The stories behind the sounds behind the stories.

Tags

life, music, pandemic

(Friday night sunset at the pond)

As I sit outside and type these words, I am surrounded by sounds – a growing chorus of crickets; the mesmerizing sounds of a hermit thrush just south of the yard; the laughing call of a nuthatch, not too far from the thrush; a neighbor mowing his lawn; the din of a nearby window A/C; a far-off fire truck siren; the clacking of my fingers on the laptop.

Each sound is an invitation to curiosity:

I wonder how many crickets are singing right now? Dozens? Hundreds? How many more will join in?

Will the birds find their mates?

Is the neighbor enjoying his time mowing, or is he worrying about things in his life?

Is someone in the room that’s being air-conditioned, or is the room sitting empty?

Where is the fire truck going? I hope everyone is okay.

And the sounds of typing. Small and snappy and satisfying, giving voice to curiosity, and to longings and aspirations. Telling the story behind the sound behind the story. Spiraling down into the heart of things as far as I can go and then back out again.

I’ve been doing a lot of typing lately – working and answering emails and journaling, responding to the outpouring of support of the decision the guys and I made last week to cancel our southeast tour this month. I’m sad as hell, but I love what I do and the people that I do it with and for too much to risk going out on the road in this latest surge of the pandemic.

Other things are coming off the calendar as well. A private singing retreat that I’d been really looking forward to in early September has been cancelled, and I’m seeing more folks pulling back on travel plans and gatherings for the time being.

So, with hours and days opening up the rest of this month and into the next, there is time now to pay attention to the sounds that have been living in my mind and telling stories of their own – old songs that could use a polish, new songs and works in progress that have been vying for my attention. For the next little while, when I’m not working on other projects, I’ll likely be at the keyboard or with a guitar in my lap, doing what I once heard Maya de Vitry call ‘some diggin’ in the air.’

Questioning the definition of insanity.

Tags

bird watching, chipmunks, life, pandemic

As an ever-so-slight chill has crept into the evenings here in New Hampshire, birds are starting to return to the feeders outside our kitchen window, after several weeks of no visitors, and it’s been awesome! Chickadees, goldfinches, blue jays, and even a couple of ambitious woodpeckers have begun frequenting the tube feeder again. Food is plentiful for our bird buddies in the summer, so it was expected to not have any visitors for a few weeks—but with the slow and steady return of longer nights and shorter days, the natural world is responding and getting to work, and I’m happy to be able to spy on those efforts from the kitchen table.

I’ve been getting a kick out of this chipmunk who lives just outside the kitchen window, too. He’s been determined as hell to get at the feeders, and he hasn’t got it figured out yet, but he keeps trying all the same. I notice that he’s been using the same approach—running up the pole, attempting to jump from the pole to the feeder—again and again, and getting the same result—falling to the ground—again and again.

It reminds me of something that someone in an Al-Anon meeting said to me years ago: ’If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always gotten.’

It also reminds me of that old saw about the definition of insanity, which is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time.

And yet—sometimes doing the same thing again and again can bring a different result. Practicing a passage of music (or meditation or drawing or cooking or anything else) can yield more facility and more ease over time, and a deeper understanding of the processes at play.

Like that chipmunk, I’m doing the same thing again and again, which is wondering how things will unfold for our upcoming touring plans. Does it make more sense to go on the road, or to stay home? Is it more reasonable to have trust in the current situation, or to be more cautious? The soft breeze of optimism upon which so many of us had been floating seems to have dropped me straight to the ground, and there are moments when I feel immobilized by anxiety about determining, and then doing, the right thing. The idea that my livelihood, the very thing that feeds every part of me, body and spirit, could put me and others in harm’s way, is heartbreaking.

So, I’ll keep doing what I’m doing, which is keeping my ears and mind and heart open to both the inquiries and to the possible answers that bubble up. I’m sure that the chipmunk and I will have success soon enough.

The sequel that nobody wants.

Tags

life, mindfulness, pandemic

It’s been exciting – and also challenging – to be back out in the world playing gigs. Like so many other folks, I’m figuring out my way through it all, trusting my two jabs, trusting every unmasked face, trusting my sources of information.

Shawn and I played our regular summer bar gig last Thursday night, which found us reuniting with an old dear friend (and some precious, fully vaxed hugs), making new pals, and meeting up with other folks that we haven’t seen since before COVID (hereafter referred to as B.C.).

On a set break, I spoke with someone I hadn’t seen in ages who was there with a group of friends, all smiles. She told me how great it was to experience live music again – and followed this with the phrase that’s been gnawing at me these last few days – ‘now that COVID is behind us.’

Immediately, I pushed back, though in a friendly way. ‘I’m not so sure about that. I think we are very much still in it.’

‘Well, yeah, you’re right,’ she admitted with a sigh.

I get it. Everyone is done with season 1 of ‘COVID-19 – The Pandemic’ and season 2 is dead on arrival. Everyone’s exhausted with news-cycle-whiplash. Everyone’s eager to put it all in the rear view mirror…

…except that it is always now – and right now, many of us are still suffering and dying from this terrible virus, and many of us are still wishing it weren’t so. The sources I trust, the sources to whom I have willingly outsourced my knowledge on this topic, are painting a worrisome picture, and no amount of wishful thinking will render it any less so. There is no canceling this thing. Right now, it is with us.

Only this breath, now, is certain – and yet, how certain is that? I can’t know when I will draw my last! And though I’ve been breathing the entire time I’ve been typing these words, and while washing the breakfast dishes and playing at River’s Edge Tavern, it is easy to forget that.

So for now, I’m taking the bookings, still imagining the squares on my calendars filling up with music and joy and connection with familiar and unfamiliar faces and hearts, and also accepting the uncertainty of it all – and trying to connect as fully as I can with as many breaths as possible in the meantime, and remembering to watch the goldfinches at the bird feeder, too.

Equanimity, anyone?

Tags

equanimity, life, mindfulness, pandemic

Many are marking their one-year-of-COVID anniversaries with an outpouring of stories, colored by every hue of disbelief, despair, longing, grief, and also hope, resilience, surprise, and even awe.

Awareness of the pandemic, and especially of the immediate impact it would have on my life, exploded in my brain on the evening of March 6, 2021 at the Mudville Music Room in Jacksonville, FL. Shawn and Davy and I were eating our pre-show meals and scrolling through our phones when Shawn announced that the entire SXSW conference had been cancelled.

‘They cancelled the whole conference?’ I replied, my voice loud and incredulous enough to draw the attention of others in the venue who were awaiting both their own meals and their entertainment from us.

‘We’ll probably all be going home in a week,’ Davy said with a bit of a chuckle.

No, I thought, pushing on this unpleasant idea as strongly as I could. I was immediately carried off on a train of thoughts:

Dammit, that means we won’t get to perform our SX showcase!

and

Are we gonna have to cancel the rest of this tour?

and

I don’t want to get sick.

and

I don’t want to get anyone else sick.

and

Shit, I’m never gonna sell all these brand new band T-shirts.

Davy was right. Over the next few days, the tour fell out from under us. Except for a live radio spot in Tampa and our last scheduled Florida show on the 14th, all our remaining gigs cancelled on us. We wouldn’t be touring Texas this year, nor would I be seeing any family in Houston, nor passing through my beloved Crescent City on the way.

This past year is the longest I’ve spent anywhere since before 2010. I worried that after a few weeks of hunkering down at home, I would get too restless not being able to get the hell out of Dodge on the regular to see and experience something new. I worried about the future. I felt powerless to the changes.

In fact, what I’ve realized in the last year is how happy I can be keeping completely still, and how deeply satisfied I am with the choices I’ve made in my life—who my partner is, who my friends are, how I structure my days with various practices and disciplines and joys. Happiness isn’t out on the road somewhere. It’s right here, in my heart and mind, even when it seems a bit out of reach, even when I believe that it’s not possible. If I remember to look, it’s available to me anytime. I have thousands of photos, videos, and journal entries to scratch the itch of reliving past adventures. And I have the time and ability to gather up and set down some new observations, plans, and hopes. There’s time now for new song ideas and new ways to share them, and for noticing the subtle changes that occur along the path of my daily walk—new bird songs, new growth on the forest floor, new beer cans discarded out of open windows, new sets of footprints from fellow creatures following impulses of their own.

This past year has also been a beautiful reminder of how generous and loving and caring folks are. As soon as we got home from Florida, I wrote and recorded a song about toilet paper, based on a poem I wrote during the loooooooong drive home, that kinda sorta went viral. And that was fun! And the laughter during a scary moment was appreciated so much by folks that they—strangers, friends, family—started sending money. Shawn and I started live-streaming that weekend, and again, the donations poured in. For the last year, I’ve made my living entirely from the value that others place on what I do. Donations, tips, gifts, pledges on Patreon, PayPal, Venmo, checks in the mail with lovely handwritten notes. That’s amazing to me. What a humbling gift!

And most of the T-shirts did sell eventually. And of course they did, because people rock!

With vaccines rolling out now—at the speed of imperfect and well-meaning humanity—I’m feeling hopeful and curious about the future. I’m also feeling so grateful for what I have, what I’ve learned, and for the reminder that life has always been, and will always be, uncertain—and being able to cultivate equanimity is the key to staying relaxed in the shadow of that fact. When I remember to breathe and allow myself to feel the negative feelings more clearly, rather than push them away, then they can burn out under the magnifying glass of mindfulness.

As we all mark this strange and stark anniversary, I hope that you can notice and reflect on the small sources of happiness around you that ring the gentle bells of beauty and joy in your own heart.