we are truly – like mika brzezinski said – ” counting down to the election of America’s life.”
if there are no alarm bells going off in your head, you have not been paying attention, you have not read the intentions of the maga party, you have sloughed off the reprehensible words of the maga candidate.
if you are not trembling as you think about the outcome of this election, you have not elicited any part of your good conscience, your moral center, the part of you that cares about this country or its inhabitants. you, instead, have bought into hatred and violence. you have abdicated your character, your integrity to the abhorrent character of this maga leader. and, if i knew you before, i don’t know you now.
if you don’t feel like sobbing thinking about the darkness that could come with the maga intentions of the maga candidate, his cronies, project 2025, every single mean-spirited, depraved, cruel, sadistic undermining of rights, freedoms, opportunity, you have closed off your heart. you clearly don’t care what happens to the people of this country – of which you are one.
i am stunned we are here, at this nightmarish moment in the history of the united states. it feels surreal to even try and wrap my head around the unconscionable, ghoulish possibility that we – free americans – could find ourselves in a fascist regime under the authoritarian rule of this unscrupulous maga candidate and his drooling-for-power contemptible sycophants.
“i go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.” (john burroughs)
to draw a paddle through silky water, to listen to the call and response of the loons, to feel the breeze off the lake and to catch the first and last glimmers of sun rising and dropping through the trees…it is completely unremarkable to say this is soothing, that these moments are healing. it is unremarkable because it is obvious, because these are so remarkable – each – and because our senses rise to these offers of peacefulness, to these opportunities for rejuvenation…every time.
we have viewed each night of the democratic national convention. the joy, the energy, the hope – they are palpable. to say that our nation needs all this is an unremarkable statement, because – of course – it is obvious. we need joy. we need energy. we need hope. we need this kind of light. we need to be soothed and healed. and we need our sense put in order.
it should be unremarkable to have – to own – this kind of hope and light and joy in this country. it should be a given. this is supposed to be the fruitful land of opportunity, a place of freedoms, a nation where – with goodness our north star – we may be who we are. and, when our senses are put in order, we remember this…each and every one of us.
when we are in chaos, when there are those wreaking ugly havoc, when division and mean-spiritedness are being stoked, when soothing and healing is far from the minds of those who wish to be leaders, it is a time we must rejuvenate our country. we must move forward, not back. we must seek the best in each other, aspire for unity, clutch onto fervent hope with all we’ve got, put our faces to the sun and get sensical.
because it should be obvious in these united states of america that democracy and freedom are the only choice, that kindness and loving one another is the way of life, that equality and acceptance and inclusion are undeterred, that sense – real sense – is in order. and that – in all its brilliant remarkableness – pointing out that those are fundamental to these united states of america is completely unremarkable. because it is obvious. because it is the way.
we drew the paddles of the canoe through the glassy water, exploring the crannies and coves of the lake. to say we were soothed, healed – even momentarily – from worries pummeling our minds, that we were able to return to our senses would be an unremarkable statement. obviously we were.
living in this country – as a place where peace and freedom and forward movement and opportunity and goodness toward each other abounds – should be as obvious.
please vote with your senses and sense in order. let us promise a soothing, healing, joyful, intelligent, abundant future to all who come behind us.
in most rehearsals, i would remind the choir that their smile could be heard. there is a major difference to the timbre of voice brought forward with or sans smile. the same is true with speaking; even when you are not seen, the difference in tone is distinguishable.
it’s the season of the christmas cantata – a major work of multiple pieces with various voicings, instrumental lines, accompaniment and narration – closer to an hour in length. i’m writing this on the sunday morning that was usually chosen as the day of performance – the second sunday in december. i can’t even begin to remember how many cantatas i’ve directed – and written and arranged – through my decades as a minister of music. just recently a facebook memory came up – it was my post thanking the choir and worship band at a church where we had just performed such a work. the creation of narrative and song is exhilarating – for both director and participants – and everything drives to the downbeat. there is a glow that emanates from such a group – these people who have diligently prepared a musical piece of larger extent – and the camaraderie that weaves its way through – it is joy.
it’s been a few years now since i have directed a cantata. i’m guessing it’s a few years since many of the people who participated have sung or played a cantata. not every minister of music or choir director is up to it and some choose other programming. while you are preparing weekly anthems for sharing in service you are concurrently rehearsing this large work, so it takes time and energy, a compositional spirit, an innate ability to discern cantatas of value, ingenuity, the ability to rearrange on the fly, the belief in showcasing your choir – as a choir – accommodating any ability level, the recognition that simplicity is potent, much flexibility and humor, meticulous planning and true dedication. it is knowing as a conductor – in the moment after the downbeat – that you will merely guide this integrated group of singers and musicians through this visceral experience of purity. yours is a backseat to the magic – this is not your microphone. it is an undertaking not for the meek.
to say that i miss cantata-day would be understating. the gift of music is to make resonant that which is hard to see, that which is not tangible. the gift of music is to evoke powerful imagery and to open emotions tucked away. the gift of music is to bring forward beauty and the magnificence of producing something together. the gift of music is to offer just that – the gift of music. impactful, moving, music has the ability to change souls.
we pass the leaf on the trail – so very obviously lips curled in a smile. i think about all the times i have urged a singer to smile, all the times i have listened to the difference between smiling and not smiling – like the difference between the keys of d minor and e minor. vast.
and right now – as i write this – i wonder how many choirs are gathered on chancels, singing their hearts out, smiling inside and out.
in the juxtaposition of october’s start and summer’s last grasp – up north – we were the recipients of the gift of a subtle duality, the gift of liminal space as the seasons shift and morph into the next: summer falling away and autumn rising.
i am a fall-girl and october is my favorite month. way back when – when color and season analysis was a thing – i was told i was autumn. but i already knew it. and now – in what is defined as the autumn of my life – i find myself looking back so as to look forward, to go forward. sometimes this is with great intention, sometimes it is not at all deliberate.
i stumbled across a video the other day. i was googling a youtube of one of my recordings. second up on the googlelist was a video i had never seen. from 1996, shot and edited by a videographer, this was posted recently as a memorial to him and is a 25 minute snippet of a full-length concert i had played at uw-parkside’s auditorium. i released two CDs that night, my second and third…a dozen albums and so, so many concerts and stages ago.
i pushed the play button.
there are days you wonder where the time has gone, how summer has turned to fall and fall to winter. time has rushed by and, in its fleetingness, you have left behind profound moments, defining moments.
watching this video became one of them. watching this video reminded me.
my straight-bangs-wrinkleless-eye-shadowed face was in her element. i could feeel it.
maybe – in the autumn of my life – in the liminal space of relevant-not-relevant, of summer-fall, of falling away-rising – i’m not quite done yet.
*****
snippets from 1996 CONCERT at UW-PARKSIDE – releasing BLUEPRINT FOR MY SOUL & THE LIGHTS CDs(a memorial post on YouTube to videographer Harry Stoetzel)
we have a meadow in our basement. it’s tucked in the northwest corner. indigenous wildflowers, stacked in boxes, cardboard containers of native blooms.
the oeuvre of decades, shrink-wrapped, flowers from seeds of thought-lyrics, of melodic gestures, of teasing harmonies, of simple evocative lines.
waiting, impossibly, to return to a time of compact discs. waiting, impossibly, for the invasives of streaming to get under control, to support independent artists rather than undermine their success, their ability for forward-movement.
the meadow sometimes beckons – like a soft wind through tall grasses – waving to me, begging me to step into the bramble and thick vegetation. like most good meadows, there is no clear path. you simply must walk in and turn – 360° – looking around, stunned by all the wild – flowers and weeds, both.
the broadcast music inc royalty check arrived. it was for $60.72. though it’s likely a few hundred thousand, i didn’t add up all the counts (listens). but one piece caught my attention. its play on youtube alone totalled 15,212 counts of this piece. my total royalties for this: $1.21. (for perspective on this: even if only 5000 people downloaded this piece of music for 99 cents and listened to it as many times as they wished, it would bring in approx $3465 (there are iTunes fees) instead of $1.21. a stunning difference.)
and we have another meadow in the basement. the canvases of bloomed paintings stack against the west wall; the easel stands in the northwest corner. the digital age of download and print has entered the art world of hanging wire and levels.
canvases, paint, jewelcases, polycarbonate plastic, discography – our wildflowers in the basement. the meadows are cultivated in fields of artistry, of color, of sound, of words and notes and splashes.
robust meadows self-seed. as do artists. we create despite roadblocks, despite the undervaluing of our work, despite the stacks of antique-store-someday-bound cds and canvas. despite it all.
but just like meadows need help – to more than just exist – to eradicate the invasive species, to grow, to prosper, to thrive – so do artists.
at long last – and truly for reasons of existence – we are contemplating a patreon account – a subscription donation platform to help support artists to continue to do the work you value, the work that has moved you, the work you turn to – as we gratefully acknowledge those of you who have contributed to our buymeacoffee tip jar. this simply means a monthly donation – as low as $2/month – that helps to make up the difference that the world has thrust upon artists. some readers may consider this timely, an avenue through which they may participate. some readers may consider this self-serving. either way, we are interested in your thoughts. feel free to email us: kerrianddavid1111@gmail.com. and watch for this – a patreon – one of these days.
we gaze over at the basement-meadows and ponder what is in our hearts, what is left for us to do, what is ours to do. we are each true to our work and, in the spirit of the fault in our stars, we know that we have – indeed – done good work if we have touched even one person along the way.
“do the best you can until you know better. then, when you know better, do better.” (maya angelou)
it’s all a journey in one giant meadow. and the difference between hardly existing and thriving.
“workers might want to consider these top 10 skills, which employers say are rising in importance over the next five years: 1. creative thinking.”(jane thier – fortune magazine)
mm-hmm. yup. #2 is analytical thinking. i’m pretty certain that without creative thinking, analytical thinking would hit dead-ends every time. and self-destruct.
the other night, in the middle of the night, the wee hours of the night when one is supposed to be sleeping, i was – shockingly – wide awake. we had a long conversation, chatting about places we had lived way-earlier-on, jobs we had way-earlier-on. i talked about eating lots of kellogg’s cornflakes and he talked about mountains of pbj sandwiches. we have both had histories of piecemeal, making-it-work, scrappy artists weaving a tapestry of living with rough-hewn shreds of granola-cotton, jute, hemp, fabrics not fine or finished but with torn edges and maybe a little holey.
larkfield road in east northport made it possible. many of my jobs – early-on – were on this road. i worked at the music store, the camera store, the dive shop, one of the churches – all on this road – before i left long island. i bought my cornflakes at the king kullen and my gas at the corner citgo, splurgy pizzas down the road and sub sandwiches next to the post office. i drove all over teaching piano lessons and saved whatever i could at the bank that gave away plates for deposits on the corner of larkfield and clay pitts. none of it was fancypants. but it gave me a different expectation bar and it was all setting the stage for a creative life.
it’s funny to me that it takes a fortune magazine article to espouse the merits of creative thinking. the number 1 top skill rising in importance – as if it’s something new. ahhh. but, perhaps it is.
for we know, better i’d say than many, the difference in actually choosing a creative path. creativity, artistry – these lead you in a direction that is unrevealed, a direction that is vulnerable, a direction that has no guarantees.
an accountant, say, knows that any amount of time spent on a project will be remunerated. time spent = time paid for. it’s really a lovely equation. and both of us have had positions in our lives when this equation was in place.
but the instant we list back to the artist side, all equations dissipate into a fog and people – the same ones who turn to the arts in watershed moments of their lives – suggest we might consider exposure of our work our form of payment. i imagine writing to the wisconsin energies company – “i’ll give you ten exposures for this $326 bill.” more so, i imagine their response. yikes!
and so, here we are. the workworld – so to speak – is catching up a tiny bit. employers are beginning to recognize the value of creative thinking…maaaybe. the COO of fortune, dan shapero, is quoted, “the long-term trend is pretty undeniable that the demand for skills outpaces the supply of skills.”
perhaps he – representing employers everywhere – is not looking in the right places.
creative thinking is found in creative people, the ones exposing their work to the world, the ones who scrimp and bring to fruition projects that started in a thought bubble, the ones who don’t have the same organizational principle applied to their vitae and whose vitae, perhaps, would go the way of bot-trash, but who have a thru-hiked life (sometimes many, many years of life – decades even – making age yet another employment challenge) – with creativity their north star.
as people-with-active-resumes we note that our schooling is bachelors and masters degrees – framed and unframed- in bins in the basement somewhere. our work experience is a little bit of that tapestry i was talking about. it’s been garnered in educational settings, in corporate settings, in public service, in non-profits like theatres and churches, in software startups, on stages and on radio, in studios with canvas and studios with microphones. our creative output is found in albums, in paintings, in books, in blogs, in cartoons, in plays, in workshop projects.
we get creative thinking.
i passed green eyes down to her. he got his eye color from his dad. both of them are wildly creative. their lives have already been a tapestry of edges. i couldn’t be more proud.
“the most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.” (mary oliver)
my uncle allen had a beautiful voice. my mom’s brother, he would stand in our living room, with me at the piano or the organ, and belt out songs with great love. he’d bring stacks of sheet music over and we’d page through them, choosing greatest hits from broadway musicals or the radio. sometimes my big brother would play along and the three of us would entertain my sweet momma and dad for hours. there is never a time i hear “the impossible dream” that i do not think of allen.
“and I know if I’ll only be true to this glorious quest that my heart will lie peaceful and calm when i’m laid to my rest”
i cannot think of anyone i have ever known who was as consistently happy – no matter the difficulty or challenge facing him, he was happy and smiling. his complete support of my earliest recording path is something for which i will always be grateful. my uncle always believed. in his wonderful wife, his adored children, his family, in me. allen was a gift to the universe. when i think about the movie “the fault in our stars”, i realize that he was an example of living this way – recognizing that it matters not how many people you touch or impact or inspire, no matter the tiny or giant legacy you leave in your wake – what matters is that there was one person…one person for whom you have made a difference simply by being on this good earth. anything beyond that is icing on the cake. allen was indeed icing.
the chipmunks are back and i have to say i am delighted. they are adorable and cunning and just really smart little guys. before the winter, they devised all kinds of methods to get to the birdfeeder, despite the metal plate that is supposed to keep them away. they managed to chock-fill their cheeks with seed and carry it off to their wintercondos. now they have returned and they are hungry. they’ve been practicing getting up the feeder, sometimes falling into the grasses below. they have been intentional. they don’t let failure get in their way. they literally jump from the ground up to the plate over and over until suddenly they are somehow balanced there and then they can jump up to the grazing edge of the feeder. they do what’s necessary, then what’s possible and then suddenly they are flying through the air, rewarded by a feeder full of birdseed.
i don’t suppose that’s unusual. everything takes practice. impossible is maybe a temporary matter. i also suppose that there is a certain surprise element to things. we start out with one plan, one path, one intention. we don’t bank on wavering off, we don’t bank on obstacles, we don’t bank on changing direction. impossible.
and yet, there’s possible waving at us from somewhere beyond the impossible dream. and we find ourselves in places unexpected, doing unexpected things, forging those impossible mountains.
there we are, flying through the air, the world in our hands, rewarded by a feeder full of birdseed.
i loved it all. the halls of john glenn high school, the walls of the classrooms i sat in, most of the extraordinary teachers i had the pleasure of studying with, most of the classes i took. i loved math, i loved science, i loved english and creative writing. i even loved my jewelry class, though i was not particularly skilled at it. i took no music classes in high school. none.
the guidance counselor didn’t know what to do. what direction do i go? what path do i take? what major do i pursue? the emphasis was on the decision. make one, i was told. it is quite possible this is one of the reasons why, years later, i completed a guidance and counseling masters – to scrap the emphasis on the decision and shift it to the process. at a time in the late 70s when college was ever-important and i was top-of-my-class i was underserved. it does not matter where you are in your class if your spectrum of curiousness is dowsed by someone pressing you into a mold, narrowed into a this-or-that.
in my first years of community college i still loved it all. philosophy classes were a stand-out. economics were not-so-much. business law was a low point. environmental science classes fascinated me. because i played the piano, taught piano lessons, wrote songs, and directed a youth choir, i signed up for a couple music theory classes and met paul simon, the godson of my music theory professor sy shaffer. listening to paul talk about songwriting was a huge highlight. i mean, it was paul simon. but i really still didn’t know what direction to take.
a life-changing event, as life-changing events do, changed that.
i moved when i should have stayed. i left when i should have dug in. i dropped the rest of the curiosity to focus on the familiar, the known. albert einstein would have taken me by my ear. “stay curious,” he would have admonished. “what you seek is seeking you,” rumi would have whispered to me. “wait.”
it’s funny to me now – as i look back – that i did not focus on the inordinate number of hours i spent writing in a tree. it’s funny to me now – as i look back – that i wrote songs and music and arrangements – fifteen albums worth – and never really thought of all the heavy composing or theory classes i took in my second half at university. never once have i gone back and compo-analyzed the structure-texture-tonal-system-consonance-dissonance of a piece of music i have written. it’s funny to me now – as i play with design and photoshop and cartooning and blogging – that it didn’t occur to me, as an editor at john glenn’s art and literary magazine “gemini”, how much i loved what i was doing in those after-school hours-and-hours sessions with one of the world’s best and most expansive english teachers, andrea vrusho. it’s funny. we see and we don’t see. twists and turns, paths taken, paths not taken. our stories all different. stages and flatbeds, classrooms, church chancels, the state side of the courtroom, piano benches, recording studios, choir rooms, department-store-holiday-wrapping in lean times. all part of the curio cabinet, never full, never finished. we take paths and, if we are scrappy and confident and lucky enough to be supported and even mentored, we make the best of them. anyway. there is a richness to each story and each path.
no special talents. passionately curious.
we all have something. something that sets us apart from each and every other person. something that the world we are in cannot do without. for every spoke in the wheel counts and every gift, every talent, every nurturing soul, every fixer-upper, every engineer-brain, every teacher, every scientist, every laborer, every inventor, every chef creating magic in a soup kitchen or michelin-star-bistro, every artist, every athlete, every skilled-trade expert are necessary in this place, at this time.
it is exactly that – that is brilliant. it is exactly that which is genius. it is the appreciation of that – so much to learn – which is the gift of being human. it is the imperative of humanity.
i was going to write about the gig economy. about how living a life – mostly – in that world has given me a perspective about work that is maybe a little less rigid than the perspective of one who has worked outside the gig economy. always piecing it together, always scrappy, always thinking of the next new thing to create – these are second nature. not having as much, worrying, repurposing, having thinner margins – these are also second nature. in the middle of the middle of what-next thinking, outside the box of indeed and monster and ziprecruiter and simplyhired and random sites that seriously suggest i apply for positions as a neuroscience researcher. “now what?” people will ask – mostly who don’t really know me or who are drawing comparisons with their own lives. i was going to write about all that.
but then i thought about beauty. i thought about how artists dive below the surface, try to find the depth of meaning, try to hear and see what which others might pass by, not noticing. i thought about stages and boom mics and connection and standing in front of a diebenkorn – or a robinson – deep inside, marveling. i thought about arvo pärt and his absolute tug on my heart. i thought about john denver and simplicity. i thought about recording studios and soaring string sections, cello lines that make clouds rearrange to allow in light. the weaving of intricate relationship between people and nature, between people and art in any form.
there have been moments – and i can actually remember them – when i have been driving and listening to a song and i weep or hiking and seeing something so stunning i stop and cannot move. these moments when i know, without a doubt, that it was right to turn down the business-school-accounting-program acceptance. these moments when i know, without a doubt, that i will not have the same security as the person-i-would-have-been following that route. moments when i feel a sense of pride to be a tiny part of the tapestry of what people turn to in time of rejuvenation, of rest, of crisis, of pure bliss. these moments when i know, without a doubt, that somewhere along the way what i have done with my time has touched someone, has opened them, has taken them diving with me. below the surface of this great big world – to beauty.
it’s been forty years now…over forty, actually. four decades of other people asking THAT question: “what’s your REAL job?”. for a society that values entertainment in all arenas of medium, it would seem a ridiculous query – for this work as an artist – this work providing a piece of heart connection, of balance, this work expressing ideas with the hope of creating beauty, this work exploring perceptions and nudging perspectives, this work generating emotions – this IS my real job. as an artist. a funambulist.
and as a lifelong artist, some things about my life are just different than the norm. it is hard for people to know what to say – or for that matter, what to think – when you mention you are a musician or that you write or paint or dance or sculpt or act. it’s kind of a conversation-stopper. or a chance for the people at the table to push, “but what’s your REAL job?”.
the success of our lives is not measured in rising stocks or 401k’s or retirement portfolios or even bulging savings accounts, for that matter. real jobs are defined by levels of security and solvency that artists, sadly, rarely experience. it’s just hard for others to wrap their heads around such oddity, such tenuousness, such a complex relationship with the imperative to create.
so we point out: the bow, literal or figurative, of any artist is humble gratitude. the joy of any artist is the rippling concentric circle of their work. success is connection, resonance. even with one tiny person-star in the galaxy.
the definition of our lives is complicated to explain, though i expect so is yours. if one artist is awkward, two artists is a weird-fest. sooo not-normal. we will laugh WITH you as you struggle to understand us. weird or not, it is who we are.
reverse threading 