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Dispatches From The World of Singer/Songwriter Heather Pierson

Dispatches From The World of Singer/Songwriter Heather Pierson

Tag Archives: impermanence

When words fail

30 Monday May 2022

Posted by heatherpierson in Uncategorized

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Tags

grief, impermanence, love

When words fail, there is music.

There is nature.

There is the memory of unspoken love between family and friends.

There is the balm of connection and reconnection through a hug, or a smile, or the touch of a hand.

The news from the world this past week has been excruciating – and here I am, saying things like ‘when words fail’ and digging in my mind for… words to write about that?

Yep, this is what I do.

My heart is broken by so many things.

And my heart is filled, too, by the tremendous generosity and compassion of friends – and that too of strangers who are comforting others in their corner of this beautiful and tragic world.

When I feel helpless, when I feel so overwhelmed with despair, I sing. I take an instrument into my hands. I write. I go for a walk. I ask Shawn for a hug or just some shared silence.

This week’s blog is overshadowed by the terrible current news cycle – and no matter when or where you are reading this, I am certain of two things:

  • that there are things happening in the world that threaten to break your heart.
  • that each one of us is capable of picking up the tools at hand to do the necessary and important work of caring for ourselves and others.

Whoever you are, I love you and I wish you well. Go ahead and let the words fail, and let the promise of love, the impermanence of all things, and the stunning beauty still left to be discovered and enjoyed in this life be the lights by which you find your way.

Christmas time is here.

06 Monday Dec 2021

Posted by heatherpierson in Uncategorized

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Tags

Charlie Brown Christmas, Christmas, impermanence, jazz, live music, Vince Guaraldi

This weekend was a whirlwind of being back in the world, performing three shows in three states with Shawn and Craig. Making music with the two of them… ahh, heaven on earth.

We’d been rehearsing for weeks, knocking the rust off. We drove lots of miles. We opened our hearts and leaned into the familiarity of the songs, and took some new chances too, all of which paid off. The audiences were groovin’ in their seats. From above and around everyone’s masks, we could detect eyes and faces crinkled into smiles of joy and gratitude.

Friday’s show was the first, in Bangor, ME. A perfect kickoff! Good turnout, lovely folks, fantastic sound guy (thank you, Torin!). Everyone was so quiet, leaning in, until the end of each song. The applause in that hall was thunderous and joyful every time.

Saturday’s show was in the Northeast Kingdom town of Lyndon, VT, in a congregationalist-church-turned-meeting-house lifted straight off of a postcard. It even started to snow, very softly, as we got into town. Picture perfect. The show brought out another lovely group of folks, one of whom immediately recognized our very non-Christmas encore and talked shop with us after the show about that song and about jazz and piano and Oscar Peterson and New Orleans.

At Sunday’s show – at the community church (and the invitation) of my beloved childhood piano teacher, Helen Davidson – one woman shouted from her seat at the end of the concert, ‘Thanks for the memories!’ to which I quipped, ‘We don’t know that song’ and everyone laughed. Immediately after the show, she made a beeline for me, saying, ‘I really do thank you for the memories – this music meant the world to me as a kid.’ Oh, I wanted to hug this lovely stranger! Instead, I smiled and thanked her.

At every show, at least one person told me that this was their first live music since before COVID.

As the three of us sipped tea together, holed up in our motel room on Saturday night, we talked about the shows, about life, about music… and eventually the conversation came around to the fact that eventually, we will do something, anything, everything, for the last time. And what if this had been our last show? So, we agreed – let’s approach every performance, every song, every lick, as if it’s the last we’ll ever play.

Like I said – heaven on earth with these two.

The last verse from my favorite Christmas song, the one we have been and will be singing all month, sums it up for me in this moment:

Christmas time is here
And we’ll be drawing near
Oh, that we could always see
Such spirit through the year

Saturday Morning Musings – Objects are closer than they appear.

23 Saturday Nov 2013

Posted by heatherpierson in Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

attachment, Country Music Hall of Fame, impermanence, life, materialism, objects, perspective

Late Thursday night, when I routinely emptied my pockets onto my nightstand, I felt a sickly wave of sadness sweep over me when I realized that I had lost my special rock.

I have (or, I suppose I should say, had) a special rock that had, for the last three years, resided in the right hand pocket of any pair of jeans, slacks or shorts that I wore during that period of time.  This little flat black stone has tremendous sentimental value and is now, I suspect, somewhere in the city of Portland, ME, where I spent my afternoon and evening this past Thursday.

I even called Andy’s Old Port Pub, where I had performed that night, to ask if they found it on the floor anywhere.  No dice.

What puzzles me more than the fact that it went missing is the depth and extent of my distress over its loss.

After I left my dark years in Fryeburg in 2010, some of the many things that were never returned to me include: irreplaceable photo albums containing nearly every photograph I’ve ever owned of my parents, every photo of my birth, childhood, young adulthood, every vacation and road trip; my junior high and high school yearbooks, complete with all of the etchings and noodlings from friends and teachers; and even my scrapbooks, containing chronicles of every single public performance of mine from the age of six upward through adulthood; and to this day I still have no certain knowledge of the whereabouts of these objects.  To think that someone (my ex) could hate me enough to keep these things from me stirs a rage in me that I sometimes fight with some difficulty not to express.  These objects are, for lack of a better word, sacred to me, and the fact that they remain outside of my reach or even my knowledge is one of the deepest sources of despair in my life.

In the wake of this terrible loss, I had thought I’d tempered my tendency to become so attached to objects.

Isn’t it amazing how important material things are and become?

Just a little over a week ago, I was at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville.   This incredible place is the home of many venerated objects: Johnny Cash’s trademark black suit; Cindy Walker’s typewriter; Elvis Presley’s gold Cadillac.

Around the corner from the Hee Haw display of set dressings and costumes, there was a small glass-encased corner dedicated to the hired hand studio session musicians who, many uncredited, appeared on countless hit country records.  Behind the glass stood an eighteenth century Italian upright bass that had been used on many of these recordings.

“Wow, can you imagine how amazing this thing must sound?” Shawn exclaimed.  “It’s a shame that it’ll never be played again.”

And his statement hovered over me for the entire rest of our visit, as we gazed wistfully at so many more forever-silenced instruments: Ralph Stanley’s banjo; Elvis Presley’s gold piano; Bill Monroe’s mandolin; Hank Williams’ acoustic guitar.

There is certainly something to be said for the reverence that humans pay to objects that were once owned by fellow mere mortals who used those objects to create masterful and transcendent art.  To glance, say, at Hank Williams’ Martin D-28 and to marvel at the end to which he wielded that guitar is to be in touch with a giant piece of history – but then, to me, the much more salient and immediate experience of this epiphany is to sit down and listen to the recordings he made with it – to hear the thing bark and sing and resonate along with his quivering yet confident voice.

I sometimes worry what will happen to my old Gibson, the one that was my father’s.  That guitar means the world to me.  I would be devastated if something ever happened to it.  And yet – here I am (and likely to remain) a childless woman.  To whom will it be entrusted when I die?  It is a morbid and serious (and necessary) question that no doubt has an answer which, at this moment, remains out of my reach.

I should hope that my father’s guitar wouldn’t ever end up encased in glass, but rather that it will continue to serve its true purpose – to be a bringer of music and, I hope, joy to others.

Speaking of which – I hope someone does find my little lucky black rock.  Retracing my steps through the hallways of Maine Medical Center to visit a friend and the aisles of Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, I realize that wherever it is found will probably be an unlikely spot to locate such a thing (unless I lost it on a street or in a parking lot).  Perhaps a child will see it and pick it up.  It does have a special sheen to it in a certain light – one of the many things I love about it.  I always wanted to skip that rock on a still pond or lake – it was perfect for that.  It was a “keeper” as my dad always called such stones.

Or perhaps it will get kicked down the street, into some forgotten corner, to find itself worn away over the millennia by the harsh elements, returning to the earth from whence it came.

Charles Bukowski said that we are “terrorized and flattened by trivialities.”  Perhaps my stone, my guitar, my family photos, Loretta Lynn’s dresses, are all trivial and, in the grand scheme of things, not that important.

What are important, it seems now, are memories.  I still remember my parents.  I still remember many of my birthday candles, my angst-filled high school days, my very first piano recital and how terrified I was.  I still remember the day that Shawn put that little black stone in my hand when we were first dating, before he even knew that I collected rocks.  And I still remember the first time I ever played that old Gibson, under my father’s direction and guidance, when I was twelve years old.

I guess the key is to be ever mindful of what is truly worth cherishing and remembering.

In the words of Mary Oliver:

To live in this world / you must be able / to do three things: / to love what is mortal; / to hold it / against your bones knowing / your own life depends on it; / and, when the time comes to let it go, / to let it go.

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