a dime. if i had a dime for every time i heard, “is this you?” as i answered the phone i would possibly be a rich girl. i am a rich girl, nevertheless, simply because of the utterance of those words. a dime for every lifeline.
in the craziest time of life, when i was reeling, hearing the voice of my dear friend scordskiii on the phone was a lifesaver. it was a crazy time of life for him as well, profoundly devastating. but we weren’t alone in our individual fires. they raged about us and we each held the other safe, just away from the flames. were i to have gotten that era over with as-fast-as-possible i would have missed it, this symbiotic exchange of breathing-together, of MAKING-it-through not getting-through-it. conversations of laughter, singing, telling stories, pondering, arguing points, more laughter. hours upon hours while he drove in some other part of the country and i sat up all night keeping him company or i drove way-far-away from where he was and he talked me through what i most needed to process at the time. or we just sat still, in our own corner of the world, talking. really really talking. hours of review, of planning, of sorting, of truth, of fear, of ranting. and laughter. i have no idea what i would have done without him. and, despite the pain and the fallout and the ash that (still) remains after the smoldering fire was finally doused, i am grateful to the universe for making me walk through it. for making me be present. for not keeping me from the lessons, for giving me reasons to not try to get it over with. it was an extraordinary time. the lifeline he extended to me is a thread that will never be broken. despite his ensuing here-gone-here-gone-ness, his presence will always be a part of what has woven into what looks like me, what is me.
the fire. who are the people who will stand in the fire with you, will stand still with you, will unconditionally love you, will be your guardian, your buoy, your champion, your lifeline? how many dimes would you have by now?
we can never repeat it. that piece we played together during a quiet moment in the service. moments where notes suspended, combined with hearts and lingered in the air. we noodled our way through it and, even just after it was over, we could not speak to how it was shaped or where it went.
it is my absolute joy to work with someone who can join me in this. jim, our beloved guitarist, is a ready partner. hand signals of the key, head nod count offs and we are on our way. sometimes the noodling takes us to a more intense, busy place and sometimes it is the stuff of nirvana, peaceful, thoughtful serenity. always it is rewarding for both of us; we share a smile when it’s done and know that the ethers now own that piece of music. never to be repeated.
improvisation is a driving force – we play at least seven pieces of music every service. with skeletal lead sheets we choose how to perform each one. sometimes we liken our performance to ‘how it was done on the recording’ and sometimes we have our own agenda, working it into the style or feel we wish it to convey. but, because we don’t simply read every note on the page (since they aren’t on the page), we know the performance of each piece will also never be repeated. it is not likely that most realize we are drawing from deep inside, from knowledge or experience, from heart, when we play. they likely think we are reading music that is all written out. i don’t suppose it matters what they think as long as we deliver what we intend. as long as we shape the service emotionally, for that is what the music is all about.
as a composer, my favorite moments, in addition to those sweet moments of harmony when we, with our respective instruments sing and can hear the lining up of the stars, are those moments of noodling. we have no fear of what’s next. we have no preconceived notion of where to go. we just start. and we follow where the music leads us. it’s ephemeral. it starts from the dust and returns to the dust. and is never to be repeated.
of all his watercolors, i remember this one. maybe it’s universe-timing but the image of a person kneeling silently in reflection, in prayer, fading into the blue of eternal sky and the hinted suggestion of sun seems particularly synchronistic. the fluidity of line, the brushstroke revealing the image of humanity – in a transitory time here as part of the whole. a blurry-edged fleeting existence in all of time’s galaxy.
but the destruction, the disregard, the disrespect. people who disassociate with the truth of here and now, gone tomorrow. intent on pillaging the universe’s glee that each of us is here, each of us is exquisite, each of us can positively impact another. this place is a place of profound beauty, the sky and the sun sure day to day.
perhaps the lure of this painting is the inkblot-exercise. depending on what you focus on, the figure will be there, the figure will disappear.
perhaps the point is the earnest time on our knees, whether or not literal. the questions we ask, the things for which we give thanks, the time to focus, the imploring to help us notice it all.
“i believe the children are our future. teach them well and let them lead the way…”
“i believe for every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows…”
“i believe in music. i believe in love.”
“believe in the magic that can set you free….”
“i believe when i fall in love with you…”
“believe it or not i’m walking on air…”
“i believe i can fly…”
“i believe in love, i do…”
“believe me, oh, believe me…”
“believe it or not i’ve been waiting for you to come through…”
“i want to believe in my fellow man. yes, i want to believe…”
“oh, everyone believes…”
“you know i believe and how…”
“i believe in you and me…”
“oh i believe in you…”
“i’m a believer…”
“don’t stop believing…”
all lyrics. just a mere short-list. lots of believing. there must be something to it. a natural tendency, a listing in that direction. always hope. always belief. we fall and we get up. we fail and we try again. we hurt and we heal. we keep on keeping on.
because humanity is full of belief. in basic tenets of goodness, regardless of how you profess divinity. belief. the silken gossamer threads of breath. the accumulation of knowledge and emotion, question and certainty, analysis and intuition, feeling, communicating, learning. the struggle to stay centered. and believe.
the road from here to there is oft not straight. the way the crow flies is irrelevant. “the only way there is through,” joan told me quite some time ago. we were talking about grief. i had lost my sweet momma and it felt brutal; at any age the loss of a parent is profound. i was talking to joan about it – about getting to the other side of the grief. and she told me that the only way there was through it. a winding trail it was, with switchbacks and no guardrails.
that has happened for me with each encounter with grief. there is nothing easy about it, nothing straight. the grief of loss, the grief of instability, the grief of anxiety, the grief of fear, the grief of insecurity, the grief of aging, the grief of failure, the grief of change, in all its rampant forms.
and yet, out hiking, winding trails are my preference. a hike that takes me past hidden-treasure-vistas, a hike where i cannot see the end from the beginning, a hike that surprises at each turn. these winding trails are gifts in the woods, in the mountains, in between red rock formations high in elevation. there is much to see, much to learn about. they are journeys of not-knowing. they are journeys of wonder, of revelation.
we are not crows; no flightpath in our lives will be straight, no endpoint clear in our sight, no one thing all the way from here to there, no vector traveled without veering a bit off-course. even reverse-threading our lives will not reveal a straight path; instead it will reveal a vast horizon of ping-ponging and circuitous route-making. we will most definitely wind around, through decisions and opportunities, missed marks and challenges at the goal line, defining and re-defining. living.
which winds me back to joan’s wise words of years ago, which i can still hear her saying. the only way from here to there is through. winding trail and all.
when he said, “make hundreds”, he wasn’t referring to blogposts. my sweet poppo was for-sure-analog and didn’t really even know what a blog was. he was sending me off to school or work, calling after me to “make hundreds”, a tad bit of pressure for an A+ seeking student but taken with a bit of a grain of salt because my poppo said it with great love. today starts the one-hundredth week of our blogposts in the melange and daddy-o would be impressed. it’s one hundred weeks, after all.
clearly, in just a few short weeks it will be two full years. two years that we have sat next to each other and written a post that was inspired by the same image, the same quote, the same painting or piece of music. it has been a profound experience. we have written on the raft with dogdog and babycat curled up next to us, on the beach, in the high mountains, in hotels and airbnbs, in coffeehouses, in relatives’ homes, in the noise of a city, in the quiet on island. whether or not others are reading my words, i look forward to every single day of writing and am stunned to think that i probably have more in the way of written word now than songs. is that possible? (even at a mere 500 words a post it is somewhere around 250,000 words, about 3-4 novels worth.) it is the best stuff of sitting up in the maple tree outside my growing-up-house on long island for hours on end, writing, writing, writing.
we sit at the starting gate with our inspiration of the day and then, without looking at what the other is writing, we expound on what we see or feel or think. it’s ‘he said, she said.’ we’ve often thought about, and might just follow through, capturing them into a journal where the same image or quote could stimulate a third person’s writing. a ‘he said, she said, you said’ book. having a prompt is the juicy stuff that makes it absolute fun.
my posts are often stories, emotional – perhaps poetic – glimpses into our life. david’s are more esoteric, more complex. a friend of ours said she can tell the difference without even looking. goodness! i’m sure that is true. when we share our writing with each other, reading aloud, i often wonder about the value of what i’ve said. like recording an album, these are words ‘put out there’ for all to see and you and i both know that judgement is alive and well. but i always bravely try to remember what our point is.
we wanted a place to put a variety-pack of endeavors, a place that our conglomerate artistries could live under some kind of umbrella. that umbrella became our‘studio melange’ and we found we could offer our individual work (paintings and music) in addition to our cartoons (earlier on, the melange included chicken marsala and flawed cartoon) as well as the quotes we jotted down each week and the images i recorded on camera that we found pertinent or thought-provoking. about a year along the line we changed the melange and added ‘merely-a-thought monday’ and ‘not-so-flawed wednesday’ in lieu of our cartoons.
if you pare our melange down you will find one overwhelming similarity. hundreds upon hundreds of moments. moments captured, moments written down, moments to remember, moments we’d sometimes rather forget, moments of confusion, moments of regret, moments of incredulousness, moments of fear, moments of scary honesty, moments of challenge, moments of pushing back, moments of questioning, moments of indescribable joy and moments of deep sorrow. all of them moments of life, a reminder to grasp onto them and hold on dearly. for that is what we have. the ability to make moments. the ability to make moments count.
last night we watched cnn’s broadcast movie about linda ronstadt “the sound of my voice”. a star in every facet. as we watched , we revisited times of our lives – times when the music we listened to was simpler, less engineered, less auto-tuned, less machinated, less acrobatic. it was music of melody and harmony, stylistically less thickened by tracks of extraneous stuff. it was indeed purer. linda ronstadt, now in her 80s and dealing with the effects of parkinson’s, particularly on her voice, was a powerhouse raised in music, surrounded by music and who, with generosity, graced us all with her music for decades. her voice goes on.
we are attracted to simpler. simpler melodies minus the gymnastic riffs and with simpler production, simpler paintings with great depth or color or message. we are analog; there’s no doubt about it. and as we watched a john denver christmas in aspen the other day i found myself yearning for that simplicity, john denver’s voice – both his writing voice and singing voice – effortlessly clear.
the common thread of less is more. it had impact on us, on our art forms.
when d was messing around in the studio recently he painted these very simple elements that often appear in his paintings: a star, a flower, petals. it’s not natural for him to paint without a figure. i imagine he was experimenting, paring down. i would liken that to me recording a song on the ukulele. it’s not natural for me to record without a piano. but experimenting is good and paring down is an exercise. especially in times of mostly-quiet easels and mostly-empty lyric sheets.
linda ronstadt’s story is one of unparalleled success and a great number of layers of experiment, a constant delve into another style of music, always paring it down to dedication to her absolute love of singing.
in the midst of all the layers, all the experimentation, all the paring down, all the silent canvases and hushed keys, we find our guide stars. and we go on.
it is a new day. filled with new promise, new possibility, new adventure, new hope, new light. no matter what, the light comes. it cannot be snuffed out, for after every night there is day. it is sure.
we look to the horizon and, like the most exquisite of tall-stemmed flowers, we lean toward the sun. we grow. we rest.
we know, intrinsically, that even in circumstance where our own light is dampened, when it is dark, when we feel extinguished, exhausted, profoundly saddened, the tiny light that flickers from deep within, from others, from sunrise, can reignite our zeal, rejuvenate us, restore us, bring us bravely back to day.
happy new day. happy new year. happy new decade. happy new light.
conked out. it’s the end of the workday, the end of playtime, the end of the evening, the end of the month, the end of the year and they are conked out. so are we. with toys strewn about, they collapse on the floor, a wary eye on each other every so often, just making sure. but mostly, sleepy, eyes closed, soft sighs.
we feel the same way. conked out. it has been a year. tomorrow we’ll search for some sage to burn on the first day of the new year, smudging room by room, letting the snuffed flame’s gentle smoke chase out the negative and allow new light in.
conked out. it feels like a repeating theme…a basso ostinato…a foundation upon which we are all arriving at this last-day-of-the-year station. exhaustion seems to be the grounding venn diagram of all those we have spoken with. like lines of the composer john cage: dissonant polyphony, indeterminate chance-filled melodies, questioning, shapeless and yet heading in some vexing conclusive direction. 2019. confusing and atonal with a lack of rests, avant-garde, but in all the wrong ways.
as we approach the last minute of the last day of this year, we sneak a peek at the new year. new beginnings. we sigh. deeply. looking ahead.
i glance at a small sign i have on the wall. it is not without noticing the irony i read a quote from john cage, “begin anywhere.” a good place to go from conked out.
there is a moment when the sun is going down that the ball of fire on the horizon disappears. official sunset. but the light lingers in the sky and the color stuns. it is seemingly a grey area between day and night. you can call it either – “it is still day,” you can say. “it is now night,” you might relent. it depends on where you sit and when we are hiking in the woods and still have a couple miles to go we prefer to think of it as ‘still day’.
it’s all a matter of perspective. the eyes through which you view all that around you. the shoes in which you stand as you look out on all that is happening. are you on one side or the other? are you bipartisan-ly, so to speak, looking at life? john avlon recently said, “where you stand depends on where you sit” and i couldn’t agree more.
opinion is a personal matter. indeed. free as we profess (or is it purport?) to be, we are all entitled to our opinions. on everything from food preferences to healthcare in our country, from clothing styles to immigration policies, from decor in our homes to gun control or the lack thereof, from coffee brands to what we individually choose to call a divine universal power and how we lift that divinity up, from places to live to how we feel about blatantly incentivizing people to stay under earning limits…it is all a personal matter.
and yet, it becomes not personal when we are unable to view others’ opinions without demoralizing them, without a listening ear, without educating ourselves before being reactionary and spurting out inaccuracies. when we turn a blind eye to what befalls others. when what is best for us supersedes what is best for all. when riches – in its first definition: wealth or great possessions; abundantly supplied with resources, means or funds – is not meant for the populace.
it becomes not personal when we fail to realize, allow for, negotiate that where we stand – truly does – depend on where we sit.
right now as the sun sets on 2019 it is still day. or has night come?
reverse threading 