H is about the sweetest man you could meet. he is in choir, sings bass and is a heckuva barbershop singer. he loves music and adventures and birthdays and hugs and butterfinger bars and the letter H. and we love him.
i was talking about a piece we were going to sing a particular sunday. i told the infamous back row they would need to eat their wheaties that day; there were some tough notes in this piece. H looked up, and with that glimmer in his eye, said, “i eat lucky charms!”
what???!!! this is a grown man – 93 years grown – and you would think that his breakfast would be practical and of great nutritional value. but nope! lucky charms it is. he added, “when my grandchildren come over, they eat all the marshmallows!” clearly not a disappointment but, instead, the greatest biggest joy. see? the sweetest.
i’m thinking that it would be a smart thing to eat lucky charms if it means i am going to live 93 years and have a glimmer in my eye. and they’re gluten free!
“the box: a place to put all the stuff of our lives.” (from BLUEPRINT FOR MY SOUL liner notes 1996)
the old black suitcases store stuff. treasured moments, all in a jumble, some decipherable, others bits and snatches of times we want to remember, so we keep these feathers and ticket stubs, notes and river stones, scraps of wrap, cards, red rock. they proudly sit in the dining room, in a stack, their vintage scrapes and broken handles call to me each time i pass them by. they shower me with memories and times i have passed through, moments i have lived. i can feel what is in them.
in another box, in another place, are old dreams. torn vestiges of paper with lyrics, a few notes scribbled in the margins of old spirals. there are visions and imaginings, goals and undetermined outcomes. like you, these are the things undone. there are no ticket stubs or photos in this box; these are the things that have not come to fruition. these are the things that beckon over and over. these are the things that demand i consider and reconsider what i am doing today, tomorrow. these are the things that make me question. each time i pass them by. i can feel what is in them.
i am reminded:
“a ship in harbor is safe. but that is not what ships are built for.” (john a. shedd)
these are the full liner notes:
“the box: a place to put all the stuff of our lives. sometimes this place really hurts.” (BLUEPRINT FOR MY SOUL 1996)
download THE BOX from BLUEPRINT FOR MY SOUL on iTUNES or CDBaby
on this very day, at this very time, i do not feel at home. and i believe i take home with me, so this is truly a statement of much discontent.
what is home to you?
how important is it to you to be surrounded by people who, with consciousness of others, support you? how important is it to you to be amongst those who are kind, who are magnanimous, who are respectful to all, who are collaborative? how important is to you to be around people who lead with goodness, who work together, who do not embrace divisiveness?
how important is the place? does an idyllic location exempt bitter disputes and argumentative people? does it matter if the sun rises and sets in dramatic color if the timbre of the place is ugly, combative, rift-producing, breach-exacerbating? what flowers override belligerence, competition and antagonistic voices? what soaring birds and graceful wildlife eclipse closed minds and turning a blind eye to others’ pain?
important questions, i believe. eye-opening questions.
home is indeed subjective for each of us. our hearts lead us.
she was born in 1921 and saw everything change around her. she stood in a world that saw the great depression, world war II, telephones and cars, movies, televisions and news shows reporting on more wars than she could wrap her head around. her husband was missing in action and then a POW shot down over bulgaria, all while she was expecting a baby. she gave birth to their first child while my poppo was still a POW and stood in faith that he would return as that little girl died.
momma built a life with my dad, all the while navigating veteran-ptsd that hadn’t yet been labeled. but she figured it out. she held her ground, both supportive and snapping to action or to “words” as she would call arguments between them.
my sweet momma wore stockings and pumps “to business” and had housecoats with snaps, long flowing mumus and finally, at long last, blue jeans and keds for relaxing. momma drove a mean stick shift and, because they were a one-car family for the longest time, walked to the king kullen and dairy barn for groceries and milk. she turned her very green thumb over to my dad after he retired, likely to keep him out of her hair for a bit of time.
she volunteered as the girl scout president and in aarp alongside my dad. she loved wood and glass; she loved to paint with oils. she loved lists and calendars and math and writing and doing the laundry any time she was stressed. she wrote old-fashioned letters with pen and paper. she adored her word processor and then the computer and finally, her beloved iphone. anything to stay in touch. she texted, she called, she facebooked, she mistakenly took pictures of the ceiling and sent them on errant trips out to the ethers. momma loved to coffee sit and have english muffins or crumb cake or danish or chocolate chip cookies or pie. and she made extra homemade french fries every time she knew I was visiting so we could sit, drink iced tea, eat cold french fries and talk.
she didn’t let fear overtake her. she was strong in every way. she credited being from new york, but i credit just her – she just went with the flow and sort of ignored anything that got in the way, including any physical challenge that presented itself. two days after a double mastectomy at 93 she sat on the side of the hospital bed and, in good humor, sassed everyone around.
she loved that everyone called her beaky. and i mean everyone.
her journey was long, her experiences rich. she was an exclamation mark in life. she celebrated people and love and moments and I miss her. so much.
but it is part of my journey to miss her.
each of us bring to our journey our own punctuation. sometimes i think i am an ellipsis, but i realize that applies to all of us. we go on…
if i got to choose what singular punctuation i would want to be, i would want to be an exclamation mark, just like my sweet momma. for this part of my journey. for every part of the journey.
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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?
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.
“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.
ken calls this my MUSH album. he is an amazing producer and i feel fortunate to call him my dear friend as well. he produced 14 of my albums and, although one of my albums and a few vocal singles were done in nashville, now i can’t really imagine any other recording projects without him.
MUSH stands for made-up-shi* and is aptly named. this album came at a really inspired time for me. artists have their highs and lows, inspiration-wise, and this was one of the highs. i’ve mentioned the story before, but i’ll short-story it here again: i had a list of titles – titles i wanted to use eventually for compositions; i carried a notebook and scraps of paper everywhere i went. i had this list with me as i recorded two other full-length albums in nyc at yamaha artist services. in-between recording the two other albums, i would choose a title and play it. simply play it. my heart is laid out in the tracks of this cd; every title was meaningful to me, every piece tells what it means.
AS IT IS is the title track so it’s interesting that i gave over the melody line to a flute, the only piece on all of my albums that has a flutist playing. it’s also rare for me to step away from the piano and, in the production-post-initial-recording phase, play a keyboard. but life is like that. you have to give over sometimes. the texture changes. the melody isn’t yours to own; sometimes you are support staff. make peace with it. it is as it is.
AS IT IS: life. we are right here…where we are supposed to be in this part of the journey…the best time is now. simply because life is as it is. (liner notes)
purchase and download the album AS IT IS on iTUNES or CDBaby
reverse threading 