I want to write a book.
December 5, 2011 at 11:37 am | Posted in Very Long Blogs | 2 CommentsTags: aging, albums, blogging, change, chronicle, Claudia Schmidt, college, composing, connection, depression, Diane Sward Rapaport, expertise, friendships, goals, guitar, healing, healing the earth, Jon Katz, journal, Karl Paulnack, learning from mistakes, life, loss, memory, miscarriage, motherhood, music, musings, parenthood, performing, recordings, reflections, Rosalie Sorrels, singing, songwriting, thanks, vision, writing
I want to write a book. This is nothing new, actually. One of the reasons I started this blog was to practice writing – not only the process of writing regularly, which I have been doing for decades in a journal, but to practice writing to a real (as opposed to imagined) “audience”. And let me take this opportunity to extend my thanks to all of you faithful readers out there for serving as listeners! Another way this blog has been helpful is in teaching me that I can write about almost anything. As you know, I have often begun with what is immediately in front of my face, and then out comes an essay of sorts. I am fairly certain that the general fellowship of English teachers in my junior high, high school, and college years could have told me that – in fact, some probably did try to communicate it to us in patience-lacquered exasperation – but, like Dorothy, it turns out I had to discover it myself. (Chloe used to say “All BY self!” with all of the monumental, exuberant emphasis that only a two-year-old can muster, placed heartily on the middle syllable.) Unlike lucky youthful Dorothy, I had to wait until the sixth decade of my life, but as we all know, it takes what it takes!
So now I come face to face with the inevitable and obvious quandary. If I can write about anything, which you have to admit opens the gates stunningly, even alarmingly wiiiiiiiiiide open, how on earth do I go about the process of narrowing down the focus? I am pretty sure that the book of collected essays about any random thing comes later in an author’s career, probably not first. So, even though I have now trudged this little line of hopes, desires, requirements, and questions several times in the past weeks, I will walk it again below, for you, but also potentially for my own benefit. If it goes as it has lately, I might end up even a few inches beyond the boundaries of my last attempt by doing so. (Not to set myself by having lofty expectations. I am only going with my own observations. Just saying.)
One of the big questions that continues to come up whenever I run into any friend I have not seen in awhile, is whether I am still “doing music.” Yesterday I was at an annual school event that always brings people out of the woodwork. (Haha – funny phrase to use at a Waldorf school, where everything is organic and all the students from grades 5 and up take woodworking class.) So Dan and I stopped to chat with this couple and that, all parents of students who have graduated from our school, catching up on how everyone – first the now-college students or graduates, and then parents (don’t we always talk about our kids first?) – is doing. Inevitably I was asked the key question by almost everyone. Being the somewhat literal interpreter that I am, my head spins every time I hear it. “Are you still doing music?”
First of all, I will ask you, how could I NOT do music? Even during the two times in my life when I have completely quit, never to play again, I would often sit down at the piano or pull out my guitar and play for my own pleasure. Does that count as “doing” music? There’s the time I stumbled into a Romanian fiddle class which led to a Scandinavian fiddle week which led to an entire new repertoire on my “retired” violin. And then there’s the time I was just going to focus on raising my kids and nobody in my new neighborhood knew me or my previous vocation. One day a woman came to my door and said, “I hear you teach piano lessons. My twin daughters would like to study with you.” No matter how I tried to argue that, no, actually I definitely do not teach piano lessons, eventually I found myself setting up a lesson schedule for her twins and then their neighbor, and then some more kids down the street, until I was teaching three or four afternoons each week, a steady stream of neighborhood children letting themselves in the door up our driveway, an instant gang of playmates for Chloe and Rachel, as they would come early or stay after their lessons to hang out. And then there’s the time I took Chloe to the Aspen Music Festival to fill her ears and her heart, and I ended up sitting in a piano master class, stifling my own gut-wrenching sobs as I realized I had left this world decades ago and now needed to return to it.
Yes, I am still doing music. I list my present inventory: playing baroque violin in my chamber orchestra, teaching private lessons on violin, piano and recorder, directing two early music ensembles at school, taking private lessons myself on baroque and modern violin, playing music for services at my synagogue, singing for the healing services at a local hospital, and whatever pick-up performance or recording jobs I get along the way. Is that “doing” music?
Okay, yes, I’m “doing” music. But what some – not all, but some – people mean by their question is whether I am still performing as a folk musician. And herein lies my true stuck and quandarous (I know it’s not in the dictionary, but it is truly perfect in this instance so I am using it) circumstance. I left the folk circuit behind and do not intend to return to it. I can honestly say that it was a right and healthy decision, and though I do not regret it, I have to admit that I now feel called to somehow share my music again. I have felt this pull for two years or longer.
In previous decades I wrote songs about miscarriage, depression, insomnia, war, love, sexual abuse, loss, motherhood, the catch-22 of the women’s movement, and more. I have performed traditional ballads on the subjects of traitors, love triangles, murder, loss to individuals during the Civil War, the time of Napoleon Bonaparte, World War I, and other historical times; on the challenges of love – between people of two classes, forbidden love, the desperation of unwedded mothers, unrequited love, and becoming widowed. I have performed songs by other contemporary songwriters on poverty, hope, transgender love, love lost and won, ancestors…Obviously the list could go on forever. There are so many stories to tell, so many new ones to add to my repertoire, so many messages to offer, so many questions to pose and explore with my audiences.
But where is my audience? If I do not care to return to the folk world, for whom do I sing, and where?
To find an answer to this question, I have had little brainstorming sessions with friends and colleagues. I have pondered the salon setting, which I find appealing for many reasons, but have, at least up until now, come up short in the area of energy. So far I have not mustered the vitality necessary to start my own salon series, nor have I had the wherewithal, not to mention the patience, to go through all the steps to make it happen. Writing that helps me see that the synchronicity of details falling into place has not availed itself to me yet. For three years or so I worked in a trio with two musician friends, hoping that together we could rally the forces necessary to brave those elements, but we found that it provided too little income, too seldom, to justify the amount of work required at the time. I deeply miss the beauty of the music that we made together, as well as the camaraderie, and hope that someday we will be called to perform together again. And I have kept my antennae up for other possibilities to present themselves. Perhaps said antennae missed some signals, but I don’t think the universe has been streaming anything approaching an abundance of solo folk-music but non-folk-venue opportunities in my direction. So far.
So now a new thought is beginning to form. I talked it through with Dan a few days ago, and it made some sense, so I’ll try it on for size here. Thirty years ago I knew that I wanted to go out into the folk circuit, and understood that to do so I would need to make a recording – in the form of a record album, which in that era was no small venture. I was already performing locally and was developing a nice following. I had enough savvy to realize that the only way to extend it to a national level was to be heard on the radio. So I bought the wonderful book, How to Make and Sell Your Own Recording, by Diane Sward Rapaport. (Incidentally, back then it was …Your Own Record.) I studied it in minute detail for several months, and then went into action, following her protocol. In the fall of 1982, my first LP, To Meet You, was released on my own label, Propinquity Records. My first California tour was in 1983, followed by a second and third on the west coast, and then I branched out to the Midwest, New England, and the Middle Atlantic states in 1985. My second LP came out that same year, followed by a children’s tape, and a third record, and then finally I accepted a contract with an “established” label and simultaneously moved into the world of CDs. My solo career was moderately successful on a national level until I stopped touring in 1995. Perhaps someday I will write about reaching that difficult decision, but that is not part of today’s entry.
The more important piece is this: if releasing my first album enabled me to jump-start and support a thirteen-year career on the road, it makes sense that releasing a written publication could help me do the same thing in the next arena (whatever that is). The difference is that this time I feel the need to allow the journey to evolve, instead of starting, as I did thirty years ago, with a clear picture of what I want and trying to make it happen. I know that may sound backwards to some of you. So why would I say it? The picture I had back then was too narrow and I ended up never really reaching it. The biggest mistake I made in that era of my career was that I kept aiming for my original image. I now know that in any venture you have to occasionally make the time to take stock, doing an inventory of what’s working and what isn’t, asking questions like How has my life changed since I began this journey? What is the present status of the industry I chose? What changes might I consider – in my vision, my goals, my definition(s) of success, my boundaries, etc.? I now know that back then I remained too stubborn and short-sighted about what I wanted, until the only thing that could crack was myself. Which is basically what happened.
So this time I am starting from what feels to me to be a very different place: I feel called to share the gifts I have been given in my life, which include more than a guitar, lyrics, melodies, and chords. I want my music and my life experiences, together with the higher-self wisdom that has always guided my writing process, to serve a purpose, to help people. Thirty years ago I knew I wanted to establish enough of a reputation that I could more easily book gigs and expect a decent-sized audience, so I could make a living and put aside enough to pay for my next recording. In addition, whether I could have admitted it at the time or not, I had another agenda. One or two layers below the aforementioned goals, I wanted to prove my own self worth, scrambling to compensate for a great lack on the inside. I thrived for many years on the so-called “waves of love” that wafted up from the audience at my feet, and the bigger the crowd, the more I craved it the next time. By the time I left that career behind, I only knew that it wasn’t working, but I didn’t understand exactly what was wrong with it. Lessons learned through a long mid-life reassessment taught me that self worth has nothing to do with ego.
In my younger years, I thought you had to become an expert before you could do your thing in front of people, and I considered myself an expert. Again, I have no regrets. I am grateful for all the years that I worked in the music industry, and for all that I learned about music and the biz, not to mention all the friendships – and the music!! – that came from that part of my life. Certainly, I know that I am a good performer and that the songs I perform, some of my own and some from a broader repertoire, reach people. I am not saying that it’s a bad thing to aim toward expertise and excellence. What I am saying is that the term “expert” is never an absolute thing, being difficult to qualify and to measure, and it may not always be the most important attribute. I want to give myself permission to be an unabashed explorer, fraught with uncertainty and far from an authority, on another front – the amorphous part that I have yet to bring into focus. Can I stand before an audience of wanderers as a searcher myself? I believe I can. Sixteen years after leaving my folk career behind, I long to connect all the disjointed and compartmentalized pieces of my life. It is so typical of our American culture. In college you can study biology, chemistry, math, creative writing, music, etc. But where can you study – and experience – the coming together of all these? Music provides much-needed nourishment for our very cells, for our minds, for our hearts and souls. It goes beyond the words that come from our mouths, beyond the notes on the page, beyond even the notes in the air.
When I wrote about my struggles with depression, I was afraid to say the word “depression” on stage because it might seem too heavy for someone who came to the show for a night of entertainment. Now I know better. There might be someone sitting out there who needs to know that writing that song was the beginning of my turnaround. How? Because to write the song I had to put a claim on depression. I spoke from exactly where I stood, which ironically enabled me to begin to move. In an earlier blog, I wrote about being so touched by the writings of Jon Katz, who minced no words in Izzie and Lenore, his account of his own plummet into the depths (see “A question about depression, and a song,” my post of May 2, 2011.)
When I wrote about my miscarriage, I vowed to wait until I had given birth to my first child before I would perform it. Miscarriage is an experience that puts us face to face with our complete and utter lack of control, and to make up for that terrible and frightening realization, we often paint over and around it with superstition in an effort to regain some semblance of a foothold. I was afraid of another miscarriage, of my inadequacy as a woman and as a mother. Out of that fear, I refused to buy anything to prepare for Chloe’s arrival until a month before she was born, just in case I might jinx it. I finally performed the song when she was almost eight months old, in a concert with Rosalie Sorrels and Claudia Schmidt. And once I began to bring it to audiences, women began to come up after the show to share their own miscarriage stories with me. I was so moved by their accounts, and equally moved by their desire to tell someone. But once I left my career behind, I had two additional thoughts about this.
One thing that came to me was that now there were some women out there who were not sharing their stories, since I was no longer out there performing the song. The other was even more sobering. The women that came up to the stage to talk with me were only talking with me, even though they had all sat in the audience together. I began to imagine what could happen if the song served as only a jumping off place – what if I could have sung the song and then we could have had an evening of sharing our stories? We could have all served as witnesses for each other. We could have cried together and laughed together – such a greater good! We could have had a one-night fellowship of women who suffered a loss and then moved forward in our lives, experiencing the richness of the joys and sorrows that followed.
Okay, so earlier I told you that I would want to enter this new chapter of my journey without a specific picture in mind. Clearly, I lied! I do have some specific pictures. And I openly admit that I have no idea how to make them come into being! There you go – two true confessions for today’s writing. Perhaps I am being idealistic, but I do believe there is a way that I can bring my music to people in a way that brings them together, in that evening, in that very room. That is my hope. And since I cannot reach everyone in person, I am hoping that writing a book can reach out into other circles and communities, and perhaps I can later go out to them too. I would like to not only write the book but also record the songs and have the recording and the book come as a package. And the part I cannot yet envision? I am hoping that it will simply come to me as the next step, evolving naturally from the actions I take up to that point.
This feels to me like a lot of hope. The work feels daunting, but doable. I love writing. I love singing. I love performing for people, sharing the stories that go with the songs. Above all, I love feeling that connection that happens between me and my audience, through and beyond the music, and I want to find a way to extend that sense of connectedness, to weave it like a thread from each member of the audience to the others. People crave it, but they also fear it. I believe it to be a healing force, and that the world needs that kind of healing.
There was a speech given in September of 2004 by Karl Paulnack, pianist and music division director at Boston Conservatory, the welcome address given to the incoming freshman class and their parents. It has been posted in countless blogs ever since, published in several languages, and I would strongly encourage you to read it. Here are two links:
http://www.bostonconservatory.edu/music/karl-paulnack-welcome-address
Music is not just a form of entertainment. As Professor Paulnack suggested to his audience of eager and terrified pioneers and their parents who were no doubt (based on my own experience) swirling with mixed emotions, “If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness…If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that’s what we do.” I want to join that fellowship and serve that higher good. I hope with all my heart that I find a way to do it.
And the subject for the book? The starting place? The direction? I know I just need to start writing some each day to see what comes. I know I will be guided, as I always have been, through the process. I’ll let you know how it’s going. Thank you again for “listening.”
The mohair shawl
November 17, 2011 at 12:36 pm | Posted in Very Long Blogs | 1 CommentTags: aging, art, artist, cancer, childhood friend, chronicle, college, crochet, dressing with a flair, friendships, grief, journal, life, loss, memory, music, musings, reflections, reunions, school, shawl, thanks, tribute, violin, waitress, writing
I haven’t written for a long time. So I promised myself I would use the old writing exercise of starting with whatever my eyes fell upon. I am sitting in Barker Hall, listening to Rachel’s weekly orchestra rehearsal, surrounded by my stuff: the bag holding our dinners and water bottles, my pack, my purse, two down jackets (it is supposed to snow tonight as we drive home and it’s COLD) and all my winter weather accessories. So what is the lucky theme for the evening and today’s blog post subject? Drum roll! A dollop of suspense. And the winner is…
My SCARF!
It’s nothing special, actually. I got it two or three years ago when Sierra Trading Post ran one of its specials (this occurs almost daily, but somehow it always feels like an extra bargain – call me a sucker). It is half silk, half cashmere, hence the key word: warm. But also another key, yet less desirable word: itchy. Around my neck. What makes me continue to wear it is its versatility, and of course the previously mentioned and most important quality. It is a thin and pleasantly drapey woven fabric, and though I think of it as a scarf, it actually has the dimensions of a shawl. I have worn it in many a chilly room over the past two winters, around my neck, around my shoulders and torso, or over my legs as a lap blanket.
Pause buttons “on”. Please do not worry. I am already as bored as you are. Let me take this opportunity to acknowledge my gratitude to you for having enough faith in me to have hung in this far! Let me also tell you that the reason I chose this topic was twofold. Number one, as a writer, I wanted to keep the bargain I had made with myself, and literally the place my glance landed was on the fringe of said scarf. Number two, and from here on, more relevantly, the instant I contemplated the subject of “scarf”, my mind jumped to a significant shawl from my early twenties, a gift from a significant friend, and amazingly, almost a twin to a gift from a different friend the same year.
It was back in the years when I was still oblivious to being Jewish and was celebrating Christmas. Most importantly, I was enjoying the holiday in a new way because I was earning enough money to buy some nice presents for people. I don’t know which was the more fun – the selection process, proudly spending my own hard-earned money, or actually handing each over to its intended recipient. And of course, I was on the receiving end at the same time.
This particular year – I must have been nineteen or in my early twenties – I don’t remember much aside from these two gifts. As I said before, the shawls were almost identical. Both were made of mohair. One is a little on the orange side of red, and the other leans more toward the fuchsia side. The pinker one was woven, and sold in an artisan collection. The rust one was also handmade, but by my friend herself, crocheted, I think.
One interesting detail is that up until then, I had never, ever worn a shawl, not once in my entire life. When I opened the first (I do not recall in what order they came to me), I remember being surprised by it. Of course I expressed my thanks (and I hope I was gracious.) But somewhere in there I remember a twinge of discomfort. Something on the order of “Oh! Does this go with who I am?” There was a lick of fear being fanned as I laid eyes on this gift, as if I was being asked, invited almost, to explore a new flavor of personality within myself. I had a vague image of the kind of person who would wear a shawl, and I did not think of myself as that kind of a person.
I was able to put these thoughts aside until the second friend presented me with the second, eerily similar gift. Let us hope that I was just as polite, just as gracious in my thanks. But now you know that I was socked with a second dose of this discomfiting stirring. Was my understanding of myself somehow askew? “This is not who I am!” I wanted to announce, as not just one, but two of my close friends chose to give me the same uncharacteristic, lovely, and somehow intimate gift.
As I was wont to do back then, I chose the rigid and narrow way. I put the shawls away and never wore them. I was about to write “and never touched them” but that would not be accurate. I did touch them. Every so often I would pull one or the other – or both – off the shelf and say to myself, “So-and-so GAVE this to me.” It is difficult to express to you all the meaning in that phrase. What I can tell you is that it meant a great deal to me that both friends went out of their way to pick out/hand-make this shawl. I felt somehow caressed or cared for by both friends. Even if I never wore either one, I felt warmer, as if I understood that both friends could see something in me that needed the warmth, the holding, and the beauty.
It was my friend Mary Jean who had crocheted the burnt orange, using a variegated yarn with mohair and maybe some other fibers spun together. We had first met when we were nine years old, in a beginning violin class in a summer music program. Mary was learning to play not only the violin but the flute as well, a fact which impressed all of us no end. I’m not sure how she worked out the logistics of attending both classes, and I do believe that eventually flute won out. I had not known Mary before, but my best friend from school knew her from church, which made her all the more significant to me (even if the dual instruments status hadn’t already won my admiration.)
Mary and I attended different elementary schools, went on to attend different junior high schools, and continued to run into each other at summer music events. We came together in high school and though we had some of the same friends and occasionally hung out in the same crowd, we were headed in different directions. Mary was a gifted art student, and I was continuing along a musical path. She must have been in the audience for some of my shows with my band, as I know she enjoyed my music. (And by the way, it was one of my bandmates who was later to give me the other shawl.) But all through those years we were not close friends.
Finally, after my band had split up and we were both college students, Mary and I both got a job at the same restaurant. We started off bussing tables, being too young at first to wait tables in a place that served liquor. We both served as hostesses, greeting customers and seating them at their tables, later we both trained as cashiers, and then, once twenty-one, we continued up the ranks into waitress and cocktail waitress, where the real money was.
I want to stop here to make something clear. Lest it seem that I am headed in the direction of romanticizing an old friendship, I should inform you that in many ways Mary Jean drove me crazy. We became roommates for some period of time, I can’t remember how long, and I thought I would end up doing something mean, she was so annoying so often. She would greet me every single time with great flourish and waving arms, crying delightedly, “Carla, Carla!” Never, never did she say my name once. (Look, now she’s even got me doing it, just thinking about her.) I was a moody person back then, and her effusiveness made me dizzy, and I do not mean that in a good way.
But in some ways she was so very good for dark, moody, lost me. I remember one day we went to the big city together, 45 minutes away, and visited, among other places, the art museum. I had never quite seen art the way she helped me see it that day. And for our excursion I borrowed a piece of clothing from her, a skirt, that somehow made me feel beautiful in a way I had never before felt. Fashionable, attractive, and graceful. I suddenly realized I could feel like that all the time if I could dress – and see myself – with a little more flair. As I just now wrote that, it makes me wonder if that was before or after I had received the shawl from her.
We also talked occasionally, that kind of girlfriend talk that just happens if you are there for the right kind of opening in the right kind of moment. She was caring and loving, and there was an air of a certain kind of wistful sweetness all through her that almost made you want to cry. She was quite beautiful. And her artwork was beautiful, with a flourish. You could almost get drunk on Mary Jean. And then you got sobered back up by the quirks that could drive you to distraction.
She ended up marrying someone I didn’t know well, a waiter at the restaurant where we worked. We drifted apart. I don’t know how long they remained married, and then they ended up divorcing. A few years passed. The next time I saw her was at our tenth high school reunion, so we were both 28.
She arrived on the arm of a new husband named Scott, a sweetheart of a guy. And with some news. She took me aside to tell me that she had spent the last year battling lung cancer. She had been sick in the winter, thought it was bronchitis since that was going around until one night she had trouble breathing and began to cough up blood. Scott took her to the ER. She told me that she spent that night in the hospital certain that she would die before morning. But she didn’t. Then came months of treatment. Her hair, which looked like regular Mary to me, was gone – this was a wig. It was good news for the time being, as she was in remission. She and Scott were living in California, and had come to town just for the reunion.
For the next year we continued to stay in touch, through letters and an occasional phone call. The cancer returned. She returned to chemo, which sickened and weakened her. It was her artwork that motivated her to get out of bed some days, and she poured herself into it, as much of herself as there was left. I wrote to her late that winter to tell her that I was going to be driving to California in June. One morning in early spring the phone rang. It was Mary.
“When are you coming?” she asked. I gave her the exact date. She hesitated. “I don’t know if I’ll still be here.” My mind spun. Here? Where was she planning to go? It took a moment for the meaning of her words to sink in. We talked for a few more minutes, though I have no recollection of what we said in that part of the conversation, and then she told me she needed to hang up so she could rest. Breathing took immense effort.
At the end of phone conversations, there are all the normal ways of saying good-by, but suddenly none of them seemed adequate. I was 29 or 30 years old and had never had to deal with anything like this before. “Mary,” I said, “I don’t know what to say.”
“I know. And it’s okay.”
And it was. Suddenly annoying and crazy Mary was the wisest person in the world, and it was safe to be exactly how I was in that moment. I felt a great sense of comfort in the face of such utterly cracked-open-honest permission to admit my helplessness. The conversation closed and I hung up the phone, feeling strangely calm. One minute later the phone rang again. “Carla? I believe I might still be here. Call when you get close.”
The night before I was to arrive, I called her number from my motel room. Her husband answered. He spoke to me as if I already knew, and once again my mind reeled until I grasped the meaning of his words. She had urged him to go for a walk the day before. He left her with the hospice caretaker, and while he was out, she was able to let go. The hospice worker told him that often a person cannot bear to give up while surrounded by loved ones, an understanding that offered comfort to him when he came back and was flooded with remorse for having abandoned her. As he talked, I had the sense that he just needed to tell it all to someone, and I was certainly glad to be that someone. But I was also filled with regret that I had come that close to seeing her and then missed by only two days.
Two or three winters ago, some 35 years after Mary crocheted me the shawl, I took it from my closet shelf and put it on. After that, on various occasions, I rotated the other one into my wardrobe, and began to let the Sierra Trading Post scarf slip down around my shoulders. I even added a fourth to my collection, imported from Spain (purchased at a huge bargain from STP.) I don’t know what possessed me, or why, but it suddenly felt just right to wrap myself in the folds of a shawl. I now dress with more of a flair, and find that I like feeling fashionable and attractive. I can still hear Mary’s voice calling me, “Carla, Carla!” These many years later, it makes me laugh instead of gritting my teeth. I can still see her smile. And I am forever grateful for each of the gifts that she gave me, grateful that her life touched mine, and especially grateful for that moment of raw and perfect honesty on the phone, and how deeply connected I felt to her in that crystallized point of time. It is my hope that I can offer that kind of safety and some touch of beauty and sweetness to my friends, at least occasionally, and that I can be honest and true with my fellows in the grittiest, most basic way, when it really counts. Thank you, thank you, Mary Jean.
Thoughts on 9/11/2011
September 11, 2011 at 10:10 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a commentTags: 9/11, All Is Quiet, change, edith hamilton, hope, journal, life, loss, lowen and navarro, music, musings, reflections, truce
As I write this, I am listening to a live performance being broadcast by our local classical station. It is a 9/11 commemorative concert put on by a choir that has shared the stage with my chamber orchestra on more than one occasion. Rachel is doing math homework behind me at the kitchen table, with Dan alternately helping her and washing dishes. Chloe recently began her sophomore year in college, a happy passage marred only slightly this weekend by near 100-degree weather, a mildly bad burn on the back of one hand (the tea water missed her cup on Friday), and a painfully swollen bee-stung foot.
I am one of those people who did not suffer any personal loss on or following 9/11. I cried in pain at the loss that so many others experienced; I welcomed my now 84-year-old aunt who finally chose to move here four years ago, 9/11 having proved the final straw to her increasingly anxious existence in New York; and I gasped when I learned that the wife of a friend of mine was in the World Trade Center that day, amazed and grateful that she was lucky enough to be back here to tell the tale. I had played at their wedding not too many years prior. There were a few more threads that touched my own path, but nothing approaching the before-and-after seismic shifts some were forced to navigate.
My mother has told me more than once how very sorry she is that I have never experienced our country as a united people with a common cause, as she and her generation did during World War II. I am grateful to have been born after even the aftermath of that war and its atrocities, but I admit that I would love to know what it feels like to have all (or at least most) of my compatriots agree on what patriotism means, at least in the moment. In my mind 9/11 is the closest we have come.
There is that story of the German soldier who met up with an American soldier on Christmas Eve sometime during World War I. Though they were enemies, though they did not share a common language, they shared something bigger and more important. They showed each other photos of their respective families. They knew in their hearts that they shared similar emotions – missing their loved ones, fear of never returning home, wishing they could celebrate a holiday they had probably never had to miss before in their relatively short lives. Something larger than the war and enmity brought them together. If then, why not now? If once, why not forever? We know it to be possible.
My parents raised me to believe that terrible evils have been done in the name of God and religion throughout the history of humankind. I suppose one could see it that way, but I do not. I see the true enemy as a blind and desperate greed for power, most often based in fear, which seems to me to be the antithesis of any God- or Spirit-centered religion’s credo. Unfortunately it seems to come naturally to us humans to carry baggage forward into each generation, rather than learning to look around us earnestly, with new and hopeful eyes, into the eyes of those around us, whether familiar or foreign.
I hope it is all right with Eric Lowen and Dan Navarro if I offer you the words of their song “All Is Quiet”. I love this song so very much, finding it a balm in a troubled time:
*All is quiet tonight, the stars are in their places
The moon will give us light to see into each other’s faces
And I know the road is hard, but if we carry on together
We will get by
We live our lives in the eye of a hurricane
We cast our fates on seas of indifference
While all along the shoreline
We look for a chance to believe
That darkness will fade and the promise will survive
Until I hear you say
All is quiet tonight…
We make our way through streets full of danger
We build up walls to keep us inside
But they keep us apart
Till we become the worst kind of stranger
Who stands with open arms and barricades the heart
And still I hear you say
All is quiet tonight…
Just imagine how our world would be if we looked quietly into the eyes of our loved ones and enemies alike, and listened with an open mind and an open heart. Not an easy charge in a fear-filled age.
From Edith Hamilton, American educator, author and Greek scholar (1867-1963):
The truths of the spirit are proved not by reasoning about them,
Or finding explanation of them, but only by acting upon them.
Their life is dependent upon what we do about them.
Mercy, gentleness, forgiveness, patience;
If we do not show them, they will cease to be.
Upon us depends the reality of God here on Earth today.
I send this out to you with love. May we each find countless small ways to initiate ripples of peace as we go forward, and may the days to come be irrevocably changed for the better by those actions.
*(Please note: Because “All Is Quiet” was written and copyrighted by someone other than myself, I do not feel comfortable offering a recording in my blog entry. You can go to iTunes or Amazon.com to purchase the song, recorded by Lowen and Navarro, or by my own trio, the Folkaltones. Or both.)
On the road a la Jetsons
July 6, 2011 at 8:31 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | 1 CommentTags: android, applications, cell phones, change, chronicle, daughter, dorm life, family, friendships, Jetsons, journal, life, music, musings, reflections, Star Trek, technology, tour, traveling, violin
I am writing this while sitting at the dining room table of one of my oldest and dearest friends, one more temporary home along this path of travel. Just so many beads on a 24-day-long chain. It’s amazing to me to think that this is how Dan and I used to live for weeks on end, back in my touring days. As much as that now seems more like a past life than just part of my own story, I have to admit that I have had a fairly easy time settling into this traveling rhythm. Somewhere in my cells it is a familiar groove.
So. Right here in this paragraph – indeed, in my very next sentence – I am going to tell you something, straight out. I GOT AN ANDROID . Not only that, I added APPS. Many of them. And, though a few weeks ago I would have proclaimed from my very own soap box that I can easily do without such new-fangled high-tech toys, thank you very much, um, it has actually been kind of, well, fun. Chloe and I used it to determine whether gas was cheaper on this or that side of the Colorado-Kansas line (we saved around $3 by waiting until we crossed into Kansas), it led us to the most fantastic restaurant that serves locally-grown and meticulously prepared cuisine (715 in Lawrence, KS), as well as helping us find our way to more than one cleverly elusive destination. It has accurately predicted the weather so I could dress for 70 or 95 degrees (though it couldn’t turn down the insidious overdose of air conditioning once we were inside the building – more on that in some future post. Hopefully they’ll come up with an app for that soon.) It has made it a piece of cake to keep up with my emails. It has located and navigated our path to Whole Foods, music stores, Target, and more. One app supplied us with quotations from famous people for our presentations. I know what the date is every day on the Jewish calendar. If I had figured out how to use it in time (and remembered where it was hiding), I could have helped my teacher by running the stopwatch when we needed it during one class session. I have taken countless pictures and emailed them to Dan and my mother and a college friend of Chloe’s (except it turned out she [Chloe] gave me the wrong person’s email address, so we are actually not sure who received the not-so-scenic view of Salina, Kansas. No offense to any Salinians out there.) And in case you are interested, I am facing southeast at 145 degrees right now, a minor but accurate fact imparted to me by said droid.
Oh. AND I have made and received phone calls on it. Which is, of course, what I got it for to begin with, though it is all too easy to forget that, when trying to figure out how to use all the other stuff, as mentioned above.
Gone are the old days. Dan and I can remember countless occasions when we had to be near a pay phone at a specific time on a specific day for a radio interview or to call a hard-to-reach contact, way back in the 1980s when we drove for all my tours. It was often next to impossible to find a phone when we needed it. Do you ever have one of those dreams where you finally find the phone booth only to discover it is out of order, or someone is already using it, or the buttons don’t work right or you don’t have the right amount of change or your long distance calling card somehow doesn’t work? Or the temperature is either ten below or 95 and humid? It was like that more often than you might guess. I will never forget the time when we called our answering machine from the back office of one of my gigs, and heard a message from our neighbor that was cut off in the middle: “So we don’t want you to worry, and the police came, but they told us—“ It was just like one of those nightmares – I couldn’t get our long distance card to work, the connection kept getting interrupted, and I was frantically dialing (we actually had a “dialer” that we carried around to beep the tones into phones that still had dials) while Dan and I were picturing our front door broken down or our house burnt to the ground. (In the end, it turned out okay, but the stress of getting through to our neighbor took at least eighteen months off my life.) None of this would have happened if we had had cell phones back then.
And now a word from my devil’s advocate, or old self, take your pick.
By sometime in the 90s Dan used all the evidence from the above adrenaline-sucking paragraph to try to convince me of the virtues of an (early) cell phone. I agreed with him that having one in our possession could spare us – or at least reduce the frequency of – the nightmarish challenges of keeping up with communications while being on the road. In my very next breath I always went on to say – and here comes my actual soap box moment (just a warning) – that maybe it turns out that it’s actually good for us to have some private time. Maybe it’s all for the better that there are times that nobody knows where we are or how to reach us. Yes, I can turn my android off, but it’s possible that even just knowing that someone could be calling or emailing me keeps one tiny set of neurons on alert when they should be taking their twenty-minute power nap or meditating on a mantra that bears no resemblance to a handheld superpower device.
So while I’m happy to have this new instrument from the Star Trek era in my employ, I still feel uncomfortable with the fact that our host for this Friday night reached me when I happened to be shopping for lead refills for my No. 7 mechanical pencil and a backpack last night. And while I was able to carry on a perfectly coherent conversation with her as I navigated the aisles of the mega-store, it’s just plain weird that she didn’t have to know where I was while we were pinning down the parameters of tomorrow’s visit. I find it on the edge of icky when a woman in the stall or dressing room next to mine is chatting with someone I cannot see. (Granted, I cannot see the woman in the stall or dressing room next to mine either, but I know you know what I’m getting at. Please don’t let me lose my momentum here.)
When we were kids, my brother and I watched the Jetsons on television together. We wanted what they had – the TV-screen phones, the instant food, the remote camera intercoms, etc. – so bad we could taste it. While I know we have not gotten as far as flying cars (thank goodness – can you imagine bad or raging drivers filling the airways in addition to the highways?) we are using a lot of things that look like Jetson imitations as it is. My android is teaching me that it can be fun, just as that happy animated family from the future made it seem. But I also want to remind all of us that the Jetsons had their daily life issues, as do we all. George, Jane, Judy, and Elroy had all manner of things to contend with at home, at school, and in the workplace, which was what the episodes were REALLY about, even if my brother and I missed the so called point. It’s not how I call Dan every day, it’s the fact that I do get to talk to him. It’s not how we found the gas station, it’s that we are fortunate enough to be able to afford to pay for this trip so that I can develop further in my profession, and also so that Chloe and Rachel and I can enjoy being together in our respective musical endeavors, re-connecting with several old friends, and making new friends along the way. I am glad to have my droid’s help so that perhaps I am less frazzled when I get there! But let me remember that the tool, no matter how seductive, is still just a tool.
A question about depression, and a song
May 2, 2011 at 4:53 pm | Posted in Very Long Blogs | 5 CommentsTags: angels, anger, anniversary, awakening, change, chronicle, depression, healing, inventory, Jon Katz, journal, life, Louise Hay, music, musings, reflections
A question came up in conversation this week, and I have been pondering it ever since. It is around a subject that has been synchronistically (is that a word yet?) showing up on several fronts lately, so I decided to explore it here. I have found writing to be so helpful these last few months! So thank you in advance for “listening”.
First, a little history.
On August 8, 1989, out of what seemed like nowhere, I plummeted into a depression. Dan and I had recently moved and had been in our new house for just over a month. It was a beautiful place, our dream home, on a few acres outside of town. I had come into the city that morning for a haircut. To stretch the self-indulgence out a little longer, I bought myself a picnic lunch to eat in contemplative solitude near the gardens in the park, next to the lake where the ducks and geese hang out. I spread a blanket in the shade of a tree, laid my delicacies on it and invited myself to sit down and allow all my senses to enjoy the feast.
As my freshly coiffed self sat on the blanket under the tree and ate the lunch, admiring the flowers, set to a soundtrack of children in the nearby playground and other such summer music, I felt it begin to descend upon me. It was a little like darkness, though duller. Like a coverlet, but one devoid of comfort. Heavy and grey. I could sense myself going down, though it is probably more accurate to say that I was being dragged inward. There seemed to be a growing distance between me and the rest of the world, one that seemed too hard to reach across. And it was accelerating, a train carrying one sole passenger.
That night I had a date with a friend and her two kids to attend an outdoor concert. I was sinking lower by the hour, but I went anyway. I didn’t tell my friend what was happening to me until later. This was a fellow musician whose husband had left her a few months earlier, just weeks before she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She spent most of the summer in chemo and all of us did the best we could to support her through the hell of side effects as well as the hell of sudden loneliness and abandonment. The concert was probably wonderful – the performers we went to see ARE wonderful, but I couldn’t take much of it in. (Years later I found out that a member of the band has suffered for decades with depression himself, which in retrospect added a strange irony to the evening.)
I won’t go into detail here, though I intend to write more about it in the future. To bring myself (and you) back to the intended topic, suffice it to say that I suffered through a few months and then began to find my way back into the world again. I was helped by the lovingkindness of friends and my kind and patient husband, by a smart therapist, by a massage therapist who not only helped me come back into my body but also served as a model to me in how to tell myself the truth, and others as well. Once walking on higher ground, I navigated my way through a miscarriage, a pregnancy and the resulting Chloe, carrying on the doings of a music career throughout. (Actually, the music career had never stopped – it was a constant even through the depths.) And then we had Rachel and we moved back into town and I sank again, not as deep perhaps, but with a greater edge of desperation. By this time I had left my career (permanently, or so I believed) and had some newly-found friends to hold my hands, as all my music comrades were busy in the world from which I had divorced myself. Also I had not only Dan but my two wonderful kids in my corner. Once more I rose, even higher this time. It has now been several years since that last dip, and I am hopeful that I will not have to walk that lowland ground again.
Hence, (finally), the question: what brought me out of it? And the corollary: why was I able to come out of it while some people struggle with it for most of their lives?
Rachel and I just finished listening to a book on CD called Izzy and Lenore by Jon Katz. It is a beautifully told memoire of Katz’ decline into a very dark time and how his beloved and amazing dogs helped him to find his way back out (hence the title). As we listened, I found myself nodding my head in agreement with many of the steps he took to provide himself with what he needed. Rachel, who has only a ghost of a memory of my low times, commented meaningfully as we were driving and listening, “He’s doing a good job.” It is both a tender and affirming testimony of finding one’s inner softness and strength, and we both recommend it.
Today I looked up “depression” in Louise Hay’s book Heal Your Body. From page 28:
“Problem: Depression. Probable Cause: Anger you feel you do not have a right to have. Hopelessness. New Thought Pattern: I now go beyond other people’s fears and limitations. I create my life.”
If someone had shown this to me when I was in the depths of it, I would probably have gotten defensive. I felt myself to be a victim of depression. How could my own feelings and thoughts have caused it? Yet now, with the wisdom of hindsight, I can see it is an apt directive. I felt hopeless, all right. And I was carrying around a truckload of anger and then making sure I hid it, even from myself. On those occasions when I was able to admit to being upset with someone, while sitting in a therapy session, or when my massage therapist helped me feel it in my body, I was so frightened by it – scared that it made me seem like a bad person and repelled by the power of it – I would shut down, just adding more layers to my own muck. The fear of looking bad and/or causing “badness” kept me sick even longer than the original offenses.
So many things have changed for me since those years, I look back on that time almost like it was a past life, rather than merely an earlier chapter in my adulthood. I could go through a litany of befores and afters, but that’s not where I want to go right now. (I will undoubtedly dwell on said litany in detail when I am ready to really write the whole “book”.)
Excuse me while I take the time for this teeny little conversation with myself, set aside in parentheses: (Okay, yes, a “book”. But since it’s mildly terrifying to contemplate the magnitude of that, I’ll qualify it by putting the word in quotes for now. It’s pretty much the same as saying, “I’m planning to, like, write a, like, book?”)
Thanks for indulging me. Now, back to the original stream:
…But – or maybe I should say “and” – maybe that (in case you’re lost, “that” = “the before and afters”) is the point. I had to change. A lot.
And the gritty truth is people don’t like to change. People? Hey, even Bella the dog doesn’t want to change. She likes to check out your crotch, and she’s the right height to do it, too. And you and I have plenty that we like, too. (Which is hopefully less obnoxious and more socially appropriate than the canine version.) But back in the day, a lot of what I liked, or at least what I was used to doing and thinking and believing, wasn’t working for me. So I had to drag it all out on the table and take an honest look at it. Then, with a lot of loving guidance, I began the process of choosing what to throw out, what to put aside to look at later, and what was worth keeping. It was a long and arduous task (not done yet, by the way), though ultimately it not only saved my life, it gave me a life. And I can assure you it’s a life I couldn’t have pictured when I first began that rough part of the journey, nor before it.
Dan and I celebrated our 27th anniversary a few days ago. (William and Kate missed our special day by just a few hours.) Two years ago, on the morning of our 25th, I remember how we lay in bed and listed out loud to each other all the things we could think of about our present day lives that are miles, seeming chasms, apart from where we started. We still shake our heads in wonder sometimes and try to imagine where we would be, what we would be doing, and how it would all feel, had we not made each individual choice along the way that lead us up to the here and now. As I look back on that routing with the perspective of hindsight, I can see how it is all lit up with miracles and billboards, but at the time I felt like we were groping through the dark.
And after all is said and done, isn’t it the hard-won milestones that we value the most? The things that come so easily that you hardly notice what it took – those can feel good, but they do not shine as radiantly as the ones that make you sweat and toil. It must the extra perspiration that gives them the added luster. Or maybe the tears. Or some combination of the two.
In January of 1992, three months before Chloe was born, I wrote the following song about my journey up to that point. In truth, it went well beyond that point. As is typical of many of the songs that have been birthed by channeling themselves through me, I continue to learn its meaning even now. In less than three weeks, I will be performing it again – for the first time in God-knows-how-many years – with some of the afore-mentioned musician friends who helped me through that first storm. I am so grateful to them and to my other guides, along with whatever grace delivered me to this place along my path. May you see – and feel – the evidence of your angels too.
(Listen to the song here. It will take a few seconds.)
Awakening (copyright 1994 Salonica Publishing Company/BMI)
I feel a shifting in my soul, I have no strength to defy it
A river out of control and I tumble inside it
It’s like an earthquake within
The earth tilts as it spins
I curse as I swim
This shifting in my soul, it’s called awakening
I had been walking in my sleep although I did not know it
For denial ran deep while the cannons were loaded
The battle stole away my rest
Depression held me to her breast
Oh what a bitter caress!
No more walking in my sleep, I was awakening
I cannot say that I am glad for all the pain and the anguish
But I am grateful for the path that gave my heart a new language
I learned the power of friends
And in a chain of many hands
I can dance my own dance
As I follow this path of awakening
I used to live life in my head, proud of intellect and judgment
But now I turn my trust instead to my heart and my conscience
Oh change is frightening!
But as I raise my voice to sing
I feel a marvelous thing:
I am joining humankind, I am awakening
Ambivalence, weaning, and a death grip
March 10, 2011 at 9:23 pm | Posted in Long Blogs | Leave a commentTags: acceptance, ambivalence, breastfeeding, choices, chronicle, daughter, decision making, family, journal, letting go, life, memory, motherhood, musings, pain, paradox, parenthood, reflections, tug of war, weaning
I am so right-in-the-middle of figuring something out, and hoping I can articulate it here. I guess it’s obvious I am going to attempt it!
I just got off the phone with a friend, someone who knows me very well and has been there for me through many years of my journey. We were talking about ambivalence and how troublesome it can be. Ambivalence. I know it doesn’t sound nearly as bad as a lot of other things, but when I get stuck there it’s not a pretty picture.
The first time I remember someone using this word in reference to me was when I was weaning Chloe at fourteen months of age, under doctor’s orders. Nursing Chloe was by then a joy, but it had begun with great difficulty. With hindsight and acquired-on-the-job wisdom, I now understand that she had something called by the benign name of “nipple confusion” combined with another sanitized understatement called “failure to latch on properly.” In plain English, most likely because the hospital gave her a bottle and a pacifier on her massively impressionable first day, she spent the first eight weeks of her life outside the womb mashing my almost instantly wounded and enfeebled nipples, and I was in perpetual agony, re-initiated anew at every feeding.
Happily, our perseverance paid off, and around the time she turned two months there was a turning point. From then on, the process reached a level of infinitely greater comfort on my part, and we began to experience, several times a day, that mutually blissful state of milk intoxication that most nursing mothers reach if they stick with it. But as the year progressed, I began to have some health problems, and, among other things, was losing too much weight too fast. With the weight went any semblance of stamina that I might have had. If I couldn’t fit in a two- or three-hour nap each day I was completely wasted. Finally my friends and family members asked me to consider weaning Chloe. I refused. It was a hard-won battle and now it was working fine. Until the wake-up call when my doctor finally told me he agreed with my loved ones.
My La Leche League leaders helped me strategize the weaning, and with the loving support of my friend Karen, who had raised (and breastfed) four children, I came up with a plan and moved forward in earnest. The basic concept was to eliminate one feeding a day for the first week, another the second week, and so on. Chloe was an every-so-often-when-we-feel-like-it drinker, so it meant we had several weeks of stepping down ahead of us, a fact I found immensely comforting. This was not going to be anything close to cold turkey for either of us.
All was going well until a few weeks into it, I hit a major stumbling block. First, allow me to back up a little. When my doctor, a naturopath whose own children had been breastfed, told me he thought I should wean Chloe for the sake of my own health, I found myself backed up against a wall I had never wanted to know existed. To save myself I had to deny my own child??? This was not an acceptable choice for me to be facing, and yet it was up to me to make it. Everyone around me was encouraging me to do one thing and my heart was strenuously insisting on the opposite. It seemed irreconcilable, a literal deadlock.
As I stumbled around on the battleground, weaving on my feet, a kernel of clarity slowly emerged amid the dust. What the situation was calling for was for me to take an honest look at the status quo. It was literally taking too much out of me to nourish my sturdy and thriving child. Even with a lengthy rest each day, I was still declining. I had to admit that I trusted my doctor, a man who was not prone to portioning out advice. I was also willing to admit that I had very little perspective and was in a weakened state, both of which make it hard to reach an important decision alone. This meant, I eventually reasoned, that I had to turn to other people to help me. And there they all were, telling me from their hearts what they felt I needed to do. And – here’s the important part – the moment I consented, I felt myself beginning to recover. It was reaching the decision, not the physical act of weaning, that caused the tide to start to turn.
So now back to the bump in my road. We were already down to a few nursings a day when I suddenly reared back on myself, questioning the decision I had made a few weeks earlier. I spun out into an agonizing place, second-guessing and cross-examining myself at every turn. I was miserable and anxious, so afraid I was damaging and abandoning my tiny daughter. In the process, I was making everyone around me equally miserable, including poor Chloe. I do not remember how long I stayed in that place. What I do remember is when, gently, my friend Karen said to me, “I think your ambivalence is harder on Chloe than the actual weaning.” With that single and insightful observation, everything snapped back into focus. Just as making the decision had given me an immediate sense of greater well-being, the self-torture – the thoughts themselves – had inflicted pain, on me and everyone else. We resumed the weaning process. As bittersweet as it is, it was indeed the road to health.
I have recently begun a practice of asking for the gift of acceptance each morning. The universe, in its infinite wisdom, is teaching me that, in order to accept something, I first have to be willing to see it and acknowledge that it’s there. Closed eyes and ears, distraction, disassociating, etc. are all forms of denial, at the opposite end of the spectrum from accepting what is, just as it is. My prayer has already begun to be answered. I am experiencing more fully the exact place in which I have delivered myself, much of each day, and it is not all pleasant. My body is in pain. Standing in the self-created and inequitable courtroom that is my mind, I now find myself facing the same kind of choice I was looking at almost eighteen years ago, though the characters in this scene are different ones. Down to the way my breath moves in and out of my lungs and the blood flows through my arteries and veins, down to my very cells, I am courting the same impossible question: Do I hold on or do I let go? When one has been holding on for dear life for one’s entire life, letting go requires the peeling off of decades of fists, fingers, fingernails, and all manner of strangleholds, each of which has worn the deep grooves of familiarity, strengthened by belief. I can truthfully say that I have already decided that I must release my hold, as I have seen the laughable futility of my death grip, not to mention the damage in its wake. My mind is willing, and my heart has been swayed in that direction, but my body has no idea how to do it differently. My sense is that the physical pain I am experiencing is that of the rope in this internal tug of war.
So after my phone conversation, in which my friend pointed out that it is my ambivalence that is causing my pain, I felt something come together. (I know what you’re thinking, by the way. I just told you that my mind is already made up, which does not sound like ambivalence. And you are right. In the big picture, I am actually somewhat clear. It’s in the individual actions that I am still frozen up – shall I do this or that? Go with xx or stay home? Practice or meditate? Is it okay that I said no to that person and yes to someone else? Can I actually say what I want, even if it isn’t what the other person wants? I think you get the picture. Okay, back to my integration moment.) Here is what my friend, this dear person who has honored my path for almost two decades, reflected to me: I am already on the path, taking the action. Remember a few weeks ago, when I wanted someone to grant me permission to do what I already knew I needed to do? It was my own permission I was waiting for.
I just looked up the word “ambivalence” in the dictionary. Oxford Pocket Dictionary (it would take some pocket to hold this one) says: “1. the coexistence in one person’s mind of opposing feelings…in a single context. 2. Uncertainty over a course of action or decision.” I hold on even as I let go. I pull back even as I move forward. I am afraid of receiving the very thing I want most. We live in paradox. It is not only entirely possible, but almost always true that we have conflicting feelings along the way, even when there is no question of what we must do. Thank goodness we have each other when the way can be so hard to find. Even when it’s obvious.
Valentines Day, the blob on the screen, and growing up
February 21, 2011 at 3:35 pm | Posted in Very Long Blogs | Leave a commentTags: aging, career, chronicle, college, daughter, family, journal, life, loss, memory, motherhood, music, musings, orchestra, parenthood, reflections, school, seasons in our lives, sitting in the audience, Valentines day, violin
It is Valentine’s Day. I am actually wearing red, coincidentally or unintentionally (whichever way you want to think of it), but don’t tell anyone I didn’t plan it. We sent Chloe a care package on Friday – two homemade cards (one from Rachel and one from me), a store-bought funny card (from all of us), and a bag of Lindor chocolate truffles. Not that we have any special family connection with this holiday. It’s just that Chloe’s roommate always decorates their room in a season- or holiday-appropriate way, and I didn’t want Chloe to feel – left out? Forgotten? Perhaps I am merely (desperately?) grasping at any opportunity to do something special for her, now that she is away.
I am sitting in the sanctuary of a church. It is Monday evening, time for Rachel’s weekly orchestra rehearsal. This is what they are calling the “dress” rehearsal, though the students are not required to wear their concert black. The performance is Wednesday night. In it they are premiering a piece by a local Grammy-winning composer, and he is here tonight. He and their normal director are taking turns conducting and listening from the hall. It is a beautiful piece, and we are so excited that Rachel gets to play it, as only the first few chairs in each section were selected for this work.
I have performed with my orchestra and with various other chamber groups numerous times in this room, and I do not often get to sit out in the pews. Never did I think, six years ago in my first concert here, that in a few years I would be watching Rachel play in such a prestigious group. Nor did I at that time picture Chloe at music school. And 1,300 miles away.
Before Chloe was born, I was active as a touring solo folksinger. Dan booked my concerts and traveled with me, leaving his computer training and consulting assignments behind each time we went out on the road. I took a few months off during my pregnancy and then when Chloe was four or five months old, we hit the road anew. She traveled to countless places with us during the first two years of her life, and let me take this opportunity to mention what a super nomad she was – eager and bright-eyed for every leg of every trip, and forever good-natured. Anyway, once she turned two, not only was it suddenly more expensive to take her with us, it had also become increasingly costly to me in terms of energy and focus. As she became more affected by the changes in her surroundings, it was harder on her, and therefore on Dan and me, which made it challenging to balance everyone’s needs while we toured. So I went out there by myself for just over one year more, leaving Dan and Chloe behind at home for each of my four- or five-day trips, twice a month, until I could no longer find enough of a reward so far afield to lure me away from the bosom of my family. When Chloe was three and a half I gave up traveling and became a stay-at-home mom, doing whatever gigs I could find close to home.
One month after my final tour, I went to Chloe’s nursery school to watch the children in their special Christmas holiday performance. They got up on their little platform, two inches above floor height, and Chloe, who had never given me even a clue as to her thoughts about my being a performer, turned to me from her place up on the “stage” and said, “Mama, now it’s MY turn to be up here!” As they launched into their first song, I observed several of the children gazing blankly around the room, mouths open with wonder at what was going on, utterly oblivious to the fact that they were performing. In the meantime, Chloe and a small handful of others were singing their hearts out, clearly, spiritedly and confidently, fully cognizant of the attention their adorable selves were garnering.
(Note: Lest you be misled by this quintessentially cute scenario, allow me to bring you back down to earth by informing you that Chloe had at that time almost no sense of pitch. It filled me with dread and alarm to think that I had actually hatched a tone-deaf child, and for all her early years I did my best to not discourage her vocal efforts with my clenched teeth and too-bright smile. My anxiety was relieved around the time she turned eight, as by then she had finally settled into a reliable and well-tuned relationship between her ears and her vocal cords, thank goodness. Until then I had not realized that for some children, developing a sense of pitch is a developmental thing.)
Chloe is now not only playing in her college orchestra as well as the designated string quartet of the music department, and working on solo repertoire with her private teacher, but also was accepted into the women’s chorus for this semester. Next week they will be performing Handel’s Messiah. At Christmas, when all the choruses and the orchestra put on the annual holiday concert, it was live-streamed for those parents who live too far away to show up for every performance. Dan and Rachel and I were way more excited to watch it than I would have expected, especially once we saw that the visual quality was disappointingly far from sharp. “That blob has to be Chloe!!” we assured each other in front of our long-distance computer screen. And we were right, of course. Family members can always tell.
Rachel’s orchestra has just begun the opening theme of Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite, one of the most lovely melodies out there. In waves, I find myself overcome with emotion as I listen. First of all, music is a personal thing, somehow intimate even in a giant hall (which this is not). When it is delivered in performance it feels as if it has been handed To You, even as you sit among five others, or hundreds or thousands of others. And the intimacy extends to the others in the room, as you are all receiving it together. There is that level of it, enhanced in this case of course by the fact that it is my kid up there!
Then there is the piece that is just particular to my family and our experience of performances. We all have almost always been there for each other’s special events. Dan has been there for close to every concert I have ever given, with the exception of that dreadful year when he stayed home with Chloe while I was still touring. Chloe and Rachel stayed with a sitter for a few years, and then began to come to my shows with Dan, even if they fell asleep during the show. Once I joined the baroque orchestra, not only have they come for almost every single performance (even coming night after night when we have a multi-night run), they generally sit right up there in the front row. My fellow musicians have come to expect them to be there, and have missed their shining faces on the few occasions when they have either missed the concert or been banished to a seat farther from the stage.
So this year presented me with this multi-faceted loss as well. We don’t get to be there for Chloe’s shows, and she doesn’t get to be here for mine or for Rachel’s. Maybe that doesn’t sound like such a big deal. My words don’t carry the charge that I feel about it. This is part of how we live together. It’s part of how we know each other. We eat together, we talk, we listen to each other practicing and we are there for each other’s performances, cheering each other on – and enjoying it.
When I played at Carnegie Recital Hall back in 1980, I don’t think it ever dawned on my parents to fly out for the concert, nor did that possibility occur to me. Since both of them were from New York and had many friends and family members who still lived there, they simply wrote to everyone they could think of to tell them I was coming. And my fan club definitely showed up, stand-ins for my parents, who waited excitedly back home for the reports of the event. I think they may have sent flowers, but I can’t remember for sure. And my aunt went with me to the Russian Teahouse and a long string of other places after the show, as we celebrated well into the night and then some. Expectations have definitely changed over the past thirty years, as has the world of travel. While Dan and Rachel and I cannot possibly fly out for every show Chloe is in, we certainly plan to be in the audience for the big ones. I don’t know how we will distinguish between those that are important and those that aren’t, but I assume we’ll figure that out.
Nobody tells you, when you hold your precious little newborn, that this is going to be only one season in your life. Let me try to explain this from my own point of view. There was the season of my own childhood. The season of college and young adulthood. The mating season that resulted in marriage, those early years with Dan that were filled with music and travel, the wrestling with career and dreams of starting a family, which took time to sort out and clarify. Then there was the season of early parenthood, mixed in with the loss of Dan’s parents. And then all the decisions that come with that phase: school, activities, priorities, the forming of new traditions. Somehow my view of that season was often blurred by and partly merged into the recollection of my own growing up. And in a way, “growing up” came to feel like a permanent state to me. After all, my parents remained my parents even after I was technically an adult. Maybe because that felt permanent to me, I took up with the idea that the tangle and closeness that is the nature of raising children would be, similarly, without end.
Of course, everyone tells me that it would drive Dan and me absolutely crazy, off the deep end, if our kids stayed with us forever, and I believe them! Isn’t it amazing how we humans can want two opposing things at the same time? In the early years, I wanted Chloe and Rachel to remain forever small, adorable and snuggly, imbued with that kind of worship that only the young bestow upon their doting parents. And at the same time, I can remember how crazy-making it was to have them on my skin every waking (and, often, non-waking) moment. I remember saying to Chloe as a baby, “How can I miss you if you won’t go away?” Of course I want them both to grow into adulthood and find their respective paths. And I want some sunset years with Dan, bookends to our early years together. And I want Chloe and Rachel here with us because that is what feels complete now.
I can still remember the last time Rachel fell asleep on my lap, two or three years ago maybe, at the concert of a friend. It was a Sunday afternoon, those sleepy after-lunch hours of the day, and she leaned on me, and then when I looked down into her face, she was asleep. I sat there in the concert, tears streaming silently down my cheeks because I was fully aware that it was likely to be the last time that would ever happen. The end of an era. She may still be my baby, but she is definitely not a baby anymore.
In less than four months, we will attend her 8th grade “continuation” – in every way a graduation, even though, yes, she is continuing on into high school. Chloe will be home for the summer by then, and will be sitting in the audience with Dan and me. It’s not that our times together are all behind us, and, God willing, we will certainly be in each other’s audiences for many years to come. I am seeing that these four years are indeed an extended transition into something else that might also be considered a transition into something further on down the line. Maybe each stop along the way in life is more of a transition than a station. I am beginning to think so. May the valentines and bouquets and phone calls say it as loudly and clearly as applause and smiling countenances, in both directions. And may we all ride the continuing surf, sometimes lulling and sometimes tumultuous, of transformation.
Lessons, a square peg, and the issue
February 8, 2011 at 9:58 pm | Posted in Very Long Blogs | 2 CommentsTags: blogging, chronicle, family, habits, journal, lessons, life, making choices, music, music lessons, musings, orchestra, parenthood, rabbi, reflections, the mind, winter, work, writing
You have no idea how much I have missed writing. Not only the writing process itself, but even just having the time and psychic space necessary to sit with myself long enough for it all to pour out and come together. Right now I am sitting in on Rachel’s violin lesson with my laptop, which I brought with me so I could attempt to keep up with my work correspondence. Even though the icons in the lower right hand corner of my screen are telling me I am connected to some local wireless internet source (a mysterious wasteland to me at best), I cannot pull up my browser, and my email refuses to either send or receive. Flexible person that I am, I seized the opportunity to write instead of fighting with the cyber void.
From my seat on this second-hand couch in this classroom/youth lounge in the church where Rachel has her lessons, and later tonight, in a larger room, her weekly youth orchestra rehearsal, I am privy to a quintessential winter scene outside. There is still plenty of snow on the ground from Saturday night’s storm. The clouds are high but beginning to thicken, and looming with a darkness that foretells of the next wave, due around midnight. Even so, there is a wan slice of late afternoon sunlight breaking through the clouds just above the horizon, from behind the branches of the large neighborhood tree, my view of which is perfectly framed by the edges of the window, a striking arboreal silhouette. I find this kind of picture to be one of the richest gifts of this stark and frigid time of year – how many shades of white, blue, and grey can there possibly be? I would never find this palette satisfying during any other season, but these few minutes have been like a visual feast.
In this calm before the storm, I submit to the admittance that this has not been an easy year. On top of the fact that my family is negotiating the bulky and uncomfortable transition of letting go of one adored offspring, and I am walking my own musical labyrinth toward I know not what, I have taken on one year-long working assignment that is siphoning too much out of me and failing to satisfy me. In my typical fashion, I have been battling with, instead of listening to, my twice-weekly inner experience of engaging in this project. Every week, as I approach Monday and then again Friday, my step lags and I feel a sinking sensation in my stomach. I think they call it dread.
I have never thought of myself as an optimist. I do not tend to look on the brighter side of things, except when faced with someone who is looking at the decidedly darker end of the continuum, in which case I usually feel called upon to find the more luminous lining. Yet, amazingly, I find myself doggedly showing up, week after week, dragging along the frail yet stubborn hope that I may suddenly stumble into some kind of love affair with this work. In my more desperate moments I have sworn that after I wrap this up in June I will walk away from it forever. Yet two weeks ago, when I had to indicate my plans for next year, I found myself unable to make it final on paper. “Surely we can make this work!” some inner voice sings (or is it whining?) in my ear.
As I write this, I can see the theme that is crying out for my attention. How many times in my life have I forced myself to do something because my intellect judges it to be good and I am capable of carrying it out, ignoring all the while a tiny voice inside me that is saying, “But. I. don’t. like. this.” Bully that I am with myself, I have driven myself straight into many a situation without it even dawning on me to hold an inner committee meeting first. Even once it becomes clear that we’re not looking at what you would call a good fit, my self-appointed internal judge and jury has usually insisted, tyrannically, on saying yes to the next offer, and again to the next. “C’mon!” the court-cheerleader is stridently urging my square self, “Keep it up! You’ll nestle into this round hole soon!”
Warning: Please brace yourself for what may seem like an about-face. In all honesty, I am actually very glad I accepted this position. And, in my own defense, I did confer with myself, heart to heart (okay, I know I only have one heart, but you know what I mean), before agreeing to it way back in August. I admit, I only had about one week to decide, because it was offered to me on short notice, so it was a rush job. But the truth is that I could never have known what it was going to be like without just doing it. And if I had said no and moved into autumn the way I had been planning, I know I would have been annoyed with myself, many times over, for not having been willing to try it. I have no doubt of that, knowing myself as I do.
What’s more, I’m good at it – certainly not stellar, since, after all, I am a novice at it, and I have made plenty of mistakes along the way – but in general people are happy with the job I’m doing. And even I can see the results, and they’re good! My co-workers seem to accept me as one of them, and I by no means have a corner on the market when it comes to my complaints about the challenges that are part of the package. In fact, my colleagues are bending over backwards to help me, so I feel very supported, and those that have come to observe me have complimented me, saying I’m doing a good job. It’s hard but it’s not bad. There is a difference. So what’s the problem?
I had a rabbi who once said to me, “The content is not the issue.” Truer words have rarely been spoken! As much as it always seems that it is these particular circumstances, whatever they are, that are causing the problem, it is always my view of and reaction to them at the heart of the matter. I could list for you the details that continue to make my work difficult, but that is not what is at issue here.
Regardless of the fact that Dan and I are now paying for our FAFSA-determined share of college tuition and we are happy to have the added income, that my learning curve is greatly enhanced by this new venture and I am grateful to have been given the opportunity to grow from it professionally, that I am doing something good and that is a pleasant feather in my cap, and that it is possible it could grow into something even greater over time; regardless of all that is good about it, it is simply not where I want to be putting my energy.
You probably don’t know that I used to be a bookkeeper. It was before the computer age, so I would have to go through a considerable updating process to return to that line of work, but I could do it. I am a perfectionist (NO! you are exclaiming, in shock. I know. But I digress.) so I was a darn good bookkeeper, accounting for every penny, and it always came out right at the end of the week. I could do it again, but that is not where I want to be putting my energy either.
Okay, this is where I am cringing inside. The battering voice rises up, and I will share it with you. Who-the-hell-are-you, it rumbles, that-you-get-to-be-so-discriminating? Other-people-would-be-grateful-for-a-job-like-this.
Well, I am grateful. And I want to move in a different direction, even if (and here’s where I feel defenseless against the voice-with-hyphens) I don’t know exactly which, yet. I love writing this blog and would like to try my hand at writing something bigger than a blog. I gave up a career in folk music years ago, but would like to take my music into new venues and new rooms and begin to create a meaningful connection with new listeners. I have for years wanted to bring the arts into the corporate domain to nurture the hearts and right brains of people whose left brains are very effective, to see what could be cultivated. You should see the pile of books I continue to check out from the library on paper and fiber arts – I am itching to get my hands on color and texture and see what I can do! I completed the first round of training a couple years ago to teach people how to improve their visual acuity through relaxation and good ocular habits, and found I loved working one on one with clients, something else I would like to expand upon.
And here’s the thing that came to me as I wrote the above. Yes, I’m busy – too busy – right now. Yes, I have too many pans in the fire. And yes, that’s an old and familiar pair of shoes. (Not to mention the obvious fact that I could add many more pans. Or shoes. I’m not sure which metaphor I’m carrying here.) And, probably like most people, I don’t always love everything I have (over-) committed to. But that is not the issue. As true as it is, and as much as I have repeated that history, it is still just a deeper layer of the content.
What lies even deeper than that is the fact that I know what I need to do and I keep resisting it because my mind thinks it knows better. But how can I allow my mind to rule on its own, without tapping into my heart and intuition? Surely creativity and wisdom spring from something more than mere intellect. Six weeks from tomorrow I will turn 57. My father’s father took up oil painting in his 50s and died in his 60s. What am I waiting for?
What am I waiting for?
Permission.
From whom?
I am finishing this writing a day later. The snow came upon us last night with gusto, with a whipping wind and such cold that the dry white drifts squeaked under our boots and tires today. That serene and achingly spare glimpse of winter beauty that bequeathed itself to me lasted but a few moments and then yielded to sunset, which yielded to darkness lit by a clear crescent moon, which yielded to more clouds, which emptied themselves upon us in a fury, all through the rest of the night and most of this day. Not one of them asked for permission from anywhere, neither the clouds nor the moon, neither the sun nor the tree. Each played its part with both grace and passion. And acceptance, that divine gift of nature. Thank you, God, for helping me pay attention and for making me teachable.
Bittersweet as the pies bake
November 24, 2010 at 10:09 pm | Posted in Long Blogs | Leave a commentTags: aging, chronicle, college, daughter, family, journal, life, memory, musings, reflections
I am in the middle of pie fixings, Dan rolling out the dough for the crust. My good friend Doug Berch’s CD is coming to us through the kitchen speakers. Chloe, freshly (one hour) home for Thanksgiving break, is ensconced with Rachel in one bedroom or the other, admiring Rachel’s recent happy Goodwill purchase (a prom dress or concerto dress, whichever comes first). Bella the dog is enjoying her bone in the girls’ company. All is right in the world. In this house.
My aunt, at age 80, moved here from New York City, where she had lived all of her life except for her college years. She was married sometime in the late 1940s or early ‘50s, a brief union that ended in an annulment. This past summer, on July 4, she celebrated her 84th birthday with a sandwich and a cupcake that Dan and I brought to her senior citizen apartment house. As we dined together at the picnic table, she commented that her mother, my maternal grandmother, died at the age of 84.
I called her today to see if I could convince her to join the four of us, along with my mother and brother, for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. She is as low as I have ever heard her. In all the complaints she has spewed out during these past four years of living here – the noisy college students outside her apartment, the thumping on her ceiling and/or walls, the lousy care when she was recuperating from a broken hip and wrist after a fall, how her newly claimed home town can’t hold a candle to the Big Apple – never have I heard one word about not feeling well. Until today’s phone call.
A woman in her apartment building took her own life two weeks ago. To my aunt, who is suffering from a chronic and worsening respiratory condition, it was a stark tolling of what lies ahead for her. What can she look forward to but the same four walls within which she has found a peaceful refuge, an increasing struggle to take each breath, and an occasional trip downstairs to visit “the ladies” or across town to the doctor’s office.
I do not believe she is lonely. Having chosen to live alone, I am fairly certain she has been content that way. I believe she is beginning to let go of her attachments here. And though it saddens me to think about it, I cannot blame her. I have watched her these last few months coming to grips with the disease that evidenced itself shortly after she settled here. “I didn’t expect this,” and “I’m still getting used to all this,” her succinct hints at how she feels about her body betraying her.
Betraying us all! I was so looking forward to trips together to the art museum, the movies, lunch and tea together. When I was a child she would visit us once a year, staying with us for about three weeks. My father would drive us to the train station – she was afraid of flying – and we would get to go ON THE TRAIN and see her sleeper compartment, truly a highlight of her visits. I loved her voice, her New York accent, the leather brace on her left arm from a serious car accident during her college years, and her straight dark hair. I would sit and watch her unpack her suitcase, fascinated by the amazing versatile manner in which she used her right hand, which often had to do double duty, and by the scars on her leg where they had to take bone to try to save her damaged limb. As plain as she always was in the areas of fashion and self-expression, I found her glamorous.
I have not seen her as much as I thought I would, these past four years. She definitely prefers solitude. She has had little or no interest in going out together. We mostly talk on the phone, and sometimes I visit her or take her to my mother’s house for a holiday or birthday. Tomorrow after lunch I will call her and see if she feels like she is up to a family Thanksgiving dinner. If not, then Dan, Chloe, Rachel and I will pay a short visit to her on the way to my mother’s. Either way, it will brighten her to see my two teens, reminding her of me when I was that age. I hope my presence can offer a little comfort, even if it cannot help her lungs take in more air. Not touchy-feely, she probably wouldn’t let me hold her hand, so we will chat and she will reminisce a little and ask Chloe a few questions about college and then not listen to the answers.
I know I need to enjoy what we have now, and I will. The passing of my father taught me to listen differently – she is beginning to speak a new language, sprinkled with hints and clues. I will do my best to atune my ear and hear with my heart and my intuition.
May we all take in whatever blessings avail themselves to us during this holiday of gratitude, and may we spread them as we receive them. Speaking for myself, they are all around, even when it’s hard to distinguish them through the tears.
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