days when i passed through teenage years. when my days and nights were long and full of adventures: dancing at discos and early sunrise photo shoots, beach-camping and scuba diving, fishing and arboretums and county parks and apple-picking, skiing and my red round transistor radio on a picnic blanket. they were days of my little blue vw bug and growing-up-nuclear-family time, guitars and poetry, climbing trees and frisbee and term papers, bike hikes, the mall, my dog missi and a plethora of friends. i was often writing in my journal at 2am, wide-awake, reviewing my day, waxing poetic, loving life. it is a pilgrimage into the innocent.
my late-nights are different now, indeed, than way back when. sleep is now something i really adore, much more so than when the most minimal amount seemed – maybe – necessary.
because i am reading and reading and reading, i am feeling somewhat immersed in back-then.
these days i turn on the salt lamp that sits on the chifforobe. i don’t do it every day, but right now seems a good time for it as i hold space for the going-through of things of the past. from this vantage point – looking back – i know the shatter of innocence comes. the voice in my journal changes.
the glow stays with me as i pass by the studio door.
and now, as sleep eludes me at night, i lay under the quilt and gaze at the moon illuminating the blinds.
back in the day we could drive out east a bit and purchase long island sweet corn at any number of farmstands along the side of the road. it was a staple in summertime, showing up at every picnic or barbecue.
when i about 16, i flew out to see my brother and his family in central illinois. nothing compared to the view below from the air – cornfields as far as the eye could see. rich, green, thriving fields of field corn.
i return to the moment in that airplane so long ago, looking down on middle america, eyes wide-open, gobsmacked at how pristine those fields looked from the sky. because it is just as stunning each time in the air – even now, many decades later – this atlantic-pacific-gulf-of-mexico-canada crayon-outlined country of america.
and now, we drive across our state on the backroads, innumerable cornfields along the way. highway 81/W/11 coursing its way across wisconsin, on illinois highway 39, along route 151 across iowa, to the letter-named backroads of missouri. any time in the heartland will place you in generous fields of corn-green. it is the corn belt, after all. it is quintessential midwest.
it also seems quintessential that our country – this bright, innovative storehouse of science and data and brilliant minds – would be aggressively concerning itself with climate change – with scientific research and empirical evidence to avoid any further harm to this planet, to protect the fragility and balance of all-things-ecological, to further generative ideas in order to avoid continued or amped-up destruction of this-place-we-call-home, to embrace sustainable and responsible methods of lessening the very real threats of the fallout of rapidly changing climate and intentional negligence by humans.
it would seem pragmatic that the solar farms deep into the fields on the side of the county roads, the wind farms lining the highways also be considered quintessentially american, for these to be so prevalent that their energy production might be a fundamental expression of this country’s fierce protection of the environment.
we all learned early on the responsibility we had on our environment. keep it clean – the bottom line. and though i have in the past stopped people who have thrown trash out of their vehicle window or while walking on a sidewalk or a path, it is not likely that i would do that in every case anymore as i weigh individual circumstances in today’s much more violent world. but i cringe each time i see any such dereliction. “we each have impact,” i think every single time.
from the air or maybe even rushing by on the highway, one can’t see – doesn’t notice – the kwik-trip cups or mcdonalds bags, the plastic grocery bags and water bottles, the emptied ashtrays, the tires in the swale or the couch dumped in the pocket of brush on the side of the road. even walking the streets of small towns speckling this nation reveals a disheartening lack of concern about the nature of nature.
the feeling of responsibility needs to start at the top, for we “little people” can only do so much to protect this environment. our hands are not in the deep pockets of big money. they are – instead – clutching the water bottle or the fast food bag, waiting to dispose of them appropriately, carefully repurposing, recycling, composting, minimizing our waste, trying to make a difference.
never would i have thought that it would be necessary to have statements issued by the international court of justice – the principal judicial arm of the united nations – that would acutely ‘remind’ this country of its accountability in this crisis. never would i have thought that this country – this country – would be ignoring such passionate pleas for holding this planet in protected space. never would i have thought that these words “climate crisis is an existential problem of planetary proportions that imperils all forms of life and the very health of our planet” would be in such acute danger of being sloughed off.
the international court of justice stated that a “clean, healthy and sustainable environment” is a human right.
taking any route across this beautiful sea-to-shining-sea – flying above it or on its myriad of roads or track – eyes open – provides a profound reminder of what we should not be willing to sacrifice.
it is just a little corner of our yard – about 4′ x 6′ or so off the east side of our deck, tucked next to the fence.
years ago – decades, really – we used it as a tiny vegetable garden. we planted a few tomatoes and other whatnot plants and attempted to have a bit of farm-to-table (so to speak) additions to our kitchen. being a tiny, difficult-to-access place, it was hard to keep up with weeding in that garden and it eventually went by the wayside.
wildflowers seemed like a good idea then – less maintenance – a freeness – a mayhem of a garden. that was lovely until it wasn’t. weeds were prolific and my neighbor’s snow-on-the-mountain was an ever-present menace.
half a dozen years ago or so we decided to build the potting stand with some delicious barnwood and industrial pipe. we added basil, a dwarf indeterminate tomato plant, some lettuce. we had a (yes, singular) salad with our lettuce, loved our tiny tomatoes and were ecstatic with the basil out our back door.
it has morphed – this little garden. and now, through a study of the survival of the fittest, herbs and jalapeños and tomato plants fill the space – this tiny space – wrought-iron-fenced off to really define it – this space that brings me peace.
in the last days we have had some big harvesting extravaganzas. our basil plants – despite an unsure beginning when i thought they might be goners – have responded to the sunshine and the warmth of this particular wisconsin summer.
with new clippers (it’s really the little things!) i clipped off the basil and some parsley as the youtube instructed. rinsed all the leaves in a colander and prepped everything we needed to make two batches of red pesto and a giant batch of green pesto, all of which went into the freezer for the middle of winter when fresh from our garden will taste ever-so-good. we have at least nine meals stored away and that was merely the first harvest.
i simply cannot imagine what it might be like to farm most of what one eats. the sheer joy of tending and growing and harvesting – all lots of work – tedium, really – (for even this little potting corner is time-consuming and i find myself worrying about the health of the plants, our investment in them, their yield) – but yet entirely zen as i lose myself in it.
yesterday i purchased a new cilantro plant – ours bolted along with the dill. so we will give cilantro another round – it is the perfect addition to our sweet-potato-black-bean burritos and stepping out back to snip it off is ridiculously glee-inspiring. (yes, yes…you are right…it doesn’t take much to amuse us.)
early every day i step out the back door asking dogga if he “wants to water the plants with momma”. every day we use this wildly cool watering wand and top off each of the big clay pots or wood planters out there. every day i – once again – think to myself how happy this tiny garden makes me. every day – in these moments – peace descends on me like the soft morning air.
*****
* (sing to the tune of don ho’s “tiny bubbles”: tiny garden/in the yard/makes me happy/is my zen-life-guard)
with a real feel of about 105 degrees, we gathered with thousands of others to watch our son perform at PRIDE FEST in chicago. the energy was electric and the set flew by, even in the midst of an insanely hot summer day.
northalsted is a landmark LGBTQ+ neighborhood, an ultra supportive community that offers undying love and non-profit medical and mental health resource assistance to its residents. we always feel welcome there; our son’s friends and complete strangers embrace us – just as we embrace them.
this year we took the train down and uber-ed over to the event. last year we had driven down and – between PRIDE and the cubs game at wrigley field- the traffic was unbelievable and took a couple hours longer than anticipated (not to mention the tornado on the way home when we tucked littlebabyscion right next to a brick building – a closed restaurant – after we had been literally lifted up off the ground by the winds.)
the show was fantastic. there is nothing like seeing your child in their bliss. and here was our son – an EDM artist – in his skin, in his element, in his community, in his neighborhood – doing what it is he is supposed to be doing and loving every second. there is no way i would miss that. there is no way i would miss any event for either of our children – our son or our daughter – that is an expression of themselves – given simply that we know what it is, when it is and where it is. it is the nature of parenthood. it is the privilege of being a parent. it is a choice and i will choose it every time.
i know that there are many parents – hell, many people in our country – who would not – even for a second – support any such effort as attending PRIDE or supporting – in any way – a child (young or grown) in the LGBTQ community. there are those who have – horrifyingly – excommunicated gay family members, who have turned their backs on their own. there are those whose actions have undermined this community, who wish to eliminate the rights of those in this community, who endanger this community with vitriolic uninformed rhetoric and undisguised hatred. it’s a sad statement of conditionality and it absolutely breaks my heart.
if we could show up for every one of the members of this community – at every one of their personal bliss-events or in their own life-affirming moments – we would.
because if we each stand in the middle of the grace of this universe, then we each should likewise stand in the middle of loving grace for each other. it’s not that hard. it’s not really hard at all.
and the choice to be actively-accepting, unconditionally-loving can’t be more important than it is right now.
“you are a child of the universe. no less than the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here.” (desiderata)
i don’t suppose i ever really fit in. i was the youngest in my family – separated by a decade – while most of my friends had siblings their own age. i grew up in a neighborhood where the kids were somehow athletically gifted, while i took organ and piano lessons and sat in my tree writing poetry. an early entrepreneur, i pulled a wagon around our neighborhood selling baby cactus cuttings and candles i had made. i didn’t go to – or get invited to – wild parties or cut class or skip my homework. i took bike-hikes and walked on the beach in the winter while everyone was at the mall or the bowling alley or the movies. i didn’t listen to the stones or grateful dead or led zeppelin (with the exception, of course, of stairway to heaven – everyone’s prom theme). i listened to john denver and gordon lightfoot and the carpenters. i wore off-brand clothing and didn’t keep up with fashion trends. my momma bought me less expensive boy-pants and found the offbeat stores for shoes-that-look-like-trendy-shoes-but-are-not, like my cherished construction boots. my first car was my dad’s vw beetle, nothing fancy but beloved. i had numerous part-time jobs through high school and then in college and knew the joy of serving corn flakes to both me and my dog missi for dinner. i never thought of myself as weird. but i suppose – if one considers the definition “may have unusual habits, interests or ways of thinking that set them apart” it could be true. i don’t see that as negative, though i also suppose that – depending on the way you see yourself fitting into the world – one might consider it such.
so the sticker “stay weird” hung upside down and backwards made me laugh aloud. somehow my laughter summoned mary oliver and she and i enjoyed a good chuckle about the infinite extraordinary of the insignificant and the everyday, the value of seeing the usual through a filter of unusual.
weird took a very long hiatus – it was safer, less vulnerable, and kept me out of trauma i had shelved. i pursued the inevitability of having to make money, to help support a household in a more meaningful way than the way of an artist. for this society – though its love for the arts is profound, its support of the arts is less so.
it was after my children were born, after the imperative was too loud to ignore, after the perils shushed a bit – when it was time to start releasing music. writing, practicing, recording, performing, marketing, booking, hawking – none of this is necessarily standard-work fare – it is unusual, it is tenuous, it requires a bit of courage. it doesn’t have the same parameters as a workday in corporate or structured america. it has no guarantees of reward, no regular paycheck. it is steeped in personal challenges, the need to be scrappy and the sisu to put it out there.
in the time that was the heyday of my recording career i would call absolutely anyone, regardless of their position. as the owner/artist of my label i have talked directly to vice presidents of sales of barnes and noble and borders books and music, owners of publishing houses, the personal managers of ridiculously successful recording/performing artists. i’ve sat in j. peterman’s messy office chatting (of the j.peterman catalog and seinfeld fame) and in the spare chair of radio program directors. i’ve danced across the stage at qvc-tv under a disco ball and played songs live over phone conferences with oncological pharma higher-ups. i’ve stood in the rain on flatbeds playing, embraced boom mics over my piano on theatre stages of all sizes, sang in front of 35000 people in support of cancer survivorship in central park. pushing the boundaries, carrying a little chutzpah along with belief in my own artistry was everyday life – and necessary. and i’d remind myself each time i picked up the phone or stepped into the unknown the very fact that we all breathe in and out the same way. this thing we have in common, i would tell myself – breathing. surely i could connect on that most basic of levels.
as outside the conventional box as it all seems, i didn’t feel weird. i felt in my skin.
and so, apparently, the weird continues. we know we are different than others. we have a certain run-and-jump into vulnerability that others do not. we have a certain pull towards creating, experimenting, learning – all in the public eye. we share because we have to, not because anyone has to receive it.
so, yes, the “stay weird” sticker really spoke to me.
though my life – and our life – is quite a bit different than the traditional lives or retirements of lovely people we know and care about, it is somehow just right for us. i never forget the corn flakes and he never forgets the sleeping bag in his studio space. every everything counts and we are reflexively careful about not being frivolous. for us, weird has granted us a certain appreciation of the littlest things, honoring simplicity and leftover pasta, redundant black thermal shirts and a shared bin of socks, used notebooks and repurposing taken to a new level.
what one does with one’s “wild and precious life”*…
they unfurled from their tiny seahorse stage into real-live ferns in what seemed like moments. all of a sudden, there they were – a whole corner garden of ferns. so incredibly green. lush.
but – even in their zealous and prolific growth – they are fragile. their fronds fall victim to the wind or the dogga’s curiosity, and they are knocked over, with – seemingly – no chance of revival. it seems – perhaps – safer to be in the middle of the bunch of ferns in the garden, rather than on the outskirts.
and i find myself nodding my head, as any artist might nod her head. yes. indeed. safer to be in the middle than on the outskirts, than life as an outlier.
when i finally felt safe enough – when the imperative was too much to ignore any longer – for me to pursue my own artistry – to leave the middle – i knew it was a different route. it would not be the interstate to success. instead, it would be a challenge to stay upright – to keep reaching – when the perils of the outskirts were plentiful.
i knew i should have kept on the road earlier, but there were things that precluded me – that hushed me – and i largely put aside that desperate voice inside of me begging to come back out – the one i had quashed so many years – decades – prior.
but the tiny seahorse fern in me didn’t give up. it kept nagging me until it was finally ok to face the perils.
and i began to write – with the fervency of the ferns in our back garden. my piano was never silent. i kept unfurling, reaching to the sun – an artist coming out of fallow.
and there was music. and more music. the compositions, the songs, the albums populated the garden rapidly – there was much time for which to make up. stages and boom mics and product boxes were the accoutrements of my life. and i could only imagine – and still wonder – what might have happened had it all started earlier, had i fronded in earlier life.
it remains a mystery.
even now – in which the unsuspected and life have mown down some of the outer fronds – there is a core, a center of gravity that holds the fern-muse.
though fragile on the exterior, we are never really broken to the core. there is still time – there is healing, there is a new spring.
though we love-us (as they say) a familiar trail, we found a new trail to hike recently.
it was a really windy day and we set out knowing we would not-know what we might find along the way. that – in itself – is one of the gifts of hiking. even on trails we know like the back of our hands.
i knew being a minister of music like the back of my hand. and, as the easter holiday just passed by, i thought a lot about the 35 or so easters for which i had been responsible – the decades i had shaped the music of these seasons. i always believed it was my job to help people connect to that which they could not see – thus, ultimately, to touch faith, to touch love.
a dearest friend of ours retired this past week. with great joy, we celebrated his new freedom and listened as he told about the party his colleagues had thrown for him. he told of their stories, their comments, their appreciation – it was a powerful validation for him and for all the time and energy and life he had spent working in that place. he finished with a flourish – full of affirmation – ready to walk into next. one door closed, others ready to be opened.
it brought up personal grief.
for my very last days – of that career – one of the professions in which i used my knowledge of music – that spanned three and half decades – these days were not lined with validation or gratitude or even a nod of thanks. instead – for me – they were fraught with being fired, what felt like a plethora of undistilled meanness, full of unanswered questions, betrayal and shock and – then – absolute quiet. an assault.
i never finished. there was no brunch, there were no casseroles, no sheet cake, no jello mold. there was no t-shirt, no mug to carry off and use each morning, warmed by the memories of time spent.
this was an awakening.
i suddenly realized that i wasn’t done.
for all the sorting and cleaning and throwing out, there was still something incomplete.
there was no flourish; there was no affirmation.
this was an epiphany.
since i can’t go back literally, there is something in me that wishes to find a way to closure. maybe it is to go back to this place we found on this new trail. to this gate that stands in the messy field of wild grasses next to the birch tree just a bit back from the meadow. maybe if i lift up that gate and just step – even just one step – into what is past it – what is on the other side – maybe it might feel – in some metaphorical-retirement-party-crepe-paper-streamers-strewn way – like there was a little flourish. that i will grant myself the validation, the affirmation – the acknowledgment of a great deal of dedicated time of my life – that others tore from me, disregarded – that i will know – deep inside me – that i gave that place – and all the 35 years in that particular spoke of my sedimentary-layered life of music – giant pieces of my creative soul and that i can finally – finally – leave the familiar behind and get about the new. whatever their agenda or issues – in an end that was not of my choosing – it should not detract from my own celebration of me.
i will never be a minister of music again. that part of my life – that arrow of dedication of the music within me – has finished. and – i was damn good at it. i understood it. i knew it like the back of my hand.
and now it’s time for a new trail.
right after i pull down all the streamers and toss them out.
it had been two years. two years plus since we last hiked there. after the woods added a high ropes/adventure course we were less inclined to go there, less eager to go hike its trails. the tranquil quiet was interrupted with the sounds of groups on the contrived course, the echoes of planned adventure bouncing off ancient trees and the forest floor.
but the other day – on a blue-sky-slightly-warmer-less-windy day – we decided to go back. because it is still merely early-spring, the course wasn’t yet open, though the staff was there training. one of the guys – suspended in a harness on lines high above us – called down to us, telling us how happy he was to spend the day in the woods.
we set out on our trail, a bit eager to see how things might have changed, how the familiar might be a bit less familiar after so many seasons had passed.
seeing this much-trod-in-the-past place was sheer joy. there is something about knowing the bend in the path, something about knowing where the tiny ponds are tucked in the woods, something about knowing certain trees and where the green glow might be starting.
we took our news-weary eyes and placed them – instead – on the roots crossing the trail, on the rise and fall of our breathing. we focused on spring arriving in the woods in this place where we have spent so much time.
we were – gloriously – nowhere else for a couple hours.
“and into the forest i go, to lose my mind and find my soul.” (john muir)
each time we returned to our airbnb west of aspen we turned it on. the salt lamp seemed a beacon, warm light welcoming us. i don’t know if it was actually emitting any goodness – as they are said to – but it sure felt like it.
we have a salt lamp in each of our studios. they glow in those spaces and, whether or not they are scientifically proven to be goodness-in-a-lamp, they are soothing to us.
my studio is clean now. i removed a desk and all the extra stuff that was cluttering up the space, all the relics of jobs or times that felt negative. i have yet to go through the closet where there are a couple file cabinets of music, but the space – as i walk in – is a completely different place than it had been and every day i light my salt lamp.
it was while i was waiting for the person to arrive to pick up the desk that i started. it wasn’t really on purpose. it was simply a way to keep an eye out the window at the front of the house. i opened the small chifforobe cabinet and began to pull things out and stack them on the floor of the studio. then i went over to the small desk and did the same thing. before i knew it, it was chaos on the floor of the studio, piles on the padded artist bench, even small piles on top of my piano.
in the unearthing of space, i am finding notebooks of lyrics, slices of songs, chord progressions jotted on scraps of paper. there are piles of process cds – from demos of songs to recording studio takes, edits, production in all its phases, final products of albums released into the world. there are radio charts and encouraging cards, pencils and erasers and staff paper.
i think of my son – at the other end of the journey – the closer-to-beginning part of his artistry. though he is waaay past just-beginning, his heartbeat is quickened by his own growth in his music and by the outer reaction to and support of his EDM. i remember those days and i celebrate for him and with him. they are the days that feed artists when we are depleted, when we are in the midst of hunger, when we are pondering our place in our art form, when – if we are feeling disoriented – we are trying to see where it was – discern how it was – we got lost so that we might find our way, when it’s a little bit agonizing, when we are a lot a bit tender, when we are wondering.
later on – much after the computer desk was gone – after the frenzied muse had left the building – i groaned looking at the mess.
but there is no going back now. it’s time to keep going, to keep going through, eliminating, filing, re-designing the spaces and space in my studio. time to bring in new light, time to give it a chance.
in more than a bit of vulnerability, i must say that i don’t really know if that will change anything. i know that the studio will look more spacious, it will be slightly less muddled in there, more austere, more piano-focused. i feel like that could definitely be a good thing…a tiny step toward actually playing, actually composing. cleaning out will remove some of the tangible tokens of feeling remote, or of hurtful, harmful things that have undermined my artistry, that have waylaid me. it might remove some of the visible and invisible layers between me and my music. i guess that’s all to be seen. as overwhelmed as i am – thinking about all the work in front of me – i do see some magical bits of light in the dark, even amid the squall of chaos.
when my grand first arrived – over 25 years ago – it was the only thing in the room. just a big C5 on bare wood floors with high ceilings and freshly painted white walls of plaster and beadboard. it was pure and glorious.
since then – for various reasons – i added a chifforobe, a writing/reading chair, a desk, music stands and mic stands, other instruments.
maybe sorting through, reorganizing, removing the desk, minimalizing stuff, clearing the space will surface the essential reason for this studio, will distill the paralyzing fog that has settled over the space and in my heart, give light to a dimmed imperative. maybe a tiny bit of balance will return. maybe it’s all still relevant.
i stand in the doorway and acknowledge that i don’t know.
reverse threading 