each time we returned to our airbnb west of aspen we turned it on. the salt lamp seemed a beacon, warm light welcoming us. i don’t know if it was actually emitting any goodness – as they are said to – but it sure felt like it.
we have a salt lamp in each of our studios. they glow in those spaces and, whether or not they are scientifically proven to be goodness-in-a-lamp, they are soothing to us.
my studio is clean now. i removed a desk and all the extra stuff that was cluttering up the space, all the relics of jobs or times that felt negative. i have yet to go through the closet where there are a couple file cabinets of music, but the space – as i walk in – is a completely different place than it had been and every day i light my salt lamp.
it was while i was waiting for the person to arrive to pick up the desk that i started. it wasn’t really on purpose. it was simply a way to keep an eye out the window at the front of the house. i opened the small chifforobe cabinet and began to pull things out and stack them on the floor of the studio. then i went over to the small desk and did the same thing. before i knew it, it was chaos on the floor of the studio, piles on the padded artist bench, even small piles on top of my piano.
in the unearthing of space, i am finding notebooks of lyrics, slices of songs, chord progressions jotted on scraps of paper. there are piles of process cds – from demos of songs to recording studio takes, edits, production in all its phases, final products of albums released into the world. there are radio charts and encouraging cards, pencils and erasers and staff paper.
i think of my son – at the other end of the journey – the closer-to-beginning part of his artistry. though he is waaay past just-beginning, his heartbeat is quickened by his own growth in his music and by the outer reaction to and support of his EDM. i remember those days and i celebrate for him and with him. they are the days that feed artists when we are depleted, when we are in the midst of hunger, when we are pondering our place in our art form, when – if we are feeling disoriented – we are trying to see where it was – discern how it was – we got lost so that we might find our way, when it’s a little bit agonizing, when we are a lot a bit tender, when we are wondering.
later on – much after the computer desk was gone – after the frenzied muse had left the building – i groaned looking at the mess.
but there is no going back now. it’s time to keep going, to keep going through, eliminating, filing, re-designing the spaces and space in my studio. time to bring in new light, time to give it a chance.
in more than a bit of vulnerability, i must say that i don’t really know if that will change anything. i know that the studio will look more spacious, it will be slightly less muddled in there, more austere, more piano-focused. i feel like that could definitely be a good thing…a tiny step toward actually playing, actually composing. cleaning out will remove some of the tangible tokens of feeling remote, or of hurtful, harmful things that have undermined my artistry, that have waylaid me. it might remove some of the visible and invisible layers between me and my music. i guess that’s all to be seen. as overwhelmed as i am – thinking about all the work in front of me – i do see some magical bits of light in the dark, even amid the squall of chaos.
when my grand first arrived – over 25 years ago – it was the only thing in the room. just a big C5 on bare wood floors with high ceilings and freshly painted white walls of plaster and beadboard. it was pure and glorious.
since then – for various reasons – i added a chifforobe, a writing/reading chair, a desk, music stands and mic stands, other instruments.
maybe sorting through, reorganizing, removing the desk, minimalizing stuff, clearing the space will surface the essential reason for this studio, will distill the paralyzing fog that has settled over the space and in my heart, give light to a dimmed imperative. maybe a tiny bit of balance will return. maybe it’s all still relevant.
i stand in the doorway and acknowledge that i don’t know.
“…you can trust the promise of this opening. … for your soul senses the world that awaits you.” (john o’donohue – for a new beginning – from benedictus, a book of blessings)
i was keeping it, even though it was broken. my sweet momma used to use it as a fruit bowl – on our kitchen table or counter when i was growing up. i feel like i remember bananas in this starry snowflake basket bowl – which hasn’t had its curved glass handle for many, many years now.
as we moved about our home, choosing to be more minimalist in approach, i came upon this glass basket bowl. the broken edges were rough and, though it was sitting out, it was not something i would wish someone to touch for fear of the possibility of getting hurt. i considered this bowl for some time, placing it on the dining room table, gently dusting it out, cleaning its starry edges. and then i realized that it was time for this basket bowl to be disposed of. i took plenty of photographs before gently letting it go, for my threadiness needs – sometimes – to be handled with care.
and then we moved on to the next. and each thing that we moved about or stored or repurposed or disposed of made room – room for our old house to breathe in a bit more light, for us to discover something new that might transform the space.
we can both feel it. the sun’s rays are now reaching further into the living room – way under the old two-person glider that came in from the deck. we’ve sat there many times now already – visiting with our boys on thanksgiving, sipping coffee and watching out the front window, sipping wine and watching the crystals on the big tree branch dance in happy lights. there is change. there is opening.
i have a list – the spots in our home that need our attention, stuff-wise. it is not a short list. we have plenty to do.
but the rewards are great and give us incentive to keep going. we are in no rush. we’ll just take on a little at a time.
and one of these days it will be my studio. i’ll finish what i started there quite a while ago. stopping wasn’t because i didn’t want to complete the going-through-cleaning-out-reorganizing. at the time, stopping was because it was just too much right then. but now…now, some time has passed and maybe i am soon ready to file, to store, to pass on, and – in likely cathartic moments – to throw out that which is no longer relevant, that which served me well until it didn’t, that which is broken in little or big ways.
and, in the process of all this, hopefully i will see the promise of the opening – the sunny starry snowflake seeds – just as we have seen it in the other beloved parts of our home.
all the world awaits each of us each day. we just need to clear the stuff – real or imagined – out of the way to see it.
“when she stopped conforming to the conventional picture of femininity she finally began to enjoy being a woman.”(betty friedan – national organization for women co-founder)
ripped jeans and boots are – most often – my dress of choice. i add a black thermal shirt or a long (black) tunic and feel like me. it’s my dopamine dressing, regardless of the colors, textures, ensembles on the dopamine charts.
my studio is not large. it’s one of the bedrooms on the main floor – in the front of the house. there are three double-hung windows – two of which face south – so nice light. there’s a chiffarobe holding a big old black-framed window, pictures of my parents displayed. there’s tin on the wall with photos of my children. there’s a painting by david and two framed collages with my first two albums. there’s a photo of me as a little girl, a rocking chair, music stands and mic stands. and there’s my piano. it’s a 6’5″ yamaha grand so it’s a presence.
and now – over in the corner opposite my bench – hangs this lampshade. i suppose it could be used as an actual on-a-lamp lampshade, but ever since i saw fabric-repurposed lampshades hanging in that iowa farmhouse we stayed at, i have been intrigued by the simple hanging of a lampshade. and so, a couple days after the new year, while out antiquing, we came upon this shade. it was hanging in the middle of a vendor’s booth, with no price tag. it wasn’t for sale. but – like the chunk of concrete – this spoke to me.
its femininity was appealing. torn strips of silk and organdy, a feathered hairclip, i was smitten by it. i could imagine it in my studio – softening the straight lines of plaster walls and crown molding. it felt – forgive me for this generalization – girly. in every good way.
i asked at the front checkout about it and the sales associate and i took a walk back to it. she double-checked, looking for a tag. it looked like it was there to dress up the booth. and, indeed, it did. it was charming.
we left without it, but the associate said she would contact the vendor and let me know the lampshade’s status: available/notforsale. my concern was that even if were available – or if the vendor made it available based upon my desire for it – the demand-cost equation might enter in and it would be out of my range (which, frankly, most things are).
the next day i got a text. $15. i re-read the text. $15. i wrote back, double-checking. surely it wouldn’t be only $15 for me to bring home this piece of softness – this very cool boho shade that reminded me of all the layers of who i am.
i wore – as usual – my ripped jeans and boots, a vest over my black thermal shirt. we walked in and the lampshade – the lampshade waiting for me – was on the counter.
there was a group of women standing near the checkout counter, all talking at once. they glanced over at the lampshade, admiring it, asking me what i was going to do with it. we all laughed together, visiting and having those amazing moments you can sometimes have with a group of women (or people, but in this case it was women) who don’t know each other at all but who all-of-a-sudden have a common interest. the lampshade.
this is a good time in my life for this, for the ripped ribbons of silk and shreds of organdy that flow gently from its structure, for the skeleton of a for-a-lamp shade to have new out-of-the-box purpose, for a reminder of femininity and of who i am.
on the way out, carrying my lampshade as i passed by one of the older women standing nearby, she turned to me and said, “it looks like you.”
the ornamental grasses weren’t there – out the window – when the studio was the nursery. instead, there were hedges – ancient hedges lining the front of the house, thick hedges lining the driveway, dense hedges in front of the old brick wall. it looked completely different all hedged in.
i’d sit in the rocking chair in the nursery with my babies and watch the seasons go by out the window. rocking them to sleep, reading a book, nursing, we spent many, many hours in that rocking chair. and i spent many hours with sleeping infants in my arms gazing out the window, pondering the season out there and the season inside. somewhere there is a recording of my song rocking chair seasons, but i’m not sure where.
it is evident from the grasses what season we are in. looking out any front window – or back, for that matter – there are grasses answering to the dance of the calendar. they sprout out of the ground in later spring and then rise skyward. stunning in the breeze, they are tall and willowy in hot summer sun. and then, the plumes. gorgeous and feathery. and now, the grasses are golden orange, a showy nod to the cool of autumn. even later they will stand in the snow, catching the winter winds. all just out the window. a timeline of life.
the rocking chair is now downstairs in the basement – one of two in david’s studio. the crib and the changing table and all the babystuff is no longer in my studio, though just outside the door hang tiny shoes on a doorknob which were my girl’s and my boy’s when they were little.
sometimes i stand by the window in the studio – at the same angle that the rocking chair sat – and look out. it is easy to get lost in the memories that flood in.
the seasons have changed. they are all-grown-up and living creative and independent lives, strong humans in this world.
i’m still right here – and always will be for them, waving my plume in the air, rooting for them at every turn, in every season.
and i look at the grasses in their perennial transition as time passes and realize it is all the same.
i own 200% of my original pieces of music, my original songs. 100% of that is the compositional copyright and the other 100% is the sound recording copyright. with the exception of one vocal song which i collab’ed on, and one song where i gave my dueting partner a percentage for a few lyrics he changed, i have solely written each piece.
i did not find myself near the bluebird cafe in nashville or any of the listening rooms in nyc or los angeles when i was writing any of these albums. by the time i was writing for albums i would be recording, i was a mom of two small children, one a tiny toddler. my writing took place in the midst of potty-training and reading stacks of books, pbj’s and grilled cheese with the crust cut off. my growing-up piano was the instrument on which i wrote my first three albums, surrounded by barbies and matchbox cars, vhs tapes of barney and disney movies. i wrote with children on the bench, children under the bench, children on my lap.
in my most recent composing, a bit ago now, i still found myself writing this way…with many plates spinning and in short spurts of dedicated time. it was a practice i honed through the years and it served me well, this multi-tasking.
vocal song lyrics are found on scraps of paper, on pa-pads, on napkins, with letter names of notes and jotted rhythmic gestures next to the words. some of these took weeks of fine-tuning, changes and wordsmithing. others took ten minutes. total. slow dance is one of those.
the album as sure as the sun is one that celebrates life and love and relationship, in its many facets. after five instrumental albums (and another nine albums later) with the very best producer – also my arranger and a consummate musician – i worked with a nashville producer on this vocal full-length. in los angeles for some pre-recording meetings, we put the song same sweet love to pencil and paper, adding it to the lineup for asats production. it’s a totally different energy to collaborate on a song – to share the writing – and something i had little experience with. we both ended up singing on this song and we co-own it.
the very wide spectrum of love – and its impact, its mystery, its universally understoodness (and not-understoodness) – is one of the emotions to which songwriters gravitate. powerful and complex, there is no limit to reaching listeners, a strong connection the tie between music and emotions, a driving force.
i’ve read that a recent psychology of music study revealed that in every decade over the past six decades (since 1960), as much as 67% of all song lyrics were about romantic love. it’s not surprising.
when i do pick up pencil and paper again, looking at the line-up of songs already written for a potential next vocal album, i’d imagine that there may be some editing. i’d imagine that the arvo pärt note-smith will step into the instrumentals. i’d imagine that some lyrics will change in the line-up, maybe a melodic gesture or two, maybe the harmonic structure. i’d imagine that – maybe – in the review of these last years there might be a few new pieces, maybe a whole album’s worth of songs or instrumentals that muster their way past my editing delete-r.
i’d guess that there might be songs about transition, about relevance, about aging, about simplicity. i’d guess that there might be songs about hard decisions, hard times, hard losses. i’d guess that there might be songs about love, in all the corners of one’s life.
and i’d guess i’ll own 200%, back in my studio, comfortable writing alone.
i’m trying to decide just how vulnerable to be, how brutally honest, how much to share. it’s like sitting on the fulcrum in the middle of the seesaw…you can choose either way from the pivot point.
this lovely couple – who we considered extended family and saw every sunday – was next door at the garden club’s secret garden event. we saw them from our deck, waving to us over the neighbor’s fence. we gestured we’d meet them in the front yard. giant hugs later, we started a little catching up, having not seen each other in years now. they had family tales and travel tales and many tales of adventure.
they told us they missed us. we were grateful to hear they missed our “energy” and “the fun we brought”. they asked about us.
he asked if i had a position now. i don’t. being terminated during a global pandemic at the age of then-61 with an injury to my hand doesn’t naturally lead to a new position, particularly in the arts. i’m 64 now and we can both agree that age discrimination is alive and well in our country.
she asked if i was composing, if i was “doing my music”.
i sat in the middle of the seesaw.
i’m asked this fairly frequently – people expect someone who has 15 albums already and who has also spent decades as a minister of music – to be fully immersed in music now. after. usually, i somehow deflect, saying something like ” you know, the pandemic…” my voice trailing off. then i quickly ask what they are up to, how their family is, the new grandchild, the retirement, the vacation, the joint replacement…
this time, though, with these dear people standing in our driveway on a beautiful day – post-hugs – tears sprang to my eyes and i began by saying, “eh, this might be too much information.”
and then i told them that i am not composing, that i am not “doing my music” and that i haven’t been able to. that it’s too been too much, that it was too hurtful, that – as much as my studio is a part of me, my essence – being fired devastated me in more ways than anyone can really imagine. it is not as simple as walking back into the studio, sitting at my piano, grabbing pencil and paper, placing hands on the keys. it wasn’t just any old job they took away. it was part of my soul. and – to be honest – i am having trouble recovering. still.
the fulcrum teetered and the seesaw arm – the resistance arm or the effort arm, i wonder – fell to the ground, jostling me. i apologized for the over-abundance of emotion.
they stared at me. they looked surprised; they looked sad. we were quiet for a minute, while i regained my composure and climbed back onto the fulcrum pivot.
but the words were out there. and they were the truth of it all.
and – up close – if you choose – you will see the foreleg of a winter-dressed pony, the extra cold-weather-coat trapping hair next to the skin of the horse, keeping him warmer. he is stopped, gazing at the distant field, ready to canter into it, the exploding of freedom of movement.
and you blink and it is a cattail. one of many in the field, waiting in the marsh through autumn and winter for early spring. as many as 250,000 seeds, white fluff sailing and transported by birds and breezes. and the life cycle continues.
it is winter in my studio. the rhizomes are gathering underground, together with the cattails. maybe around the spring equinox, maybe a bit later, the shoots will rise out of the ground – like a phoenix out of ashes – and new sprouts will grow and grow. the cycle germinates and pollinates and seeds will fly again. the birds and the wind and i will play for you – seeds and notes flying.
in the meanwhile, i wear my winter coat. it is keeping the heat in. it protects me. insulation for shelter in this long and cold winter, to shield in the storms, to brace in this fallow.
but soon, soon, with the sun and fresh air, the pony will run free.
took everything off every surface. dusted everything. put some things away. moved things around. got rid of excess. hung a favorite print. and – with great care – gently vacuumed the inside of my really beautiful piano, for full-stick is an invitation to dust.
i stood back, stood in the doorway, looking in.
the room was breathing. deep breaths.
i was breathing. immersed.
there is still more to go through. there is more to file away. there is former work-trauma to discard and there are calendars of choir music and ukulele band books and handbell arrangements and contemporary solos to box up. the first pass didn’t get all those and now, two years later, i am still a little paralyzed by all of it. that’s why it all needs to go. this process is taking longer than i would have anticipated. “mind, body, spirit,” she said. “it’s not likely others will understand all the layers. they will expect you to just move on, to get over it. they will not grok the wounds; it is all fraught.”
but there were staff lines in the sky. and the universe prompt is haunting me a little.
it’s always had a purpose – my studio – a direct line from standing or sitting in there to actual work. i’ve not just noodled or played because i was just playing. i’ve stood in there to write – to flesh out an album, to practice, to plan – the arc of music for a concert or for a church calendar, to teach – so many students through the years. it hasn’t been a place i go to without purpose, without an end-product, without a result i could see. as an adult, my studio has represented the potential for income; it has been a professional place. now there are questions. many of them. like living in a blank staff, i live – lost – in the questions.
i played my piano. a few carols.
there is one more day this year. and then 2023.
and i won’t carry carols into the new year. it will be time for something else, something less dusty.
there’s some way to go. it’s not as simple as it sounds.
the staff lines in the sky hold no clues, have no notes.
maybe – instead of reading that as tacet – silent – i might – and “might” is the operative word here – read that as a composition without designated key, without predetermined time signature, without definitive expression markings, sans any direction or boundary.
a merger between old navy and, say, dupont could bring play to the whole wide world. stands of thongophones could be simply everywhere. i can see it…people gathering, favorite flipflops in hand, making music.
it was hard to resist the pull of this two-octaved structure. flipflops – the paddles provided – were chained to the wooden stand, laying on the ground, waiting. it was just a delicious invitation – “try me, try me,” it called. and then, channeling the group chicago, “thongophone, in the park…”.
pretty crazy, it had good pitch for polyvinyl chloride, not necessarily known for its musical talent. and the flipflops? well, everyone knows how i feel about flipflops. they are the symphony of summer, so definitely a good choice.
i, generally, don’t walk up to faux musical structures like this. i usually stand back and watch others discover and play, reveling in their adventuring and exploring sound.
but this time was different.
i played first on the lower octave side. for some reason, the first piece i played was the first piece on my first album, galena. the first day i played galena was also in one of those situations i don’t usually take part in…instead, sitting back and watching others and supporting their fun.
that time was different too.
that time – encouraged (read: pushed) by three girlfriends, playing at the piano in the restaurant in galena, illinois – set me on a road i didn’t know was coming. less than a year and a half later, i released my first album. now, fifteen albums and a variety of singles and blahblah later, i look back.
and i look forward. i’m not sure what’s there. but this past week i stood at my piano and played and sang three songs for d and one of his dear friends. it’s been a long time. i apologized for the dust in the studio. i apologized that it was a little messy in there. d said rob cried. despite the dust and remnants of previous work piled around.
by sheer coincidence, today is the anniversary of that first album – 27 years ago. lots of flipflops ago.
today is a good day for a dustcloth, some garbage bags and a storage bin or two.
it’s not a thongophone in the park. it’s my piano.
reverse threading 