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.
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.
On Shabbat
October 29, 2010 at 12:15 pm | Posted in Long Blogs | Leave a commentTags: blogging, chronicle, classes, commandments, daughter, family, Judaism, life, motherhood, musings, neighbors, parenthood, practicing, reflections, sabbath, school, Shabbat, writing
I had the opportunity to talk with some of the seniors at our high school last week. They are studying world religions and I shared with them my experience of being Jewish and some background on Judaism. This is the fourth year I have been invited to do this, and have enjoyed it each time. The students always come up with great questions, which together with the fact that I have to pull a presentation together, turns it into a chance for me to take another look at my life as a Jew, as a woman, an American, musician, mother, daughter, friend, wife, teacher, etc.
In the midst of each year’s talk, I explain about the idea of Shabbat, the Sabbath. Their teacher pointed out that one of the ten commandments is that we should observe it. Of course, as soon as something is required, any of us who have issues with authority start to bargain with and resist. And not only is there the commandment itself, but also the list of thirty-nine acts that are prohibited on that day. Talk about a great way to stir up creative rule-bending/breaking!! So why – and in what ways – do I observe it?
Ironically it was a Christian friend of mine who first inspired me to consider the possibility. She was a neighbor of ours at the time, in a rural section of town that had first been settled as a large orchard. All the homes, built mostly between 1920 and 1940, had the feel of old farmhouses, and our neighborhood had many qualities of the quintessential old-fashioned small town. Our children (her three daughters and my two) were together often, swinging in one backyard or the other, going to a neighbor’s pool for their swimming lessons each morning, and playing house on rainy days. My friend and I were both of like minds about letting our girls be little girls for as long as possible, resisting the urge to rush into all the extra-curricular activities, and keeping our families’ lives as simple as we could. Somewhere in there she decided to make Sunday a real Sabbath, and she shared her thoughts with me.
I was at the time studying Judaism through a local chapter of the Florence Melton Adult Mini-school, which offers a marvelous two-year curriculum now available in 60 cities throughout the US, England, Canada, and Australia. My teacher, a modern day mystic, cultivated for our class a rich and deep foundation for learning. When the subject of Shabbat came up, the seeds had already been planted by my neighbor, and I decided to explore it by trying to experience it.
The traditional interpretation of the Sabbath comes from the Creation story, which tells us that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. Obviously, many modern Americans in the Judeo-Christian world do not take that literally, but the idea of a day of rest is still a valuable one. Just as we need to sleep at night, we also need to plant breaks into our daily rhythm. Practices of many kinds recommend taking two to five minutes every hour to get up, whether from the desk or assembly line, take a walk around the room, do some deep breathing. We digest our meals better if we pause from what we are doing to eat them. Most studies reveal that if we work too long without a reprieve, we become less productive.
I have to admit that the very first time I heard about the Jewish Shabbat, I stepped right up onto a feminist soapbox. I was nursing Rachel, a toddler at the time, and Chloe had just turned six. As a mother of young children, I was not going to get much of a rest, and I spoke up – hotheadedly – to protest that Shabbat was perhaps more about men getting a rest than the women who really needed it. The person teaching that class was diplomatic, helping to make it a little less black-and-white than the territory into which I had leapt, but I was only a little bit consoled. Those were my reactive days, and my learning curve was steep enough that I pretty much had to put the kernel of the Shabbat concept aside. What my family did do at that point was simple (though not easy) and basic. On Friday nights we ate in the dining room instead of the kitchen, and we lit candles and said blessings over our juice and bread.
So now, two years later, I decided to see what Saturday could feel like, now that our Friday night ritual was intact. To be honest, I remember no details of the day itself. What I remember is that I reached a moment of great discomfort. I wanted to do something. DO, with a capital D. And that’s when it hit me that my life was centered around everything I was doing, and what I needed was to take a break from that by just being. This was not about what my hands were doing. I could nurse Rachel and at the same time be focused on all the things I was going to accomplish during her ensuing nap, which was what I did all week long. Or I could sit and nurse Rachel and have it be totally about nursing Rachel. I could chop carrots for dinner and be thankful that I could feed something nourishing and tasty to my family. I could breathe more deeply if all I was paying attention to in that moment was my breath.
What came to me that day was that observing the Shabbat is about taking that day to be mindful and present, and not about doing, no matter what I was in fact doing.
So last week, as I stood in front of that class of seniors, summarizing briefly my understanding of Shabbat, I found myself filled with a longing for a real Shabbat. Fast forward from those precious days with my young girls to now: Chloe away at college and Rachel a full-fledged teenager, in every sense of the word. Some Friday nights Dan, Rachel and I are actually home, and we set the dining room table for three, light the candles and say the blessings. If we are not too exhausted, we play a box game or watch a DVD after dinner and dessert. Many Fridays Rachel and I have violin classes and we get home after 7:00, to that blessed dinner, prepared and set out by Dan. Some Friday nights are centered around something that precludes our dining room altogether. Saturdays are often so busy I totally forget it is actually Shabbat.
The gift of doing things like speaking to a class at the high school and writing this blog is that it gives me the chance to take another look at something. Pulled away so gradually from the purity of my practice in those early years when the girls were young, I had completely forgotten that I can still carry the spirit of Shabbat with me, no matter the circumstances. In my own mind – and heart – I can make everything within those fully-booked Saturdays more about being there than about what I am accomplishing. I’ve had a lot of practice.
On cool calendar dates, reunions, and synchronicity
October 11, 2010 at 9:27 am | Posted in Very Long Blogs | 1 CommentTags: aging, chronicle, college, composing, cool numbers, daughter, family, friends, friendships, getting to know me, guitar, journal, life, memory, motherhood, music, music business, musings, old friends, parenthood, performing, practicing, reflections, reunions, school, songwriting, synchronicity, the mind, writing
I have always loved dates like today’s: 10/10/10. My first memory of such a date was June 6, 1966, only days before I graduated from the 6th grade, which made the day feel personally special. And in that morning’s paper was an article about twin girls who were celebrating their sixth birthday that day. I think they lived on 6th Street in their town, with a zip or area code with numerous sixes in it. I was so excited by that.
I’m not the only one who finds things like that attractive and intriguing. Tonight Dan and Rachel and I will be attending a party. The host couple has commemorated the appropriate date for the past few years: 5/5/05, 6/6/06, etc. (As I am writing this, I just want to say that in five minutes it will be 10:10 on 10/10/10. Yes, my heartbeat accelerated just a wee bit as I typed that.) And remember when we could actually watch the numbers turning on our car speedometers turn over from 99.999 to 100,000? (Assuming your car made it that far. And let me just note here that one of our two cars still does have that old-fashioned mechanism.) And who of you knows what I mean by our golden birthday? That’s when you turn the age that is the same number as your birthday date. For me it was turning 22. Poor Rachel had to celebrate it on her 5th birthday, before she was old enough to understand it. At least the rest of us enjoyed it!
I don’t know if it was the stars and planets lining up because of this date approaching, or just coincidence (though I have to say I hardly believe in coincidence anymore), but I have intersected with three different threads from my past in the last two days. I feel a little stirred up by having so many memories and connections sparked by all three.
One was an email from someone I have not seen since Chloe was very young, I think even before Rachel was born. She was one in a circle of friends. Though the two of us were never super-close, as a group we were bonded. For me, one of the most significant ways in which she affected my path was after I had written a particular song, back in my active folk performing days. It was such a personal song that I could not imagine anyone understanding it, let alone identifying with it, which made me very reluctant to sing it in concert.
I’ll back up a little here to try to describe what it used to feel like for me to perform a new original song for the first time. Somewhere pretty early in my solo career I was practiced enough that I was never very nervous in concert. I really enjoyed the interaction I had with my audiences, and felt like I could ride that energy and have a very relaxed, fun, and also meaningful exchange with them from the stage. But performing a brand new song was nerve-wracking by nature. There was always the strong possibility of forgetting words or messing up a guitar part, as it just wasn’t completely a part of me yet. If it was a song I had recently written then there was even more heaped on top of that normal anxiety. One aspect was that it felt like I was exposing something about myself. (Usually this was justified, because I was!) This always made me feel like I was taking off all my clothes and performing naked, it was such a fragile thing to share from my heart this way. Another piece was that I was always, at that point in the life cycle of a song, totally in love with this newest piece of work, and desperately wanted everyone to share in that love. It was not unlike whipping up a self-invented delicacy and wanting everyone to feel deep rapture while eating it. And finally, there was the precedence set by my previous songs, and the fear that perhaps this one would fail to live up to a higher expectation. Rather lofty, and clearly daunting on all counts, though also clearly self-created and perpetuated.
So back to my friend and my newest song. This particular work had been forcefully ejected from me by a powerful muse, and though I kept running away from it mid-stream (literally leaving the room right in the middle of composing it, hoping to escape the painful birthing process of those verses), I was consistently marched back to the drawing table by something far stronger than my own urges, until it was finally completed. I had never experienced such a wrenching creation process. I truly felt I had written a song against my will. It took over a month before I had the courage to play it for one other person. I was attending a music conference and found a willing audience in a fellow songwriter. She sat on my hotel bed as I sang it. When I finished and looked up at her, she asked me if I would sing it again, which I did. I think she had me sing it a third time before we talked about it. Agony. But she liked it. Very much.
So finally a month later I decided to debut it at a small concert in an intimate setting. My friend, along with a few others from our circle, sat in the audience. It was her face that gave me the courage to start, execute, and finish it. And again the response was good. So it became part of my repertoire and eventually the title song of the next album, though I never would have foreseen that! And two days ago, after years of silence between us, she emailed that she had been thinking of me and listening to my music and felt like reaching out to me. It was like a little electrical jolt to see her name there on my screen after all that time. What do you say to a friend, fifteen years later? So I answered her, with a brief update, and will see what is to follow.
Earlier that same day, I had had a cup of tea with an old high school friend. Similarly, we had never been close when we were in school together, but we had gotten to know each other and had a few classes together. Though on a different schedule, as I graduated a year ahead of my class and then took time off to record and travel with my band, we graduated from our hometown university at the same time.
Three months ago I was part of a concert that deliberately featured music from three differing styles of music, held in a small art gallery. I was wearing my singer-songwriter cap for the first time in a long while. Since this performance was being given in a new location for this series, I sent out an email announcement to try to generate a little more interest, as ticket sales were slow. As a result I knew several people in the small audience. Greeting people before the show, I was very surprised and pleased to find myself saying hello to this high school friend. After living on the east coast for a few decades, she and her husband had recently moved back here, where most of her family had remained. We agreed to get together.
Circumstances being as they are, it took until late last week for that to work out. We had such a lovely quiet time together, exploring where our paths had led us through all these years, and sharing what we are navigating in the present. I am sure we will see more of each other. And she may even become my neighbor, as she and her husband are house-hunting in my neck of the woods. I came home with a little excited flutter. All these years that I have been a mother raising two kids, I have shared much with many friends, felt nurtured in several communities, and Dan and I have grown many new friendships. Somehow this single hour over a cup of red berry tea felt new, like the beginning of a fresh chapter that put me in the center instead of my children or my relationship with them. I pictured inviting this friend and her husband over for dinner, Dan cooking up a gourmet meal, and the four of us enjoying each other’s company as grown-up friends. It’s not that this hasn’t happened at all in the past 18 years (though I have to admit it hasn’t happened with great frequency!) It’s just that the image conjured itself up and it excited me with its sense of promise. That is definitely new.
The third brush with my past came yesterday afternoon in the form of a get-together to remember a recently passed co-worker and friend. I spent my college years working in a local restaurant. My fellow waiters, bartenders and managers were some of the most intelligent, creative and fun people I have ever known, and many after-hours were spent in each others’ company during those years. The restaurant business often attracts people who are on their way to something, and this group was no exception. In our midst were future doctors, lawyers, artists, scientists, mountain climbers, dancers, actors, writers, poets, teachers, and many more. Our beloved manager died last month of cancer. His mother and his brothers celebrated his life – and what would have been his 64th birthday – at his mother’s house, serving the same food we dished up when we all worked together.
It is always such a bittersweet thing, these gatherings. I cannot help but find myself thinking, “Why couldn’t we have had this party while he was still here?” And yet I do not want to diminish the gift of having had that time yesterday with these people who all cared deeply for this sweet man we all called a friend. It was a treat to find out what everyone has been doing all these years, to see how well everyone is aging, who remembers what, and who is still connected to whom. There were, of course many people missing from our circle, some due to other commitments and some because we have lost touch.
Okay. So now it’s time for true confessions. I came home with my mind swirling. Even today I am calming down from the dizzying effects of over-stimulation. As fondly as I remember those years, they were also some of the most despondent in my life, fraught with uncertainty about myself in the world, desperately lonely even when I was surrounded by people, trying hard to be someone I wasn’t, and being hit over the head repeatedly with the lesson that I could only be myself, yet refusing to learn it until decades later. All of the unhelpful and hopeless tapes that were helplessly recorded in my subconscious back then have been trying to pull themselves back into the forefront (wherever the forefront of my sub-conscious could be) since last night, and my very grey matter is tired, all the way to the tips of my just-as-grey hairs.
Sitting here writing this, I also find myself pulling something else together. A few days ago, after a hard day of teaching beginning violinists, I asked the universe to offer the guidance of a few clearer signposts. (Interesting. I had to correct my mistyped word “soundposts.”) Everyone at the party, my out-of-the-blue email, and my tea date, everyone asked me if I’m still doing music. Yes. But what music did they mean? The last each of these people knew me, I was a folksinger, not a violinist in a baroque orchestra, taking and teaching private lessons.
Just this week I picked up the guitar, for the first time in quite awhile, and a new thought began to come forth. There is no extra energy or time in my life these days to set up a solo folk concert and do all that is necessary to publicize it. Could I put a show together and show up and do it? Absolutely, with pleasure. But performing is not just giving a concert to an audience. In fact, that part, which is the most rewarding and fun, is in many ways the easiest part. So now it suddenly came to me: what if I were to pick one song and work on it, at my own pace, up to performance/recording level? And then I could employ our little digital camcorder and post it on Facebook or YouTube, or both, and let my friends know about it, just to be able to connect to people with my music in some way. It’s not that I have no desire to play the very music around which my entire life revolved for all those years, now in my present tense. It’s that while I was resting from it, and raising my children, the world – and in particular the folk industry – continued to evolve, and I cannot step back into it without a major commitment on a lot of levels. It would be hard to do it in a micro or fractional way. This is the first inspiration I have had to move back out into the public as a soloist, just a little bit.
Just last week I read an article about a singer who goes into corporate settings and rallies these business people in meetings to sing together! Not surprisingly, it has helped co-workers deal with conflicts, stuck energy, and many other challenges in the workplace. Just before I left the stage and the touring circuit, this was an idea I had had, but I didn’t have the wherewithal to pull it together and market it. Reading about this woman rekindled that question – could I work with local companies? I would love to provide some inspiration to grown-ups who do not have enough music in their lives.
So here I sit, my mind reeling with questions. For my own sake (and to contribute to your possible boredom or at least overwhelm) I will try to articulate them. The big one: what am I being called to do? (This might be an appropriate place to mention that last week I went to the library and checked out a book about finding and following your calling. What attracted me to this book six days ago?) A smaller and more immediate one: can I quiet the noise in my head and find some stillness? It is out of that stillness that I am usually able to identify something to do just right now, in the short run.
So with that I will close for today. First, I will do the mundane and necessary thing that string players must do often, which is to clip my nails so I can practice. And then I will practice. And after lunch I will lie down and breathe, and do my best to let everything fall away for a short time. I have a lecture and a concert to attend – as an audience member and friend of the performer – and then a 10/10/10 party to attend. With dear friends I have known for decades and care very much about. Hmmm. Recurring theme a la mode.
The nature of moving forward
September 27, 2010 at 9:46 am | Posted in Long Blogs | 1 CommentTags: blogging, chronicle, college, daughter, family, journal, lap top, life, motherhood, moths, orchestra, parenthood, reflections, time, writing
There is a moth frantically dive-bombing the walls and lights in the kitchen tonight. As desperate as it sounds to my ears, perhaps every moth making a beeline (haha) from one lumen to the next is actually filled with carefree abandon. But here we are, in the final days of September, and it hit 90 or higher today and a summer insect is careening through my house like it’s June.
Chloe has been a college student for exactly one month.
I have rarely in my adult life had a busier month, and am relieved to be able to say that the crush of too-much-at-once is behind me. I would try to enumerate it all here, but that’s not really why I am writing tonight. I am writing tonight to explain why I did not write yesterday, as I had intended to do – and actually did do. Until the computer challenged me and I retreated.
One of the factors that has contributed to my busyness is that I now spend Monday evenings taking Rachel to an orchestra rehearsal 45 minutes away (each way). We go straight from school at 3:10 so that she can have a snack and short homework session before her violin lesson, fit in another study break and a hasty bite for supper, and then orchestra from 6:00 to 8:45. We finally return home a little after 9:30. Once the snow season starts, we will get home even later some weeks. It’s a very long day for her, and for me as well.
After the first four Mondays, it dawned on me that I could use the time during her rehearsals to write my weekly report to the parents of my students, and also to write my blog. If only I had a laptop. I casually mentioned this to Dan last Tuesday, and, computer geek that he is (I assure you it is his own term for himself – in my opinion he is much too well-adjusted socially to be considered a geek) he was willing, even eager, to find me a refurbished model. Eager, indeed. I had myself a “new” laptop before the end of the week. Dan loaded the necessary software and virus protection onto it and presented it to me after lunch Thursday. Cool!
It happened to be one of my “orchestra weeks” during which my baroque chamber group – this time our concerts involved thirteen performers – spends three days rehearsing for a weekend of local concerts. This means that I spend several days floating from one rehearsal to whatever classes and lessons I am able to teach to a quick meal and back to the next rehearsal – happy, usually more than a little stressed, and definitely stretched in terms of time and energy. So it wasn’t until yesterday, the second concert day, that I actually had a little uncommitted time.
It was a beautiful day outside. Sunny, clear, a little breeze, and that little touch of autumn that starts to make itself evident in those days when the sunlight takes on more of a slant. Since I had spent most of the week inside, I decided I would take advantage of the perfect weather. I went out in our backyard and settled myself onto a patio chair, a little giddy with the romantic image of working on MY laptop, which I placed before me, small 21st century altar on the picnic table. Dan was mowing the lawn and Bella was merrily cavorting between the flying bits of grass and the bees she loves to chase around the raspberry bushes.
I opened with a paragraph about the splinters emanating from the rough wood of the table, moved from there to Bella’s bee habit, and was just segueing into yesterday’s theme – no small feat, it had taken me so many weeks to be ready to actually put words to paper – when my new ally, my dear refurb, abruptly interrupted with an alarming announcement that something very serious was happening and it was forced to abort all present activities in order to protect itself.
Barely three paragraphs into my fragile beginning, my words were erased.
It’s not that it had taken that much time to write them. It’s not even that it was that good. But in that shattering moment (not quite the blue screen of death, but those big white words on the black screen are a little scary – just saying) I was demoralized. The universe doesn’t want me to write? FINE! I cursed the very laptop I had been worshipping only moments before. I made an angry and upset show of closing it down, Dan all the while instructing me that I need to use the computer some more so we can see if it happens again. HAPPENS AGAIN? I’m going to pour my heart out onto its soulless – not to mention conscienceless – keys again, JUST TO FIND OUT IF IT IS FUNCTIONING PROPERLY? Which by the way I just expect it to do because THAT’S ITS ONLY JOB AND PURPOSE IN LIFE!
I’m calmer now. It didn’t even take me that long to regain my normal heart and breathing rates. Dan expressed his sympathy for what I lost and I thanked him for showing me that he has much more of a heart than the machine that provides most of our income, as grateful as I am for that. My higher self knew that I would find a new starting place and compose a new set of paragraphs, and still be able to post a blog within a day or two. And in the meantime Dan identified a few outdated “device drivers” that may have contributed to the crash. He is replacing each one with a newer version. For my part, I will employ the “save” function sometime during the first paragraph from now on, instead of being so cavalier as to trust a mere hard drive with words that often do not come easily. Lessons learned, little harm done.
By the way, in case you are curious as to the theme of the lost essay, it was this. For those of you who remember how it felt to go from two to three, from a coupledom to a threesome – how suddenly it hit you that life would never again be the same – exactly, word for word, the phrase that our houseguests, a couple with a one-year-old angel boy – used oh so casually during a mealtime conversation on Wednesday – that is exactly and precisely what Dan and Rachel and I are experiencing. But this time there is no fanfare. No shower with gifts. No sweet bundle to caress. I can no more retrieve the days behind me than recover the lost words on my screen. So instead I offer these. And we all continue forward, since we cannot go back.
Neither can the moth. I found it this morning, nestled in the pages of one of Rachel’s violin books for its final rest.
Naming my blog: a (slight) retrospective
August 12, 2010 at 11:47 am | Posted in Long Blogs | 4 CommentsTags: blogging, chronicle, composing, daughter, family, getting to know me, habits, journal, life, motherhood, music, musings, names, parenthood, reflections, writing
I admit it, I do become obsessed when I’m searching for the perfect whatever. Decades ago, when Dan and I were planning our wedding I got so wrapped up in the quest for the right dress, I still found myself gazing at silks and pale colors two and three years after the gown had been properly stored away. Embarrassing, but true (and somehow freeing to say it out loud in public, after all these years – thanks for listening!) So when I was trying to come up with a name for my blog, it was torture. Here’s what I wrote while still in the throes of the final decision-making agony:
So now it’s a name. No, no more babies, no more dogs, unless you call this blog my newest child or pet. But perhaps it would be helpful to review the last few name-selecting processes I have been through and survived to tell the tale.
- Chloe’s name. When I was pregnant with Chloe, we chose no boy-names. Holding on to the old fashioned mysteries, Dan and I had decided that even though the doctors and nurses and staff people could be informed of our baby’s gender through the miracles of science (I was 38, so they required amniocentesis) we wanted to wait until the moment all of our ancestors had had to wait for. I’m not saying there were no male names that we liked. There was Ian, Ewan, Matthew, Martin (except for what “Martin” means), and more that have been long forgotten, but none of them made it to the “possibles” list. So we arrived at the hospital (with less than two hours to spare, but that’s another story) with four girl-names: Emma, Laurel, Maureen, and Chloe.
- Rachel’s name. Another story, first of all because we knew she was a girl. As it was our second time around, we decided we were no longer in need of a mystery and allowed the clinic to give us the complete report from the amnio. Actually, she was so different in the womb, I had thought that perhaps she was a boy, and shared my thoughts with Dan and Chloe. So we spent a few weeks of early pregnancy picturing the little quintessential family with one girl and one boy, and then got the news that our imagined portrait had a major flaw. That was amazingly shocking! We found ourselves reeling for awhile over that piece of news.
- The Folkaltones. I think I still have all the sheets of scrap paper on which we brainstormed for just the right way to capture the essence of our trio. We loved Tribe of Three, until we Googled it and found it was already taken. It went from there, and every time we ran a search engine we found we were not as clever and unique as we had believed. It was ego crushing, not to mention frustrating, and it was getting annoying that we had no name. I honestly have no memory of how it happened, but we finally settled on the Trifolkals. We liked the implication of 3-ness, the obvious folk reference, and we decided to capitalize on the “focal” aspect by giving our music the subtitle “visionary folk”. Egos back, intact.
- Naming my song Adjustment, and then changing the name to Bouncing Back. I wrote this song in 1979. Dan and I had split up in September of that year, after two years of dating, and two months later the song pretty much wrote itself, the result of a wrenching time. “Can I help it if I’m not bouncing back…” is how the song starts, and the refrain echoes it at the end of each verse. So when it came time to give it a title, a poet friend of mine suggested I call it what it is. To me it was about adjusting to being alone, separate from Dan, when I wanted to be with him. Once I had performed it a few times, audience members started to request the song about bouncing back. It isn’t about bouncing back, I would respond. It’s about not bouncing back. Aren’t you listening carefully to my lyrics? (I didn’t say that last part out loud, it not being a good idea to criticize fans.) It went on my first solo album as Adjustment and retained that title.
- Naming this blog. I keep going back to the advice of my poet friend, call it what it is. What is this blog about? Based on past experience, I may not really know the answer to that question until around the year 2040, but in the meantime, I think it is about two main things. One is walking through the process of letting go of my older daughter as she leaves for college. The other is figuring out what on earth I am going to do with my own life now that most of it has revolved around being the mother of two daughters and I will only have one living here. Those don’t sound like they are related, except that both of them involve me, and I do happen to be the one writing this blog. And one is catapulting the necessity of figuring out the other (you can work out which is which for yourself.)
There was no question in my mind. Chloe was my favorite, hands down, and I couldn’t understand why we would consider any other choice, but since I thought Dan wasn’t sure, it seemed the right thing to do. And to clinch the list idea, we reached a milestone decision: How could we really know who the baby was until he/she was born, and therefore, how could we pick a name ahead of time? Even with my bias, it seemed obvious to us that you have to wait and see who you get.
So after she was cleaned off and we got to look at her, we had to walk through the process of ruling out three names. One look told us she was not an Emma, and probably not a Maureen either. (I had gone to nursery school with a Maureen, and it forever holds meaning for me as a sweet and adorable bright-eyed toddler.) That left Laurel and Chloe. The latter had come from the movie “The Big Chill”. Chloe’s character is somewhat enigmatic, of a younger, seemingly more flakey and carefree generation from the rest of the cast, but in the end she turns the most troubled individual around and offers him a new chance for happiness and serenity. I saw her as a caring and wise soul peppered with a sprightly cheer.
Was Dan really strongly considering “Laurel”? I’ll never really know, but I do remember that I breathed a sigh of relief when he came around. And our Chloe has turned out to be a caring and wise soul, without a doubt, with more than a touch of her own brand of chirpiness. The irony is that years later Dan discovered that he has been saying his L-sound in the wrong part of his mouth all of his speaking life. Instead of using the tip of his tongue he has always pulled the back of said tongue up toward his hard palate – a very difficult thing to do, but it’s how he interpreted it way back when. So, poor thing, either of our top two would have proved a mouthful for him! It’s okay, she’s worth it.
Soon Dan and I went to work collecting names again, and this time nothing took. We spent months combing through name books from the library, my parents’ house, and our friends. Nothing. Or rather, each time something sounded good, there was a compelling argument against it. We liked Gretchen, but as we watched Chloe learning how to write her name, we decided it was too many letters. I liked Ruby, but Dan felt it was too old-fashioned. Emma, Laurel and Maureen were not even considered.
A few months later, on the way to the hospital in the back of an ambulance after Rachel had been born on the living room floor (I’ll cover that one some other time) I suddenly remembered that we had no list of names, or perhaps more accurately, no names on our list. Once Chloe was handed off to my parents and Dan caught up with me in the hospital room, we discussed the issue at hand. Finally we came up with the name Margot. My parents had been brought together by a folksinging Margot Mayo in New York, which added a nice dimension, and we liked the sound of the name. During the night, as I lay there too overwhelmed to sleep, the name Rachel came to me. We decided in the morning to give Chloe the choice.
Unbeknownst to us, Chloe had gone through her own process during the months prior, and had decided the best name for the new baby would be Diamond (taking off from Ruby – another gem? I’ll never know.) I can easily imagine the kind of appeal that name would hold for a four-year-old who is becoming a big sister. What I cannot imagine is what went through her mind when Dan called her at my parents’ house and offered her our two options, which had to seem unquestionably inferior to her. Luckily she was by nature quite agreeable, and since there was in her mind no contest between Margot (ugh) and Rachel (yay!) she came through. Definitely a family process.
Until we had printed out business cards and had the graphics all ready for our debut CD and a friend of mine from Chicago mentioned that there was already a trio by that name. I had even already even made the acquaintance of their songwriter/leader, Greg Trafidlo, at a conference. That was close! So we had to return to the drawing board. We played around with all the ideas again and, happily, stumbled fairly quickly upon Folkaltones, which took. We like it, but most people think we are the Folka (like polka) tones and that continues to drive us mildly nuts. It’s better than a lawsuit (though Greg is way too nice to think of it.)
Until three years ago, when I decided to re-release a compilation CD of songs from my first three records. This was my chance to make any changes. The pain having been eased during the past thirty years, it dawned on me that perhaps the song was about bouncing back after all. Maybe I wrote it during the early phase, when progress on that front was slowest. Maybe my fans had been right all that time. So for the first time ever, I re-titled a song.
The challenge is that it is difficult to encapsulate both of those in a four-word title, give or take a word. I had first come up with “Notes from the nest” but it’s taken. I contemplated how this nest is going to be half empty – “Half-empty nest”. Already taken, but also it is seen as leaning toward the negative, which is not my desire. So I brilliantly and optimistically went for “Half full nest” but it’s taken. And I decided also that it kind of sounds more like the earlier years of child-raising (especially when you read the blogs at those sites.)
So I have been brainstorming for days. Partial list: Face the Music, Cries at Weddings, So Far from the Nest, Musings from the Nest, Mom in Search of, Tune-up in the Nest, Mamatone, Take Your Vitamins, Whose Life Is It Anyway, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Love in the Translation, Tune-up for Mom, Losing my Marbles, Recomposing (maybe a little too close to “decomposing”), Lullabies for Mom, Apron strings and A-strings…
Finally I stumbled upon Roots and Chords, which everyone in my house (at the time) liked. I liked it too, but there was no sign from the universe to go ahead and grab it, except that it wasn’t already taken. Up stepped my Great Doubting Mind: If it isn’t already taken, maybe it’s not so good! However, that kind of logic has a fatal flaw, which is that I will never ever get to post my site if I am seeking approval from an already existing title, SINCE I CAN’T HAVE THAT ONE. Okay, breathe in, breathe out. I finally just went to bed after that episode. And this morning I jumped onto a new and different track: Apron strings and metronomes. Or Bach, Baez, and Bombeck. I’m kind of liking that approach and have two hours in the car this afternoon to come up with more tries.
Obviously, by the time you read this, the decision will have already been reached, since I will have chosen a title and posted my blog site. OR you and I will be dead because waaaaaay too much time will be taken in making the decision. As it is painful for me to imagine this being read at my funeral – or worse, used as my epitaph, I choose the first option. I promise you will hear from me soon.
Back to August 12, 2010. You can see where I ended up. I think it turned out to be the best choice, just like all the others.
Homeschool for mom: an update
August 9, 2010 at 10:32 pm | Posted in Long Blogs | 4 CommentsTags: blogging, chronicle, college, composing, homeschool, journal, music, music lessons, practicing, reflections, sleep, update, violin, writing
In my first blog entry, I told how my family had come up with the idea of creating my own “university curriculum” since I was flirting with going back to school. Since three weeks have passed since that post, I figured it was time for a progress report.
- Violin lessons. First and most importantly, I have found my violin teacher! I had my first lesson last week. I am happy to say that as much as I enjoyed getting acquainted with her over the phone, working with her in her studio was all the more wonderful. I have been dutifully, and for the most part, eagerly, practicing all week on etudes (Kreutzer), scales (Flesch and just plain), exercises (double-stops), and one piece (Meditation from Thais). It feels to me to be the perfect balance of challenge and manageability. I am starting off with one lesson every other week, which seems to work well for my teacher as well. And the bargain I have made with myself is my old standby – I will keep to my practice and lesson protocol imperfectly. When I miss a day, fine, back to it tomorrow. If we have to go an extra week or two between lessons, which will undoubtedly happen, I will have no trouble finding more to work on.
- Composition lessons. Not. The husband of my teacher is a composer. The night before my lesson I had listened to two of his compositions and liked them very much. When my lesson was over, my teacher introduced me to her husband, and I asked him if he taught lessons in composing. No, he doesn’t. However, he went on, why don’t I just begin composing a piece on piano and violin and see how it goes? Yikes! This was a dive-right-in approach I had not expected! And he was so pleasant and relaxed, almost innocent, about it, I found myself agreeing to try. So…
- Composing. A few days ago I sat down and began to write. It morphed instantly into a trio for two violins and cello. I am very happy with the theme and the harmonies of the first section, of which I have written eight bars. Well, seven and two-thirds. It took me hours! And I have no idea where to go from here, but then, I had had no notion of how to start until I did it. It appears this will be a long-term project, and I promise to keep you posted.
- Music theory school. In the meantime, I have been tutoring a student in music theory to get her a little better prepared for her theory placement test when she arrives at her college, and Chloe has been going along for the ride. It has been a great opportunity for me to review what I know and start to learn some more around the edges. I have to say, it is quite dry to learn music theory from a book! This is one discipline that is truly alive when using it, but utterly dead when on a printed page. So I hope to find someone to work with this fall. I know I will enjoy it far more in the company of another human being.
- Writing my blog. I am very excited to see that my list of subscribers and my readership in general are both on the increase! Thank you all for sampling something along the way in the past three weeks, and for coming back for more! Here’s the conundrum: the more active in my home-university I become, the harder it is to keep up with the chronicles! This is especially frustrating to me because I have been finding the writing to be a gratifying experience. I’m pretty sure that once Dan and I return from getting Chloe settled at her college, and Rachel has settled back into her school rhythm, I will have a little more time to follow my own pursuits. I look forward to that!
- Sleeping. Here on the home front we will be a little sleep deprived once school begins. It is so very hard to get up over an hour earlier than we have been through the summer, and somehow so very easy to stay up just as late. Darn. Why is that? Chloe, on the other hand, will have a class that starts at 8:00 only one day a week, and all the rest of the days she won’t start until 10:00 or later! Hey! I want to go to college! Okay, that was kind of an in-house joke, just in case you didn’t pick up on it.
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Roots and Chords 