the studio in our basement is full of beautiful paintings that haven’t yet found their proper home. it is also full of boxes of cds that have been replicated and shrink-wrapped, ready for their new homes. there is no shortage of completed work down there, no shortage of heart projects, no shortage of sweat and tears. there is no shortage of work in progress, canvases prepped, notebooks of lyrics and melodic gestures.
we moved our 20’s father’s paintings last week. today we will move the remainder. as we carefully loaded big red, you could not help but feel wistful about these paintings moving away from their home, to be stored by 20. duke was a prolific painter and his work is stunning; we wondered where and how these mostly large pieces would find a permanent home. where does it go from here?
any artist, thinking about the impermanence of life, wonders that. where does it go from here? who will purchase it, hold onto it, look at it, listen to it, read it, ultimately – feel it? will it matter later on? does it matter now?
i’m glad my sweet momma saved these, my first soft leather pre-stride-rite walking shoes. they hang in my studio and are a literal reminder that everything is accomplished by first taking baby steps. leaps are optional. long jumps, ridiculous.
as we embark on some new adventures, i keep reminding myself of this. regardless of age, the idea of learning new things can be daunting and exhilarating, both. we step with commitment and with a willingness to bend and be fluid like reeds in the wind. we hold fast to past lessons and apply them generously where they fit and we recognize when new wisdom will serve us better. we step confidently and tenderly. both.
my beautiful niece chose BABY STEPS as the piece that started her wedding on the beach. the wedding party all walked barefoot through the sand to this music as we witnessed and supported heather and brian starting their new journey, one baby step at a time.
it all starts with baby steps. one tiny footfall at a time. speed matters not. it’s all forward motion.
BLUEPRINT FOR MY SOUL was my second album. it followed on the heels of RELEASED FROM THE HEART, just a short year later. RFTH wasn’t my first recording. back in the late 70’s i recorded three songs in ny, all vocal songs. i toted those, to no avail, around nashville’s music row, along with a few others that i had penned and recorded in the mid 80’s. but things don’t always happen in our own timing, nor do they happen the exact way we envision them. architects use pencils with erasers for a reason.
fast forward a few years. well a decade, actually. the story behind the story, which i told in my 19 years ago today post (written five years ago now) is a story of the blueprint…the one we can’t see. we seek out what we think we want, we pray unceasingly for that thing we are hyper-focused on, we worry and wring our hands, trying to force IT to happen. (ask us. we can speak to this.)
but sometimes what we think we want isn’t what we are really seeking. and sometimes unanswered prayers are a gift. and sometimes worry will just beget more worry and anxiety will just make you miserable.
the blueprint, the design, the plan. all with options. all with freedom of choice. mostly, all, thank goodness, with grace. those pencils with erasers come in handy.
“sometimes people and things have an obvious fit with you.” (liner notes, track 2)
download BLUEPRINT FOR MY SOUL on iTUNES or CDBaby
i have a seagull collection. much like my horse collection, my seagull collection is much bigger in my memory than in the actual bin-in-the-basement. when i opened what i thought was a big stable of horse figurines, i was shocked to find that my i-packed-it-in-1972-according-to-the-newspapers-in-the-box brain had overestimated the numbers…by a lot. my seagull collection, on the other hand, was packed a bit later – more like 1980 – and i had a (little bit) better memory about how many jonathan livingston seagulls i had collected through the years.
growing up on long island i loved seagulls. never too far from the beach, they were everywhere, but i spent great periods of time beach-sitting winter/spring/summer/fall watching them swoop and holler, screeching at their scavenged finds. richard bach created a whole seagull community metaphor and i fell right in.
i can still smell the wet sand, see the seaweed washed ashore on pebbles i collected even back then, feel the sun, even the winter sun, on my face. it all made me breathe differently. it all made me think and grow and dream.
“And all of those who see me, and all who believe in me Share in the freedom I feel when I fly. Come dance with the west wind and touch on the mountain tops, Sail o’er the canyons and up to the stars. And reach for the heavens and hope for the future, And all that we can be and not what we are”
were i to record this old reassuring hymn BE THOU MY VISION again, i would play it much, much slower. not the andante of the recording, the tempo of singing these verses. instead, i would realize that this kind of guidance doesn’t necessarily happen in my version of time but, instead, in the universe’s version of time. much, much slower.
it was 15 years ago, back in 2004, when i sat on a leather piano bench at yamaha artist services in nyc recording this piece and the others on the hymn albums. i was 45. things seem to move a lot faster at 45; expectations are impatient, conflict needs quick resolution rather than measured, thoughtful parsing.
now, 15 years later, i realize that slow is key. the right answers don’t come fast. much as we want quick, answers take their sweet time. we ask for guidance and wish for an immediate sticky note to float down in front of us. we, d and i, can tell you, if you don’t already know, that just doesn’t happen. post-it notes were created on earth and any sticky note floating down from the heavens, the vision we so desperately seek, is invisible. it shows itself, slowly, in how things begin to fit together, how it feels. slowly.
we were at the music store in town a couple days ago. kevin, the owner and one of our favorite people to hang and chat with, asked us what was new. we laughed, not ready to share all that has been happening, but described an ever-changing picture. he asked us if it felt like “all the pieces were falling into place easily.” although i wouldn’t choose any form of the word ‘easy’ to depict our sticky-notes-requested-scenario, we can also say we haven’t been force-fitting square pegs into round holes. “then it’s supposed to be,” he said. he told the loaded-with-sticky-notes story of buying the music store, fraught with challenges, but so meant to be. it’s not in our time. our expected tempo of things happening has, we can see, nothing to do with it.
so, lento. lento would be the way to play this. slowly. taking sweet time. and rubato. freely. for in the gift of vision is sweet freedom: the ability to take a breath, recognize, regardless of our age, how little we really know, sit in purple adirondack chairs, go beyond the jetty and count on a benevolent universe.
one of the gifts i received for my 60th birthday this week – an envelope with seed packets of lettuces in it, dirt and manure. on the outside of the envelope of seeds was this:
“to plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.” (audrey hepburn)
early november. moab, utah. i was standing on the precipice of a vast and deep canyon and was filled with wonder. My Girl encouraged me a bit further out, a bit higher. she was right to push me. the gorge inches away, unforgiving, i didn’t lose my breath until the very edge. but i breathed in so much more. i felt like ME. me, in my old hiking boots and ripped jeans, a couple black layered shirts and a vest, fingerless gloves linda made. ME. the air of the high desert mountains seemed to fill me and, as i stood there, pondering my very existence in this place, i felt renewed. a meeting ground, i could feel all the yesterdays that brought me there and the tomorrows that stretched forward. it is a spiritual place. she was right and i tied my heart to it just as she had predicted. the sun and i were each merely a tiny piece of the enormity. we watched day end and shadows paint the canyon walls until dark filled the void. we laughed uncontrollably. i cried. no matter what, the next day – tomorrow – would come to that place and sun would spackle the walls until it would -again- be light.
THIS will be the next album cover. in some tomorrow time. i wish to bring burning sun and immense canyons into that project. mountains and Spirit and old boots. a bow to yesterday and to tomorrow and the place inbetween. the air in me. i don’t know when or exactly how. i just know i need to somehow make the chance. i need to stand on the very edge, once again. it matters not whether i am relevant in these times. it just matters that i plant it. lettuce, here i come.
yesterday david wrote these words about his palette. as i read his words, i realized he was conveying many of my own sentiments. with his permission, i have only slightly modified his words this morning to express my own artist palette – my piano. the re-posting of this, and even using the same verbiage, reminds me of the intertwining of all soulful expression. bear with me as i experiment, my words in red, an exploration of two artistic planes running parallel.
true confessions: i never rarely clean my palette the music stand on top of my piano. i like the messy build up of color. color is found in many forms but mostly notebooks and pa-pads, scraps of paper, snippets of tracks recorded on an iriver or an iphone. i like the chunky texture pile. it serves as a gunky history of my work, a genealogy of paintings compositions past and future. and then, over time, it becomes a tactile work of art in its own right. unfettered by any of the mental gymnastics or over-ponderous considerations that plague my “real” work, it is the closest to child-mind that i will achieve. it is accidental. it is free. it is idea, melodic gesture, poetry waiting for notes, phrase waiting for the rest of the lyrics. ready. waiting. free.
this might be a stretch but it is, for me, nevertheless true. i love my palette because it is the place of alchemy in my artist process. it is the true liminal space. long before the space spanning the route taken from introduction to coda. i begin with pure color. i begin with the rest, silence inbetween the notes, the place for breath so you can hear the vibrations of sound. i smash the pure color together with another color and transform it into a third color, the hue i intend. note upon note i build a melody, smashing note upon note i build a small unaccompanied orchestra of harmony, the hue i intend. on a palette, color becomes intention. sound becomes intention. and then, once transformed, with a brush or knife i lift the color-intention from my palette and in an action that is often more responsive than creative, i place it onto a canvas. i play, i listen, i play again. i lift it from the keys of my palette and place it onto the canvas of paper, attempting to capture the fleeting moment it has created and etch it into a piece of music that can be repeated, played again. it transforms yet again relative to all the color it touches. it transforms yet again relative to the air in the room, the echo of an intention, the listening ear it touches. an image emerges. more color is called for. it emerges, this composition of music, and more color is called for.
and, somewhere in this call and response of color, i become like the palette. the pass-through of alchemy, the door that color passes through en route to something beautiful. and somewhere in this call and response of color, i become like the palette. the pass-through of alchemy, the door that color passes through en route to something beautiful. this! can there be a more pure statement of artistry? and, in the process, perhaps i, too, in my messy build up of life/color, grow closer to that child mind. unfettered. accidentally interesting. free. and in the process, perhaps i, too, in my messy build up of life/color, grow closer to that child mind. unfettered. accidentally interesting. free. the rest between the notes. the breath of music on the air.
“You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough” ~ William Blake i paint. i write. i compose. i don’t know what is enough until i know what is more than enough. truth.
“sometimes it takes longer to understand and appreciate what is around you.” (liner notes)
it’s the ah-ha! you feel when you realize that it’s ALL about perspective and even this moment will soon disappear into vapid space. yet this very moment is the one that counts. we simply can’t waste it. there’s no time to not appreciate it, no time to throw it away while yearning for the next.
i have come to realize this over and over and over, through loss, through mistakes, through absolute joy, through reminders spoken, seen, felt on an excruciating gut level. we are all repeated students of this lesson, for we are all human. we are all human, for we are all students of this lesson.
on an everest documentary we watched the other day there was this quote: “it’s not that life is so short. it’s that death is so long.” if that doesn’t make you spring into action – noticing life – i’m not sure what will.
“…dawn turns to daylight. to dusk. to full darkness. always to dawn again…” (liner notes)
brad built a snowman in the woods while we were snowshoeing. with a nod to our wit and creative pet-names, he cleverly named it “snowman-snowman”. he was a charming snowman and we lingered by him for a bit, all chatting in the quiet woods. because he is, well, a snowman, we left him behind as we continued on the trails.
yesterday we went back to the woods. there was still snow, even more in some places. but when we got to the spot where the trails split off, i, sadly, saw that snowman-snowman was no longer there. i didn’t talk about it. the magic of snowman-snowman was still in the air despite his absence on the trail.
we hiked a bit farther into the woods and when we stopped for a moment, i started packing together some snow. it was that really-good-packing-snow, so “valentino” came together easily. we searched for his eyes and the perfect nose, tucked a feather-leaf in his ‘cap’ and fell in love with our little snowman. his magic was instant.
transient. all daylight. all snowmen. all of us. life. it’s a minor key. all-consumingly-beautiful. gut-wrenchingly-fleeting. every reason to revel in every ray of sun, build a snowman, embrace those you love, bravely live every moment. even if our footprints aren’t still visible, our magic stays in the air.
“when one door closes another door opens.” how many times have you heard that? people fail to address the hallway in-between. ahh….that hallway in between. full of mystery. full of questions. full of wondering. full of not-knowing. it can be freeing; it can be torturous. bridging from now to next.
two to three months after my big brother died, my sweet momma continued to have nights when she could not sleep. she would rise from bed and go down the short hall to the bedroom that served as her office. in that short walk, she would pass the entrance to the living room. one night, as she passed the living room, glancing in she saw a depression in the very top of the recliner, the way it looks when someone is sitting with their head against the back of the chair. this chair…the very one that my brother sat in so many times in the last months of his life, close to the front door so that he didn’t have to go too far and become too tired.
my momma, not given to fanciful imaginings, decided to walk into the living room to find out why the headrest of this chair gave the appearance of someone in it. she came around to the front of the chair and found my brother. he was sleeping in the chair and did not stir while she stood there. she never said a word, just silently watched for a couple of minutes. her heart full, she quietly walked to her office. an hour or so later, when she was ready for bed, she walked back down the short hall, this time glancing in to the living room to see if the headrest was still shaped as it had been, if my brother was still there. the recliner had returned to its normal state. my brother was no longer there. she went to bed and slept, her time in the hall of grief a little lighter, a little less encumbered, a little less painful. mysterious, full of questions, full of wondering and not-knowing. freeing and a little torturous. but moving into next.
reverse threading 