“we all travel the milky way together, trees and men.” (john muir)
the pandemic rages on, wreaking destruction; after 800 years, jupiter and saturn line up in the sky. and i cannot wrap my head around the absolute-insignificant-significance of each of us. in this moment, on this piece of earth, under this sky, we whirl through space and time, reaching out to grasp onto bits of life – merely air – and make a dent in the atmosphere where we stand.
2020 has been a year of whittling. it has whittled away at our safety. it has whittled away at our health. it has whittled away the physical companionship of our loved ones. it has whittled away relationships, through political divide, social justice mores, the pursuit of personal freedoms over community. it has whittled away trust, heaving it to the side as we watch, astonished, as untruths, gaslighting, even propaganda surround us both under the cloak of country and up close and personal. it has whittled away the security of our finances, our work suspended. it has whittled away at our shock gauge; each time thinking there has been enough and being surprised by yet more, the baseline of dismay ever-changing. it has whittled away the convergence of reality and logic and it has left confusion in its place; it has paralyzed us and it has frightened us. it has whittled away what we understand.
and yet, the trees stand steadfast. they continue to reach for the sun, arms held out to the light. they neither seek to understand as they grow nor question the storms that have battered them. they just are. their place in the milky way dents the atmosphere a tiny bit, just as ours does. we travel, in various rotational directions, hundreds of thousands miles per hour along with the trees. all of us, together.
“you are a child of the universe; no less than the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here. and whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” (max ehrmann, “desiderata”)
between us we have two master’s degrees, two bachelor’s degrees, four businesses, a coaching and consulting practice, various certifications, multiple states of teaching credentials, fifteen albums, four singles, hundreds of paintings, multiple play-scripts, countless productions and concerts and performances and gallery showings, a radio show, four cartoons, books, blogs that contain a few thousand posts, numerous and diverse leadership positions in theatres and churches and educational institutions, too many non-profits to count, long resumes and a combined total of over eighty years of work experience.
we are artists. and, as you know, that is not the easy path. it’s gig economy in a corporate environment. it means piecing things together, working a plethora of jobs at once, purchasing your own healthcare, investing in your own so-called retirement, advocating for your own value, balancing, balancing, balancing. the tightrope is thin, but anyone doing the tightrope dance (funambulism) is well-acquainted with the balancing pole and standing tall in the center of mass on the rope, necessities in an artist’s life.
in a workplace conversation once, i was asked how i would even speculate about having a second job. an incredulous moment, as a person who has always had simultaneous multiple jobs, it was ludicrous to me that the person asking this, who apparently has always lived in absolute bullet-pointed stability, could not fathom having more than one job at a time. were artists to be so lucky. were any gig workers, in their area of professionalism, to be so lucky. that is another world entirely.
so we are always on the lookout for additional gigs, so to speak. education, experience and skills from the wide spectrum of the first paragraph speak well to helping with growth and change processes and insight and honoring students and employees, not to mention the separate and interwoven threads of music, painting, theatre. these experiences that span decades speak to the arts, that which the world turns to in times of chaos, unrest, dis-ease, periods marked by adjectives like distraught, devastated, frenzied, unprecedented, uncertain, arduous, splintered, divided, distrustful, untrue, exhausted. the arts – that which feeds society. yet, “creativity takes courage,” understated henri matisse (painter, 1869-1954).
as many of you, we receive solicited and unsolicited lists of jobs in our email. we peruse through the obvious ill-fitting options like neurosurgeon or stem cell biological researcher; we look for opportunities to plug our work as artists into the world. we are also emailed positions that line up with our professional abilities and tenure in the arts.
and this is what we’ve been sent: sandwich ARTIST and GALLERY advisor. it’s hard to know whether to laugh or be insulted. sandwich artist? if this is really what subway calls their employees, i would say most of us have related experience since the first time, at like age 3, we spread peanut butter and jelly on our wonder bread. and gallery advisor? tesla, really? car dealer concierge maybe?
it’s a dim future if you cannot see relevance for the arts in a society, if they are secondary to anything and everything else, if they present in sandwiches and on dealership floors. where are the organizations, the institutions, the employers who recognize the multi-faceted diamonds in an artist’s perspective, an artist’s drive, an artist’s commitment, an artist’s vision, an artist’s project-driven dedication and multi-layered stamina, an artist’s sensitivity, an artist’s heart?
as two artist-funambulists, we’d like something better for the gifted artists giving breath to joy and hope and tomorrow. from the tightrope of this gig economy, it makes our toes curl to think any differently.
no one else. there was literally no one else i knew who took organ lessons. eight years old and i was the only one. everyone else i knew took piano lessons. they went to the new local music store –munro music on larkfield road in east northport – and had lessons in itty studios downstairs and came back upstairs to pick out sheet music from a big wall featuring the latest hits and books of collected artists, written out for various levels of piano-playing ability. me? i went to mr. i-never-knew-if-he-even-had-a-first-name sexton’s house (now, think about the torture my peers had with that name) and took organ lessons in the addition adjacent to the garage. there was no wall of sheet music, were no cool guitars hanging up begging to be purchased, no amplifiers or drums. just that one organ. no windy or ode to billie joe or i’m a believer easy piano for me. it was beautiful dreamer and long, long ago. and hymns. lots of hymns. but i had been asking for lessons since i was five and the little chord organ that was my grandmother’s was moved aside and a ‘real’ organ with two manuals (keyboards) and real pedals and cha-cha button settings was added to the corner of the dining room that was next to the kitchen and the living room.
when i was ten i tearfully played the pipe organ for my brother’s wedding, the processional as my sweet sister-in-law walked down the aisle to my big brother. yesterday i was talking to john whelan, a master celtic accordionist the exact same age as me, and we talked about the first real gig we did. his was at 12 and he actually got paid. mine was this wedding and, for obvious reasons, payment was out of the question. i got to wear a really pretty peach-colored party dress and white shoulder stole and wept my way through the difficult piece.
after some time, i somehow convinced my parents that they needed both an organ and a piano and they signed me up for piano lessons. joan ostrander, the very chic music teacher, was my first piano teacher and i adored her. she pushed me and i adored that too. i spent long hours practicing on the piano bench with my dog missi sleeping underneath, my dad whistling in the background.
in years to come i studied with the teacher-of-all-teachers alan walker and was convinced that the piano and i were kindred. i taught more piano lessons on long island (and later florida and even wisconsin) than i can remember, back then driving from one house to another, delighting in each student’s joy playing the piano and progress no matter the pace, hoping to emulate the teaching style of this amazingly kind man. after lessons we talked life and ham radio and ate open-faced crunchy peanut butter sandwiches. music is not just about music, you know.
during my undergrad, i studied piano in college with one of the professors but kept bringing in pieces of original music and kept veering off course from assigned large scale pieces, hoping he wouldn’t notice.
as no real surprise, i majored in music composition, the first (?) step toward living as an artist, the first step in a road that leads to here and now. so much in-between. the gigging composer music timeline is filled with albums, concerts, performances, cd sales, radio and tv, qvc appearances, barnes & noble and borders, listening wall placement, phone calls, yamaha, traveling, shipping and more shipping, recording labels, carrying boxes, standing in the rain on flatbed trucks playing and singing, driving, driving, driving, press releases, graphic design, writing, recording, supportive family and friends and coworkers and a person named hope hughes.
but that organ. it has kept on re-appearing. somehow it is one of the threads that has woven its way through my life. there aren’t that many of us out here: people who play the organ, who can finesse a chosen timbre through the pipes and who can actually play lines of bass notes on the pedals. those lessons from the very beginning somehow set the stage for me to work for three decades already as a minister of music. conducting choirs and handbells and ukulele bands and worship bands, choosing music for services and performing groups, leading and shaping worship and, yep, playing the organ…it has been a constant. there are days that i will pull out all the stops and play as loud as the organ pipes will allow. its bellowing echoes through the sanctuary and i giggle as i think of my ten year old self, sitting on an organ bench in williston park on long island and crying.
what would i have thought if i had known that fifty years later i would still be sitting on an organ bench?
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at night, if the weather is clear, with the backdrop of waves lapping at the shore, we look up and see the milky way in the night sky. it makes us feel tiny. tiny in a vast world.
we string happy lights about our home, inside and out. they are the simplest of holiday light strands, eensy white lights on green or white cords and we use them year-round. one white light alone barely lights a space, but together, a constellation of tiny bulbs, the illumination is magical. one alone. all together. it makes a big difference.
we are working in a place that is divided. the division is deeply rooted and exacerbated by stubborn attitudes and time. we must “string the stars together” to bring hope; we must “sing light in common song” to move forward. community must prevail over a schism of proportion. no place can truly be beautiful without stringing together. we have our work cut out for us.
fair isle books is one of the sweetest spots on this island. a breath of fresh air with warm ambience and overtones of the joy of learning, this little shop is owned by deb, whose heart is gigantic. outside her shop is this plaque, a snippet of a poem ‘constellation’ by wisconsin poet laureate bruce dethlefsen, a presenter at the washington island literary festival in 2013.
how fortuitous that this poet should capture in a mere 33 words the work that is to be done. we are not alone, each of us on this tiny-planet-in-the-vastness. though seemingly individually strong, we are indeed actually weak. we must link arms, act in community, string together, work collaboratively.
division doesn’t create more for each on the sides of the chasm. it creates less.
collectively, we can create boundlessly. our constellation -together- creates hope.
the lake is glistening out the window right now, diamonds in the sun on a sea awash in blues and teals. we just listened to this track SCATTERED and i am taken back to when i composed and recorded this, a time i felt scattered. yet, this is the right piece of music for today.
how we arrived together at this place at this time – all scattered puzzle pieces. rearrange one piece and everything changes. somehow, the pieces all fit, snug tabs and blanks forming a picture.
right now, coincidentally the album title, we are in a new time of life at a new place doing a new thing. our job is to respectfully, mindfully, keenly watch. we will listen and study and learn the branches of our little island, the unique challenges of the work here. as we develop relationship with the island, the people, the places, our littlehouse, our work here, the scattered tabs and blanks will come together. not without intention or purpose, not without dreaming or planning, not without knowledge or the wisdom of experience, not without experimentation or failure, but they will come together…as they will. it just feels a bit scattered right now, as every jigsaw puzzle fresh out of the box.
this came across my desk last week. “maturity in season of life.” part of a minister of music job description, i was struck by the unguarded language, the bow to what only time and experience can teach. i have never seen this written as such before. it was bracing in every GOOD way. it was appreciatory. it was a breath of fresh air.
in a society that seeks to remain youthful and puts less emphasis on maturity in season of life than on staying young, we need remember there’s a place for everyone. some places require youth, fresh and breathing hard from the sprint. other places recognize the need for the steadfast wisdom of the ages, a decision-maker-doer who brings a lifetime of positive and negative experiences and knows how to differentiate between them, has an intuition built on time and the ever-growing wealth of lessons. the seesaw has room for both; the fulcrum can only balance with both.
as two artists living together, we are more than aware of the challenge of ageism, the challenge of time spent in our artistry and how that relates to value. more than a thousand times we have each been admonished for thinking we need to be paid when we should be grateful for the “exposure” we are being “granted”. more than a thousand times we have each been in a place where we have had to explain why our artistry needs to be financially rewarded just like anyone else’s work.
indeed, pay scales have been built to reflect time spent and job descriptions use verbiage like “pay is commensurate with experience.” experience. maturity: “the ability to respond to the environment in an appropriate manner. being aware of the correct time and location to behave and knowing when to act, according to the circumstances and the culture of the society (read: job) one lives in (read: one works in).”
i recently was having a written messaging chat with a hard-working young adult whose job is in the arts. with these challenges facing him every day, he said that people do not realize that “they’re paying me to know what to do if things don’t go well.” intuition. working on the fly based on training, knowledge and an ever-building bank of experiences. he will continue to face that challenge; it will only deepen. how is that maturity measured? how will he be paid for that maturity, for that which he cannot describe and for which others cannot fathom? for some reason, in this society, it is easier to answer that question if you are doing a numbers job, something seemingly more concrete, more measurable, more quantifiable.
but maturity in season of life touches others as well and we have dear friends who have been ‘let go’ from their jobs simply because of their age. now, their companies would never testify to that and are careful to avoid such language – for that would set them up for all kinds of legal problems – but it has been clear to our friends, struggling to find a new way in later days of their lives. few and far between are those who are able to benefit by pointing out the error of their ways to the company that is undervaluing a later human-on-this-earth season. other friends are fortunate enough to be working somewhere that has deeply valued the long time they have spent in their work and these friends have retired with spoken words of gratitude and wishes of continued good living. where is the fulcrum?
in this particular document that came across my desk, the whole phrase read, “maturity in season of life and maturity in ministry experience.” shockingly, they are seeking this as a qualifier and they are willing to pay for it. speaking directly to that qualifier that beautifully honors the wisdom of the ages, there are things that, as a minister of music at 19 i did not know. there are things that, as a minister of music at 32 i did not know. likewise, as a 30-years-as-a-minister-of-music at days-away-from-60, of course there are things i do not know.
what i DO know is that every experience i have had as a minister of music has built upon the last. instead of a chasm where learnings have dropped rapid-fire into an abyss, i have learned what the important stuff is and how to attempt to keep those things foremost.
like anyone in any job, mastery is commensurate with time spent, with growth in that work, and yes, without exception, with maturity in season of life.
“take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.” (desiderata)
we really never know what it takes to do someone else’s job. we don’t know all the tools used, the research done, how training and experience play into it, how someone perceives their own work. we can only guess and, often, fall desperately and even arrogantly off the mark.
walking into d’s studio my eye is drawn to the easel standing in the far corner. closer to me, though, is an old cart with an old wooden box holding paints and brushes. there is another cart and on that is this palette – layers upon layers of color and texture, clay pots of water standing next to this widely-understood symbol of “artist”, often associated with the beginning of the process of painting.
now, i’ve painted a few paintings in my life. i bought very large prepared canvases and dug around in the basement for leftover acrylic house paint to use on my creations. without a palette, i brushed and re-brushed and threw paint until i knew each painting was done. and then i hung them on the walls. in one case, i painted right on the wall and put a clearance frame around the section of wall that i painted – a nod to a painting without the cost of canvas.
all of this, however, does not make me capable of really understanding how d paints. for i do not know all the tools, i do not know the process of mixing color or the technique of stretching canvas he uses, i do not know the tricks of the trade he has accumulated over decades of honing his expertise. nor do i know the knowledge base he brings about other artists, other painters and paintings, the use of light and dark space, the way the viewer’s eye sees, the very technical details and the very heart-based intuitions he has learned through many, many years of study and practice. i can’t understand or even try to predict the amount of time it takes or doesn’t take for him to conceptualize, to explore, to create, to review, to assess, to adjust, to re-create. i can respond to his work but i cannot define it, nor would it be meritorious for me to even try to do so. out of respect for his work, something that is one of the very things that defines him, i know that i really have no idea. what i can do is appreciate his talent and every last thing that he has done to bring him to this place where he paints beautiful paintings and it seems to take no effort whatsoever.
with regard to anyone and the work that they do, i would hope we could each remember – with humble respect – that we really have no idea. we can just be grateful that we are each a spoke in the wheel on this good earth. our palettes, the places from which we begin, are different. and we can’t do it alone.
we were canoeing and it was quiet. the only thing you could hear were a few birds, a loon from time to time and the sound of the paddle hitting the water. we went through the channel and above us we saw it.
the young bald eagle was taking its first flight and we had the great fortune of witnessing it. i knew i wanted to write at least a few words about how lucky we were to see it, watch and quietly be a part of it. as this beautiful creature soared over us, it seemed to relish its newfound freedom, its new ability to fly. even as we watched it struggle a bit with the landing, we could see its determination to its flight. we talked about how the eagle was representative of this country we live in. in the late 1700s it was chosen as the emblem of the united states…based on its long life and great strength, it is majestic, bold and faithful, independent and a symbol of freedom. such hopeful words, such a powerful emblem of a nation that has lost its center.
after some time, we continued on. we talked about writing. we talked about why. why do we write each day. why do i compose. why does d paint. what words could you wrap around what we do, why we share what we share, why we fly in this artistic-world, the place we are at home. is it important? why?
we are merely instruments. we can watch and quietly be a part. we can simply start the ripple. that’s all that is really possible. that is our job. to be instruments. like pebbles dropped in water. our emblem would be just that. tightly-starting-ever-widening-circles of ripples, repercussions, the effects moving, ever-moving. what we choose in the center counts. if we choose peace and kindness, then we can start the concentric circles outward of peace and kindness.
when we were designing our website, the dalai lama quote ““Just as ripples spread out when a single pebble is dropped into water, the actions of individuals can have far-reaching effects” needed to be present. the ripples of water on the front page of our site are not graphically brilliant or even singularly creative. but they are an emblem, so to speak, of the reason we do what we do. the meaning behind that emblem is the reason we keep trying. it is the reason we yearn to make it possible to live as two artist-ripples, to make a living and pay the bills and do what we can to be instruments of peace. we hold tight to the center. and like that young eagle, we are determined.
“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.” (the prayer of st. francis of assissi)
