i can feel it. it’s not something i can put words to. it’s mysterious and undefinable. but it’s coming. there is a turning point. right around the corner.
i walk into this new year and there’s something different…there is an underlying vibration i can feel – viscerally – a pulse, a quivering – that is present.
when it was time to pick a piece of my music for this week’s studio melange, i was drawn to this one….full of angst and wonder and sedimentary layers and mica and minor…..full of questions.
2019. it has been nine years since i recorded a full-length album of any sort and seventeen years since a full-length vocal. is it time? to record? to let it go?
i can feel it. it’s not something i can put words to. it’s mysterious and undefinable. but it’s coming. there is a turning point. right around the corner.
this bonus track was a surprise for my sweet momma and poppo. playing God be with you till we meet again as the last track on this, my first christmas album, seemed apropos back then. it was a favorite of theirs, spoken to us or sometimes even sung as we left to depart to places far away or even close by. and i get that. goodbyes are so hard.
in the last couple of months we have been lucky enough to see My Girl, My Boy and his boyfriend, my wendy aka ben aka saul, and some dear long-time friends. in the next month or so we will see my heather aka feath and her brian, my sister and her sweet bill. we have communicated with holiday greetings…on the phone, via texts, emails, cards or letters sent in old-fashioned-times postal mail, sealed and seasonal-stamped, with those whom we hold close. soon, other family and friends will cross our paths; perhaps we will even drive to them or they to us. maybe we will meet halfway. maybe we’ll talk on the phone or facetime or text. any way we have the opportunity to be with them, upon their departure or ours, i will quietly whisper – as i always do – God be with you till we meet again.
God be with you till we meet again…by good counsels guide, uphold you….
with a shepherd’s care enfold you…God be with you till we meet again.
“…i love to watch the lights shine on my baby’s face…”
the place this song came from. motherhood. the full-body-overwhelming-love-feeling for me of holding my babies those first christmases. seeing the lights from the tree play on their faces was magic-on-earth. i suddenly understood my sweet momma and her joy having us there at christmas, surrounded by her babies (forever her babies, regardless of age.) this is a story-song. i’ll say little else about it. you’ll understand when you listen to the lyrics.
“…a chance to really mean something to someone…” (judy noerr, cherry hill guest experience officer.) every year in westminster, colorado (one of my favorite states) “roughly 800 naturally bearded santas” -who work for the cherry hill program of santas (people representing the real santa!) placed in retail centers around the country- have an opportunity to attend the training session that convenes annually. i read about this in aarp magazine last year and saved the article; it was touching…an article about such a positive impact on others.
there were three santa secrets shared and, although they went into more relevant santa-detail, they are worth repeating here: 1. keep up your appearance. 2. keep egos in check. 3. speak another language. ahhhh. staying healthy and aware, remaining grounded and compassionate, making an effort to embrace others not-like-you. amazingly simple. these are simple-santa lessons. worthy of our taking notice.
it is this season….a season of hope, of joy, of miracles. a season of simplicity and compassion, of giving and generosity, a season of really meaning something to someone, a season of love.
may this season bring you all the gifts the universe has to offer you. with great love.
hope. there aren’t many words like this…describing that which you can actually-viscerally-feel in your body. it makes you breathe differently. it makes your heart beat faster. it makes your knees weak and your ability to wait strong. it makes you weep with anticipation and holds you close with others who are also hoping.
wishing you a season of hope, a season of expectation, a season of joy, a season of peace.
THE ABUNDANCE SALE: there is an abundance of THIS SEASON – A CHRISTMAS ALBUM CDs in stock. i would rather have these solo piano albums playing in homes and cars and keeping people company than in the boxes of inventory. so…..the first 100 people who order this album will receive it for $5 plus tax and shipping. at this time of generous gift-giving, you may order as many as you wish at this price through December 17.
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THE ABUNDANCE SALE: i am also offering the solo piano album ALWAYS WITH US VOLUME 1 – HYMNS OF FAITH at this same price. in this case, the first 300 CDs ordered will be $5 plus tax and shipping. this album is meditative and reassuring, traditional hymns played solo piano, an hour of reflection. at this time of generous gift-giving, you may order as many as you wish at this price through December 17.
just last saturday evening, out on cape cod, we lingered over seafood and glasses of wine with jonathan, our bass player. we were sitting around his table, chatting about music.
he told us about a group of musicians he rehearses with on an irregular basis. they play a wide variety of instruments and they all just gather casually together and jam on some “good music”. “…and once in a while we play the same stuff…” he stated. his voice trailed off as he thought about what he had just said and we all laughed. we can picture a whole group of jonathans in the room – all exuberant and, each, lovers of all music, all pick-ready, mouthpiece-ready, reed-ready, hands-poised-over-the-keys-ready. that kind of enthusiasm shouldn’t be curbed or restrained. the sheer joy of playing – now that’s the reason to be all together. it’s not about playing all the notes on the page, playing them all perfectly at the same time, playing them with no mistakes. it’s about heart. it’s about the breaths and the rests of silence, the flip-flop your heartbeat makes when soaring notes come together in a sweeping harmony, the tears you get in your eyes when something you just played or heard is sublimely sweet, dynamically touching, deeply resonant, the belly laugh with the ridiculously dissonant moment.
the ukulele sip ‘n strums are about just that. if we can choose to teach anything at those sip ‘n strums, i would choose to teach just these things. the things of joy. music is all about individual hearts…coming together with the immense gift of twelve notes at our literal fingertips. no matter what we play, we are playing the same stuff.
it’s not a complex piece of music. it’s a line out of my heart at the moment in time i was recording it. it’s the mystery that surrounds waiting. it’s the depth of biding one’s time. it’s the expression of sitting tight and holding on, of not-knowing. it’s the tentative simplicity of before…before the time of getting to the end of waiting. it’s the time of anticipation, of advent – the time of emergence, of arrival, of birth.
it’s not complicated. it’s just waiting.
download JOY – A CHRISTMAS ALBUM on iTUNES or CDBaby
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)
sisu. perseverance. fortitude. stamina. courage. determination. my grandmother mama dear used this finnish term all the time and passed it down to my sweet momma beaky who passed it down to me. a philosophy of life, a mantra, “you gotta have sisu!” mama dear would say. if up against the odds, if forging upstream, my sweet momma would say, “you gotta have sisu!” and so it was without a second thought when it was time to name my own company, the independent recording label that has been sisu music productions for the last 23 years. i can’t think of a better name for all the challenges that have risen – and continue to rise – as an independent artist.
any moment of fear, of uncertainty, brings me to draw on that sisu…digging in my heels and standing firmly in it. it’s kind of a blind faith and has everything to do with that. in the face of adversity, of the scales tilted not-in-your-favor, you just keep on. in the face of fear…everyone has their thing…the thing that makes them afraid…the thing that makes them white-knuckled…you just keep on. sisu.
i was flying back from telluride to denver a couple days ago – in a smaller plane. there was a big strapping guy all dressed in camouflage who got on the plane before me. he told the flight attendant he had been out in the middle of nowhere hunting (successfully) elk and mule deer. he was a rough and tumble kind of guy and ended up seated just across the aisle from me. when the plane hit turbulence, particularly over the front range, his face turned red and he looked over at me with a deer-in-the-headlights look and said, “i hate this part!!” i started talking to him then, trying to ease his obvious fear, talking about the wind currents and the mountains…how i could see the airport…we are almost there…just a teeny bit further…wheels are going to touch down any minute…. he was gripping the lock on the little tray table and finally relaxed his grip and smiled. everyone has their thing.
we can loan others the sisu we carry with us. we can bank on the sisu we carry with us. i often credit being-from-new-york for times i have just forged-ahead-anyway, but my sisu roots go way further back than that.
sisu. i stood back from the edge of a deep deep canyon the other day, my beautiful daughter on another boulder a few hundred yards away. i looked at the sky, the sunset playing over red rock. thought about that very moment in time, this moment i was sharing with the part of my heart known as kirsten…this moment that wouldn’t be repeated. and i heard the voice in my head, “you gotta have sisu.” i stepped to the very edge of the canyon, stretched out my arms and laughed aloud.
