long island | reverse threading

October 19, 2018
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where i’m from. [k.s. friday]

it’s circuitous…the way i would define where i’m from. you have to be prepared to listen a spell if you ask me this question.

just like anyone, i have taken pieces – absorbed – every place i’ve been, every community i have shared in, every experience i’ve had, everyone i’ve met or been influenced by; indeed, those have become where i’m from. in jeans and boots on stage i talk about where “home” is and try to differentiate by referring to wisconsin as “home”, florida as “home-home” and long island as “home-home-home” which sounds semi-ridiculous, not to mention annoying for people who cringe at redundancy. plus it doesn’t include time living on a sheep farm in new hampshire nor profound moments i’ve had visiting places that have sought space in my soul. but it might give you a place to listen from; with your eyes closed you may hear your own story.

when i wrote this piece, 21 years ago or so, i knew it needed to swirl around the theme, travel from one key to another, return to its theme…have continuity yet have places where it started again. in celebrating my sweet momma and dad this week with the introduction of my song YOU’RE THE WIND it brought me back to my deepest roots, transplanted time and again though they may be. no matter what, i will always be a northeast girl. new york is in my blood and long island is ever a part of my heart.

where i’m from…it’s time ago…it’s now…it’s what’s to come.

if you listen you can hear the tide. in and out…like day, like experiences, like finding home. it changes. it’s the same.

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WHERE I’M FROM from BLUEPRINT FOR MY SOUL ©️ 1997 kerri sherwood

September 28, 2018
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longing. [k.s. friday]

i first wrote and recorded this piece while i was working on the twin LET ME TAKE YOU BACK albums. performing the tunes of the 60s and 70s made me feel wistful; memories flooded every note. i’d remember dancing to a song at a prom or listening over and over to another in my room in the basement. they made me picture the windows rolled down in my little blue vw driving on the open roads out east on long island and they brought me the sweet smell of warm sand on crab meadow beach with my red round ball and chain transistor radio. they had me thinking about the songs coming from my sister’s room and the songs my big brother would play on his guitar. so it wasn’t a stretch to write a piece that was all about longing and reminiscing and memories, stories that were deeply set in my heart, times that had gone by. later on we orchestrated this piece for the album AS IT IS. i still associate it with the twin retro albums; the cello line gets me every time. it makes me want to take out all my photo albums and set up a white sheet in the living room to watch the carousels of 35mm slides my poppo called “film funnies”. longing. indeed.

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LONGING from AS IT IS ©️ 2004 kerri sherwood

September 7, 2018
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time together. [k.s. friday]

the air coming through the windows this morning felt cool. almost chilly. it has been a long while since the last time i could say that of a morning here. we have had a very hot, very humid summer…not my favorite combination. but today. it was different. and it made me feel immediately homesick. that happens every fall for me. maybe it’s a melancholy recognition of the passing of time, years zooming by. maybe it’s the season-change-thing…we know grey days are lurking right around the corner. either way, i feel homesick.

it’s a time when i miss long island the most, recall my growing-up years, pine for the autumn at millneck manor and long deserted-beach walks at crab meadow. a time when my sweet momma and poppo are really present for me in their absence, if that makes sense. i yearn to talk to them. a time when The Girl and The Boy seem oh-so-grown-up now, steeped in their own adult-lives, having adventures and being a dynamic part of this world, far away, without the benefit of hearing ‘good night moon’ every night. i know that every evening they roll their eyes at my goodnight texts to them, but i figure that someday they will understand. homesick.

yesterday was my father-in-law’s 85th birthday. we called columbus and sang ‘happy birthday’ to him. my momma and daddy did that every year for me and i try to carry on the tradition with the people i love. he laughed and told us he had gotten back from dinner at texas roadhouse and was listening to an old record. he listens to old records a lot. i suspect, because he is the man he is, that he gets homesick. i can tell by his eyes that he would totally understand me if i told him how i felt.

so today, if you are spending time together with someone, memorize it. if you are lucky enough to spend time with your momma or your daddy, please hug them. if you are one of the fortunate parents who have their children nearby, hold on just a little tighter and look into their faces when you say goodnight. relish it.

there is nothing like it.

time together.

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TIME TOGETHER from THIS PART OF THE JOURNEY ©️ 1997, 2000 kerri sherwood

August 10, 2018
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count on you [k.s. friday]

i drove back and forth and back and forth to nashville when i recorded this album, each time returning with a cd of the work we had done on the album. i’d play it numerous times, taking notes to share with my producer, re-writing, practicing, sometimes sharing the songs-where-they-were-at-the-time with others.

joan was the one who told me i needed a “strong woman” song included on this album. so i walked across the street home, directly into my studio and wrote one.

now, this isn’t my favorite song – it’s a little kitschy if you ask me – but i have had many tell me how much they like it and one of my favorite performances of it was when beth’s students sang it. (i was long-term-subbing for her. she’s a dear friend and an amazing choir teacher in a middle school in our district.) those kids really rose to the occasion and kitschy fell by the wayside in favor of strength and power and belief in themselves.

recently d and i listened to some of my first recordings. they were from 1979-80 and recorded in a studio in a town called port washington on the north shore of long island. i had found a cassette (now isn’t that retro word dating me!) and we have a boombox (another retro word) that plays cassettes so we settled in to listen to the three songs on what would now be called an EP.

one of the songs is called leaving and is a song i wrote for my parents as they retired and moved from our long island home to florida. i remembered that song well.

the other two? well, it’s funny. i could sing every word, but i didn’t remember the intense emotion behind them. THESE were my #metoo songs, i discovered (rediscovered?) as i listened. one of these days i might share these songs, not because they are great songs but because they are truth and every artist has songs that are life-defining. not the ones necessarily that chart (although those are lovely, indeed!) but the ones that speak from deep inside, with lyrics or music that must be spoken. these two songs were written by a vulnerable (and pretty angry) young woman who wanted to unleash the power of her crayon and live out loud, who definitely wanted to live without fear, who tried hard to break away from an experience i still would rather forget and who prayed – alone at the time – beseeching words. all this is what i wrote about in this week’s melange.

my heart goes out to all those women who are also card-carrying #metoo survivors. the out-loud ones and the silent ones. my wish for each of you: unleash your crayon, live without fear, break away, pray with another, count on you.

from this song of today’s melange post COUNT ON YOU, which may be more #metoo and less kitschy than i thought, “just move forward and then believe – you gotta trust…in you.”

DOWNLOAD the song COUNT ON YOU track 12 AS SURE AS THE SUN on iTUNES or CDBaby or purchase the CD on kerrisherwood.com

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COUNT ON YOU from AS SURE AS THE SUN ©️ 2002 kerri sherwood

July 19, 2018
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blue.blue.this world is blue. [d.r. thursday]

i could hear it in my song-memory-bank as i worked on this painting morsel. “blue, blue, my world is blue…blue is my world when i’m without you….” the song (love is blue – links to hear it below) was playing on a record player in my sister’s yellow-flower-power-hand-painted room and i, next-door in my saddle-brown-burlap-curtained-horse-postered room, was listening.

while i worked on the design i kept thinking about those words…ok, well, kind of those words…instead i was thinking about my new words – “blue, blue, THIS world is blue…blue is this world with so much to undo…” how i feel when we read the paper and the news apps and watch the news and ugh… i feel blue.

but i love the primary colors in this piece. the strength. the yellow of sun and hope and a new day and the red and orange of the fire of people’s passion working to make it a better world. part of the world is in darkness as it rotates, but the scribbles and the royal blue of cool cleansing water give hint to light. maybe this world will not be so blue…one of these days.

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and the promised LOVE IS BLUE songlinks:

love is blue recorded by marty robbins

love is blue recorded by al martino

blue. blue. this world is blue. ©️ 2018 david robinson & kerri sherwood

June 21, 2018
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the sun rises in the east. [d.r. thursday]

when i think about long island, i miss the days that i could bike to the beach, climb the fence and watch the sun rise over the sound. these colors – the blue, green, aqua, yellow – dominated those mornings, both gentle and fierce, end of night, beginning of day.

i feel that if i were in outer space looking from far away at the earth…i would see the sun wrap its rays around the east side of the earth, a mix of blues and greens, melded into a blur with a rounded edge. it would be a kaleidoscope of color and feeling.

either way i hold this piece, vertically or horizontally, i see the sun. golden rising. off the east edge of the earth. or over the water. either way, a new day.

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the sun rises in the east ©️ 2018 david robinson, kerri sherwood

June 15, 2018
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the arnson-goodbye [k.s. friday]

the “arnson-goodbye” is infamous. it is an endless loop that strays as far away from “goodbye” as possible. on the phone, standing by the side of the car in the driveway, at the dorm room door, next to the apartment building in boston or a place in the high colorado mountains, the goodbye just goes on and on. the conversation ebbs and swells, the tide of “the leave” determined by how long it will be till “the next time.” i really can’t be blamed, so i hope my children are reading this. it has been passed down through generations; we are all dna-driven to have this longgggg goodbye, this aversion to actually DO-ing it: leaving.

yup. i truly do hate to say goodbye. i come by it honestly. so, now you get my thready-ness, yes?

to download HATE TO SAY GOODBYE track 12 from BLUEPRINT FOR MY SOUL on iTunes, click here

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HATE TO SAY GOODBYE from BLUEPRINT FOR MY SOUL ©️ 1996 kerri sherwood

May 22, 2018
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which way? [two artists tuesday]

the moment i saw this trailmarker it made me laugh. i was feeling exactlyyy this way, so this lightened my mood. (yes, yes, i understand that the marker made sense, but if you flatten it out (as opposed to three-dimensional) it is admittedly funny and a little confusing.)

middle age (ohmygosh, yes, middle age) seems like a time of arrows every which way. where we’ve been, where we are, where we are going…these questions are all different now…different from the striding times even a decade ago. time is starting to mean something else; i recognize the scarcity of time-limitlessness.

i lost one of my very best friends from elementary school, junior high and high school last week. kenny was brilliant and funny and courageous and a really good person. together with his twin richard and i, we were often thought of as “triplets” in school, mostly because we were all platinum blond kids growing up. i haven’t seen kenny for many years. the last time i can remember was having coffee with him at the atlanta airport; he was an airline captain and based there so we met when i flew through with a tad bit of a layover. he was thrilled to catch me up about his beautiful wife and son and he joked about how long it took him to find her. even though i saw him rarely, there was something about knowing he was in the world that was comforting…a piece of my long-ago-past that i could still talk to or text with, maybe see from time to time, who knew me when i was little, when i was a preteen, when i was a teenager, when i loved calculus. i tried to explain this to d…when certain people who connect me way back to my roots are no longer present on this earth, it is as if i can feel the earth tilt on its axis; it wobbles. and nothing will ever be the same. i can’t get to ken’s service, but i hope to carry with me – always – a piece of kenny and our growing-up history. i hope to honor him somehow.

and the next time i wonder “which way” in angst, i hope to stand still, right where i am. time is not unlimited. i don’t want to waste it.

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March 28, 2018
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flawed cartoon wednesday

interrupting is an art form on long island. i know this. i grew up there. and, apparently, i carried this forward. it took d a while (read: a few years and meeting crunch) to realize i was paying attention, that i wasn’t ignoring what he was saying when i interrupted…i just knew where he was going with it and jumped ahead. now, i do realize that sounds pretty rude. it’s not my intention to ever be rude, so i have tried, in recent times, to w.a.i.t. before i speak…at least a little bit longer. if you are nearby when jen and i talk, you will think we are interrupting each other, talking in a circular path and arriving back at the point; carol and i have, for decades, conversed in short snippets of interrupted tangents. regardless of our intent, no one wants to be asked to “pay attention!”

yet, we have all these ways, nowadays (using this word makes me sound old), to not pay attention. how many videos have you seen where people are walking in a mall (or somewhere) texting or reading on their cellphone and fall into a fountain (or some other obstacle.) we sit with others and try to hold a conversation, but they are busy on their phone or some device checking facebook or texts or twitter or the news…so many ways to not pay attention, so many distractions. we see the tragic effects of split focus while people are driving cars.

we are no longer just giving our attention to the moment. we are interrupting conversation, our work, the activity we are involved in, each other’s safety. we would be well-served to pay just-a-little-more attention.

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March 27, 2018
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two artists tuesday

the hymn “it is well with my soul” makes me think of the hymn “be still, my soul” which makes me think of mama dear, my grandmother (my sweet momma’s momma.) (are you still keeping up?) these two strong women, so alike and yet so different – were both anchors in my world, quietly (and sometimes not-so-quietly) shaping my ability to walk in this world and have faith. my sweet momma, for my growing-up years, went to church most every sunday. she and my poppo got dressed up and we would go to christ lutheran church on burr road in east northport. i got to hang with my best friend sue and we went to youth group and sleepaway camp (cool as it was, those days i was never a really big fan of sleepaway camp) and, together, we memorized the books of the bible in order (i still have no idea what the purpose of this was.) i can’t remember mama dear going to church as much; she went on some weekends, on holidays with us or to special events. mama dear had bright red hair, taught me how to sew and adored going to las vegas to play the slot machines. she was obstinate and somewhat opinionated and one of the loves of my early life.

during the time i went to suffolk county community college, mama dear’s house was within reach and i would go there for lunch or tea. we’d eat rye-bread-toasted-with-melted-butter and i’d tell her everything that was going on in my life. she’d listen and, every now and again, she’d say a few words of wisdom. i could tell her anything. she let my soul breathe.

i’d come home from school during junior high and high school and my sweet momma and i would sit on the couch and have tea and chips ahoy chocolate chip cookies, my way-back-then favorite store-bought cookies. we’d talk about my day, the challenges that face girls in high school, cute boys who might have said a word or two, the kids smoking on the bus. she would listen and, every now and again, she’d say a few words of wisdom. i could tell her anything. she let my soul breathe. matter of fact, she let my soul breathe the whole time i had the privilege of having her physically in my life. she still does.

we need that. a place for our souls to breathe. people with whom we can let our souls breathe. a faith in this universe that opens us and simultaneously holds us gently and anchors us. then – we can say: it is well with my soul.

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