the last i saw him was not the last of this world being this world. but it was the last moment my world was the same. i wrote about this yesterday. it’s all fragile. like a soaring violin note bowed over a line of piano, it’s ephemeral. it will vanish in the next moment. we keep hearing the line in our heads; we keep hearing the cello passionately talking to us; we keep those we have never seen again close.
i wrote this piece to speak to the last time i saw my big brother. i listen to it now and it is also about the last time i saw my sweet momma, my poppo, my uncle allen, my grandparents, my adored high-school-english-teacher andrea, my not-really-a-triplet-from-elementary-school-on-dear-friend kenny… it’s about the last time i saw people i’ve loved forever. it’s about holding on to shared moments with my living-far-away-children. it’s about the last time – when i don’t know when the next time is.
LAST I SAW YOU is the gossamer strands of connection between us. it’s how we hold that and honor that. for me, just know it is a statement of enduring love.
download THIS PART OF THE JOURNEY on iTUNES or CDBaby
“…no one can tell us because life is not something which can be understood from a book…” (krishnamurti)
when my big brother died almost 27 years ago, my world tilted, never to return to the same again. i struggled to understand that this amazingly smart, talented, witty man – someone i depended on my whole life – was no longer going to be in this world. losing him left me with a lot of questions.
ever since then i have not been able to wrap my head around how the world keeps going if you cannot feel it anymore. and yet, each loss i have experienced is evidence that is exactly what happens. the world keeps going. it’s all a mystery. no one can really tell us.
there is no handbook available to explain all this. life’s complicated layers and sideroads, the junctures where we choose left or right, the places we decide to stop or go…it’s all a mystery. no one can really tell us.
nearly every day there is some world-tilting reminder to wholeheartedly embrace the moment you are in; nearly every day we forget. it’s not as easy as just remembering. it’s not easily understood. your shoes are not my shoes and, although it is easy for me to sense all the concurrent emotions in a room, i still cannot grasp what you are actually going through. my sun could be your rain. it’s all a mystery. no one can really tell us.
so we try. we try to understand, without instruction, the strands and tattered fragments and shiny-mica-bits that weave together into life. mostly, we keep feeling life. and the world keeps going.
i had landed in denver, took the little plane for the small airport in the mountains. The Girl picked me up and we did errands in town, because telluride is an hour and a half away and there is no target or starbucks or any chain store there. when we got to the little house she just moved to and shares with three others, i looked for something to cut the stems off sweet flowers so i could place them in a facsimile of a vase. having not unpacked all the way, and knowing she was also not all that familiar with her new place yet, i knew that i should just make do with anything that cuts. i grabbed a large knife off the counter and starting sawing. the only thing wrong with that is that i sawed my left pointer finger as well. ouch! i did everything to make it stop bleeding but it was stubborn and kirsten and i wrapped it in bandaids and paper towels to wander around town. yowza.
i wasn’t going to mention it to d – the cutting-stems-with-a-big-serrated-knife thing and all – but couldn’t resist looking for a little husband-sympathy. so after another hour or so, i texted him. he texted back, “we are twins. my left index finger. i sliced mine hours ago…” what?!?
we have this beautiful print in our home, a simple calligraphy by my big brother….it reads, “when one weeps, the other will taste salt.” hmmm.
right at 2:08 in this recording is an ambient sound. it is a sound that my producer and i deliberately decided to leave in the recording, an audible sound of divine, a tiny punctuation in our project from across the barriers of physical being-ness.
we were recording remotely on one of the northwestern university stages, ken (my amazing “it’s fine” producer) having built a small studio off in the green room, separate from the stage space where the piano was. everything was moved or padded so as to avoid interruptions or rattling or vibrations or overtones, anything we didn’t want included in this solo piano album. it was a tedious process and we recorded straight through a twenty-three hour stretch. with me were items – totems of a sort – to keep me company as i recorded this first album. one was a stuffed animal i had given my beloved big brother during his chemo treatments, three short missing-him-years prior.
divine intervention was the last piece up. the last piece of the very first album i was recording, released 23 years ago november 11 on my sisu music productions label. teetering on that balance point, no idea of where i was to go next or what would become of this album, i was emotional and exhausted, determined and vulnerable. i spoke words of prayer and began the next take of this piece.
at 2:08 i heard a sound. it sounded like an old wooden screen door closing, but i didn’t really know what it was. i was sure, however, it would be on the recording since i could hear it on-stage. i kept going anyway, thinking we’d go back and re-record the piece. when i finished playing, tired tears in my eyes, i walked into the green room to find ken standing in astonishment. there was an empty can of pepsi in that little studio, one i had put in there and secured by towels deep onto a shelf. at 2:08, the can somehow moved out of the spot it was nestled in and clattered onto the floor. the sound. even without listening to the cd i can hear this sound in my head every time i play this piece.
we listened back to the raw recording. sure enough, it was there. and so was something else. a feeling that somehow, some way, the divine interrupted. intervened with a small nod. perhaps it was my big brother, in jest, stopping by in the middle of the last take of the very last piece of my very first album, to make a little noise. perhaps it was something else. either way, we knew. and we left it in.
i still have the can.
15. divine intervention (3:16): the feeling i have about this whole project. there really isn’t any such thing as chance. those who are just on the other side sometimes help us to sort and place the clues of our life’s story. (words from released from the heart jacket)
a legacy. todd bol has left a legacy in his wake. and i can’t imagine one that doesn’t touch imaginations and creativity and limitlessness more. todd built his initial little free library in 2009 in hudson, wisconsin, as a tribute to his mother, who was a teacher and a book-lover. his first little free library was a replica of a one-room schoolhouse, which he secured on a post and filled with books that he invited his neighbors to borrow. it caught on, as no one could have dreamed possible, and now these gems are across the united states and in more than 80 countries.
we read every day. together. we always have a book going and it is one of our greatest pleasures to read aloud to each other. there is something magical about it – sitting close under a blanket, experiencing the book at the same time, reacting to it, talking about it. sometimes a book is so engrossing it requires one of us to pull the other out of the book-world-reality that has consumed us. such is the power of reading.
if you walk around our neighborhood, even without walking on every single street, you will encounter these little libraries. there are five within just a few minutes, a few blocks of us. todd bol died at age 62 on october 18. but his legacy? he has left behind “more than 75,000 little free library stewards around the world dedicated to literacy and community.” an amazing – and ever-growing – gift to the world. thank you, todd bol.
and, speaking of legacy, happy would-be-68th birthday to my big brother wayne. no matter what plane of existence you now grace, you live on in each of us. i wish i could peapod or instacart or jet you gallons of coffee ice cream. i love you and miss you. always.
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.
download LONGING track 13 from AS IT IS on iTUNES or CDBaby
anyone who knows us knows that we love our coffee. every night we literally look forward to coffee the next morning; we even talk about it.
it’s no different when we travel. friends, in incredibly thoughtful gestures, have given us starbucks cards that we load onto the phone (proudly, i might add, since that speaks to our APP savvy…ok, slight APP savvy.) we drive a few hours and start looking for the signs – on the highway – or on the APP (which i have to say is sometimes frustrating since – it seems – the APP locator doesn’t differentiate what direction you are going and sometimes displays a starbucks cafe twenty miles away….and we get excited….only to realize it is twenty miles BEHIND us.) but i digress….
pretty much every time we stop to get our double espresso (knowing sandy sue is rolling her eyes) we take a picture. most of the time we send that picture (there are COUNTless photos of coffee cups on our phones) to our dear friend 20, although jen and others have received these oh-so-meaningful photos. double espressos are good (called “doppio” if you want to seem really hip at the starbucks) because they make it possible to have lots of caffeine without having to stop at every rest area or small convenience store you pass while you are traveling long-distance.
we also love to find independent coffeehouses. one day in asheville, north carolina we literally stumbled into a great little coffeehouse while trying to navigate through a town under construction after a stressful morning drive. i found a lucky parking spot, parallel parked into it and said, “let’s go find some coffee. i neeeeeed coffee.” we got out of the car, looked around us, trying to figure out which way to walk and stared right into the window of a granola-organic cafe with sweet little mugs of espresso and great gluten-free vegan sandwiches. ahh. bliss.
if you’re traveling and want to keep in touch with us, text us some “cheers from….” with your coffee cups. we can relate.
and today…a nod and so much love to my big brother, who loved coffee even more than i do. i’ve missed you for 26 years. i’ll always miss you.
“…you’re an angel in my life, and i’m still ridin’ on the back of your bike.”
“…you’re my big brother till the end of all time. angel you are.”
when i was little, my brother wayne used to ride me around on his bike…pretty much anywhere and everywhere. and so my adoration of him started early. he was nine years older than me; he had wisdom and know-how i didn’t…i was years behind him. even when i was small, i cherished all the moments he spent with me. and i didn’t know.
i didn’t know that time would be cut short and that this person who i relied on for advice and wisdom and fixing-stuff-know-how and just general big-brother stuff wouldn’t be around forever.
i remember being in the hospital with him during one of his chemo sessions. i asked him if i had been an annoyance when i was young, always wanting to go with him, always wanting his attention. there was this moment i will always remember – forever. he said, “no! you were my little sister and i was proud of you. i always wanted you with me.”
time stood still when he said that. i knew it was important to memorize that moment. i am still holding on to it.
when you think about bowling, you can literally smell that distinct bowling alley smell. each time we see the boys, we bowl. it is becoming a tradition. i think it is because we are erratic bowlers and they like to poke fun at our lack of bowling expertise. no, truly, they are pretty kind about it. and it is always a blast. after we bowl together, i always say to d, “we should bowl more often.”
sandy and dan (brother and sister) bowl on thursdays. every thursday. they bowl with a team and i know that they look forward to it. it is a staple of their week and balances out everything else going on in work and life. it would be a unimagined joy in my life if i could bowl on thursdays with my brother.
this morsel is a piece of a much much larger painting, called joy. the painting is gorgeous and colorful and one of my favorites of d’s yoga series. when i sorted to this morsel, i was surprised and amused at the bowling ball and wooden lane that i could clearly see there (at least clear to me.) but how perfect. joy within joy.
there are days i know my poppo is in the wind. i can feel him there. somehow he lets me know. it was six years ago today that he left this earth and, before he said goodbye, i made him promise to hang around. i told him i had no idea how i was going to adjust the timing on the ’71 bug without him, i wouldn’t be able to call him on the phone to ask him how to rube-goldberg a fix on something, i would be missing his “hi brat!”
with him in the wind and my sweet momma and my big brother and all the others who i miss, i have help from guardians. with everyone who is by my side on this beautiful planet, close or far away, i have help from champions. we each do.
we face into the wind, challenged by change and our ever-fluid lives. we put on our invisible capes, take a deep breath, hold onto each other. together we are superheroes.
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.
reverse threading 