the woods along the trails by the des plaines river have been burned. the fires, intentionally lit to restore native life to the forest floor, to burn out the invasive species that have harmed the vegetation. already, post-burn, we can see green amid the blackened mulch. already, there is newness of life. the toxic has been deliberately remediated and goodness will prevail. it will take some time, but it will eventually tip the balance and the woods will be better for it.
this is simple. it is all around us. the necessity for an intentional burn. we wake up to a new day, a new sun, a new chance. in this time of re-birth and restoration, we are amazingly gifted. with grace.
i cannot help but think of the world despairingly coming together to lift up notre dame as it was on fire. not at all intentional, not necessary, absolutely devastating to that beautiful and majestic cathedral, yet somehow it brings together a global community of people who recognize its importance, its value, its history, its soul. and it will prevail. in a divisive world, grace.
less is often more. it is in that spirit i recorded this track of amazing grace.
download ALWAYS WITH US VOLUME 2 on iTUNES or CDBaby
the two of you: two reasons why i breathe ~ my children (cd liner notes)
this will never change. most of the things i gather around me are things that make me think of them, feel them near. it’s as simple as framed photographs or collages or a peace keychain or lanyards that say ‘colorado’ and ‘boston’. it’s a screenshot of a text message i want to remember. it’s a note jotted on my calendar about something My Girl or My Boy said to me or a date that is important to them i want to remember. it’s notes they wrote as children held by magnets to the refrigerator or in small frames bedside. it’s laughter saved in a video. it’s moments of tears driving away from their homes. it’s a rock saved on a hike in the high desert canyonlands with The Girl; it’s The Boy’s childhood favorite ny taxi pencil on my piano. nothing is huge. everything is huge.
most of my also-mom-friends will agree that, outside of spending time together, the one thing certain to lift them up on any given day is a reaching-out-to-them by a grown-up child. it’s the moment ANYthing else stops. it’s the silently-agreed-upon, strictly-held-to and always-welcome interruption in the middle of visiting others, working, hiking, cooking, sleeping. both The Girl and The Boy knew – and know – that they can call or text at any time of day or night and i will be there; i will answer. ‘always there’ is a fierce inner motherhood promise designed to both ground and frustrate children, whatever their ages. it’s a guiding principle, a mom-creed. it’s absolute. it’s truth.
from the moment they were born everything changed. and, from that moment on, one thing didn’t. the two of you ~ two reasons why i breathe ~ my children. ❤️
one of the gifts i received for my 60th birthday this week – an envelope with seed packets of lettuces in it, dirt and manure. on the outside of the envelope of seeds was this:
“to plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.” (audrey hepburn)
early november. moab, utah. i was standing on the precipice of a vast and deep canyon and was filled with wonder. My Girl encouraged me a bit further out, a bit higher. she was right to push me. the gorge inches away, unforgiving, i didn’t lose my breath until the very edge. but i breathed in so much more. i felt like ME. me, in my old hiking boots and ripped jeans, a couple black layered shirts and a vest, fingerless gloves linda made. ME. the air of the high desert mountains seemed to fill me and, as i stood there, pondering my very existence in this place, i felt renewed. a meeting ground, i could feel all the yesterdays that brought me there and the tomorrows that stretched forward. it is a spiritual place. she was right and i tied my heart to it just as she had predicted. the sun and i were each merely a tiny piece of the enormity. we watched day end and shadows paint the canyon walls until dark filled the void. we laughed uncontrollably. i cried. no matter what, the next day – tomorrow – would come to that place and sun would spackle the walls until it would -again- be light.
THIS will be the next album cover. in some tomorrow time. i wish to bring burning sun and immense canyons into that project. mountains and Spirit and old boots. a bow to yesterday and to tomorrow and the place inbetween. the air in me. i don’t know when or exactly how. i just know i need to somehow make the chance. i need to stand on the very edge, once again. it matters not whether i am relevant in these times. it just matters that i plant it. lettuce, here i come.
yesterday david wrote these words about his palette. as i read his words, i realized he was conveying many of my own sentiments. with his permission, i have only slightly modified his words this morning to express my own artist palette – my piano. the re-posting of this, and even using the same verbiage, reminds me of the intertwining of all soulful expression. bear with me as i experiment, my words in red, an exploration of two artistic planes running parallel.
true confessions: i never rarely clean my palette the music stand on top of my piano. i like the messy build up of color. color is found in many forms but mostly notebooks and pa-pads, scraps of paper, snippets of tracks recorded on an iriver or an iphone. i like the chunky texture pile. it serves as a gunky history of my work, a genealogy of paintings compositions past and future. and then, over time, it becomes a tactile work of art in its own right. unfettered by any of the mental gymnastics or over-ponderous considerations that plague my “real” work, it is the closest to child-mind that i will achieve. it is accidental. it is free. it is idea, melodic gesture, poetry waiting for notes, phrase waiting for the rest of the lyrics. ready. waiting. free.
this might be a stretch but it is, for me, nevertheless true. i love my palette because it is the place of alchemy in my artist process. it is the true liminal space. long before the space spanning the route taken from introduction to coda. i begin with pure color. i begin with the rest, silence inbetween the notes, the place for breath so you can hear the vibrations of sound. i smash the pure color together with another color and transform it into a third color, the hue i intend. note upon note i build a melody, smashing note upon note i build a small unaccompanied orchestra of harmony, the hue i intend. on a palette, color becomes intention. sound becomes intention. and then, once transformed, with a brush or knife i lift the color-intention from my palette and in an action that is often more responsive than creative, i place it onto a canvas. i play, i listen, i play again. i lift it from the keys of my palette and place it onto the canvas of paper, attempting to capture the fleeting moment it has created and etch it into a piece of music that can be repeated, played again. it transforms yet again relative to all the color it touches. it transforms yet again relative to the air in the room, the echo of an intention, the listening ear it touches. an image emerges. more color is called for. it emerges, this composition of music, and more color is called for.
and, somewhere in this call and response of color, i become like the palette. the pass-through of alchemy, the door that color passes through en route to something beautiful. and somewhere in this call and response of color, i become like the palette. the pass-through of alchemy, the door that color passes through en route to something beautiful. this! can there be a more pure statement of artistry? and, in the process, perhaps i, too, in my messy build up of life/color, grow closer to that child mind. unfettered. accidentally interesting. free. and in the process, perhaps i, too, in my messy build up of life/color, grow closer to that child mind. unfettered. accidentally interesting. free. the rest between the notes. the breath of music on the air.
“You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough” ~ William Blake i paint. i write. i compose. i don’t know what is enough until i know what is more than enough. truth.
it comes in waves. in less than two weeks i will be 60. i’m not a consumed-with-my-age-person, but this particular birthday is proving me different. without any prompts, i find myself sorting through my life, the six decades that lead me to right now. memories flow in and ebb out like the tide on a surfboard of emotions. trying not to resist, i ride the wave as it brings me growing up times on long island…my nuclear family all together, all alive, gathered in our dining room on abby drive or up in the catskills in a rustic state park cabin….bike hikes and carvel….simple times of arguing for john denver over bob dylan….time walking or sitting or playing frisbee on crab meadow beach…late sunday morning mc-arnson sandwiches or waffles and ice cream around my sweet momma and poppo’s table in florida…the time of building the first home i ever bought, a big choice for us as a young couple…the sheep farm in new hampshire….moving to wisconsin away from family and the challenges that raised…celebrating the amazing birth of our daughter and son and watching them grow into the people they are….recording my first album and what that meant….letting go of the day-to-day mothering as my children became adults and still being an every-single-day mother….balancing the impact of good decisions and bad decisions….times of intense grief….choosing love….starting over….wondering what is coming next….
the inner monologue chronicles through all of these years…i sit in quiet watching the slideshow in my mind’s eye and ponder. what was most important, what is most important, what will be most important. what it all means. and it’s clear most of the time. the people who have surrounded me, who have loved me, who i have loved. the people i am missing – and will always miss – as well as the people who are right here. the times i am missing – as well as the times -moments- i could miss right now were i to be too engrossed in something else.
on the album RELEASED FROM THE HEART, the track that i selected to follow MISSING is called CONNECTED. because it all stays a part of the vast ocean that is each of our lives. the missing and the now and the wondering, all part of the whole. all waves to ride.
“sometimes it takes longer to understand and appreciate what is around you.” (liner notes)
it’s the ah-ha! you feel when you realize that it’s ALL about perspective and even this moment will soon disappear into vapid space. yet this very moment is the one that counts. we simply can’t waste it. there’s no time to not appreciate it, no time to throw it away while yearning for the next.
i have come to realize this over and over and over, through loss, through mistakes, through absolute joy, through reminders spoken, seen, felt on an excruciating gut level. we are all repeated students of this lesson, for we are all human. we are all human, for we are all students of this lesson.
on an everest documentary we watched the other day there was this quote: “it’s not that life is so short. it’s that death is so long.” if that doesn’t make you spring into action – noticing life – i’m not sure what will.
“…the other end of the process of living through uncertainty…” (liner notes)
sometimes when we drive along third avenue, right around the corner from our house, the fog totally obscures lake michigan. you would never know it was even there. you can’t see where the shoreline is, you can’t see the expanse of lake. further down the road, you can’t see the beach, the waves, the jetty. it is as if, for this time, the lake and the sky are one; neither exist and both exist.
this duality, this co-existence…is what this piece is about. the presence of clarity and the presence of haze. when i read my liner notes this morning, i sighed. i wrote them in 1997 – (a shocking) twenty-two years ago. i was 38. i must have thought there was an “end” to uncertainty then. and, at the time, i must have interpreted the fog, the mist, in a somewhat negative way, as something to get “through”, relief at the other end.
and then the fog lifts over the lake and there is differentiation of planes. the sky becomes sky; the lake becomes lake. until the next fog rolls in.
this month i will turn 60. it takes me a few seconds for that to sink in each time i think about it. were i to re-record this piece now, i would slow it down. i would linger in the fog a little longer, not so afraid of it, of its mystery. i’m still learning to embrace the fog, still learning to watch for the sky when it lifts, still learning that both can co-exist: clarity and uncertainty. nothing is really clear in life. nothing is absolute. we keep stepping. it is truly all a little foggy. i now think it’s supposed to be that way.
‘you-hold-me’s i will always remember… among the more-than-i-can-count-mom-heart-moments, one of the last times My Boy fell asleep on my lap and i knew – at the age he was then, rounding 5 or 6 – it was something to hold onto. or the time he, all-grown-up, bent down and, one more time, hugged me goodbye. precious time dancing to marvin gaye with My Girl in the sitting room, her favorite infant-lullaby. the bittersweet-tender-time-stood-still time she – as an adult – fell asleep while i held her. in o’hare airport when d just held me while, with people swirling around us, we were lost in reuniting, in recognition. the greetings we get from dogdog and babycat every single time we arrive home. the hugs we get inside the door to our best friends’ house, their big beloved dogs jostling for attention. the memory of watching my sweet momma and poppo hold hands as they walked, always…those linked hands grasping each other. watching my momma hold my dad’s hand at the side of his last hospital bed, nodding off, both of them, but holding on. ‘you-hold-me’s aren’t always just about you.
in these times, in any time, the simple feeling of being held – a quick hug or embrace that goes on and on – is the one true thing. it doesn’t solve any problem, take away a worry, change any circumstance. but it is a reminder that you are not alone. you are woven of and into so much more. and you are held – by your family, by your children, by your friends, by this good earth, by a higher power. in appreciation of you. in a bigger thing called love.
“…dawn turns to daylight. to dusk. to full darkness. always to dawn again…” (liner notes)
brad built a snowman in the woods while we were snowshoeing. with a nod to our wit and creative pet-names, he cleverly named it “snowman-snowman”. he was a charming snowman and we lingered by him for a bit, all chatting in the quiet woods. because he is, well, a snowman, we left him behind as we continued on the trails.
yesterday we went back to the woods. there was still snow, even more in some places. but when we got to the spot where the trails split off, i, sadly, saw that snowman-snowman was no longer there. i didn’t talk about it. the magic of snowman-snowman was still in the air despite his absence on the trail.
we hiked a bit farther into the woods and when we stopped for a moment, i started packing together some snow. it was that really-good-packing-snow, so “valentino” came together easily. we searched for his eyes and the perfect nose, tucked a feather-leaf in his ‘cap’ and fell in love with our little snowman. his magic was instant.
transient. all daylight. all snowmen. all of us. life. it’s a minor key. all-consumingly-beautiful. gut-wrenchingly-fleeting. every reason to revel in every ray of sun, build a snowman, embrace those you love, bravely live every moment. even if our footprints aren’t still visible, our magic stays in the air.
this. this is what this song is about.
reverse threading 