Yesterday, my 88-year-old mother and a friend drove north into the Adirondacks. Essentially, it was a leaf-peeping trip, but along the way they visited the lakeside house where my father’s family had summered from the nineteen-aughts through the sixties. It was the house where I was conceived in August of 1962.
About a decade ago, I took mom and Elihu up to the Severance home. No one was in the main house, so I searched the grounds for the owners and found them having a large family gathering in a screened outbuilding. The owner happily gave us a relaxed tour of the house. He enjoyed the stories that mom recounted from more than a half-century ago. I enjoyed seeing the rooms and matching them up with my father’s stories. I spent a moment at the top of the stairs, imagining that young boy, long past his bedtime, sitting there listening to the eruptions of grownups’ laughter as they sat downstairs playing pinochle. But my biggest curiosity was to see the room. Easy enough, it was at the top of the stairs. A cozy bedroom under the gable that looked out and over that grand, descending lawn and the lake beyond.
When my mother and son and I stood in the room together, I felt the closure and completion I’d been after. My existence had begun in that room, and, as a result, Elihu’s life had begun there, too.
My son’s life had also begun in a lakeside retreat, one with a similar view (Torno, Italy). Like this place, the site of Elihu’s conception was also high above the nearby water, and on the south side of the lake. If you were to examine a map of each location, they look incredibly similar. My son and I both began our lives lakeside, looking out to the mountains beyond. This is something I very much like to know. Somehow, it grounds me.
A massive new house now sits too close to the driveway, and a few small outbuildings appear to be missing. The house itself has been painted, it is no longer pale yellow, and the shutters are now blue. The immense tree in the turnaround of the driveway has been taken down. It seems there has always been a tree there; it does make perfect sense. But new money doesn’t always abide by those classic rules of balance and aesthetics. No matter, it’s under the care of someone with resources. That’s the key to a building’s survival. The place may be changed in many ways, but it still exists. The phantoms of the home as it once was still hug the new periwinkle shutters and bare front yard. My father still lives there as a five-year-old boy bringing barn kittens into the house. The Confederate General and his family still live there, slightly dazed at their new Northern environs, but finding enjoyment in the cool waters and pine-scented woods, nonetheless.
These days I feel I am living in an in-between time. Things are this – and at the same time they are also that. My son is in college, closer to graduation than high school, yet he is close by, and I am able to see him fairly regularly. My mother, although visibly aging into frailty, is still living her own life, driving to the Adirondacks, regularly reading The New Yorker and feeding her outdoor wildlife friends each day. I myself look young enough to fool people about my age but am old enough to feel the oncoming infirmities. This and that. Both, at the same time.
Sometimes I feel as if I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. Or at least the next chapter to identify itself. Lest I sound as if I’m complaining, I wish to say that I am not. I am simply feeling a little off – a little out of my body, a little unsure as to what it is that I am. My roles have always been fairly tidily described. But now, these days? I’m kind of in a nether role. I’m not a caregiver anymore. Not for the kid, and as it stands right now, not yet for mom. I’m in a rare place, this I know. And so I’m filling the space. And filling it easily.
I’ve begun to write songs. And while it may seem a mere hobby – on paper it would satisfy that definition – it feels to be more than that. A tiny spark ignites inside my chest when I envision writing songs and performing them. And then, if I imagine a band behind me, it gets so exciting that I don’t dare explore it further. It would be too big a disappointment if I began to care too much about that particular outcome, never to see it happen. But then again, why the hell shouldn’t I dream? Is that not what leads to creation? Have I not played behind dozens of other people who themselves had the conviction of self to assemble a band in support of their own vision?
It appears to be time for me to step up. And I am in the process of doing so. Step by step I am beginning to ascend. Or, as a band leader once put it to me, I am, to use his words, beginning to “ramp up”.
About a year and a half ago I had a rapturous musical experience which was followed quickly by an excruciatingly difficult period. I lost almost half of my hair due to the stress that it caused. I stopped working out. I started eating and drinking way too much. Then I suffered a back injury. After six months of brutal despair, I knew only I could get myself to a better place. And so I began to work my way up in the only way I saw available to me. I began attending open mics in search of a new musical tribe.
The open mics were challenging to endure, especially in the beginning. Long slogs through dozens of bad musicians playing done-to-death songs on out-of-tune guitars. Yet I tenaciously continued to attend open mics everywhere – even in Chicago – fascinated by the hard and earnest work that so many people were putting into their performances, even if, at the end of the day, they were far from performance-ready. I also went to the open mics on the hunt for the gems – the sleepers, those magic songwriters who stop by to work out a new idea, or who are there to fill a night because they’re passing through town… (That’s a bit of a fairytale outcome I now realize – although at the Caffe Lena open mic I actually have heard and become acquainted with a few “real” artists.) On the whole, there were no sleepers. The “real” musicians and songwriters were out playing real shows.
Tiring though they may be, the open mics have been a very important step in my ascent. They give me an opportunity to test this new skill of songwriting. They provide me with a goal. They provide me with feedback and input. They have opened doors for me to do my first solo shows. They have been a necessary step on the staircase ahead of me. They are a great tool, to be sure.
The first song I wrote was born of sheer need. I was going mad. Bereft and alone, without son, prospects or piano students, I pulled my keyboard outside into the sunshine on a late summer day because I had nothing to lose and no reason not to. Moved by the dire situations of two dear friends, I began an aural contemplation on the whys of it all. And by the end of the day, I’d written my first song.
It feels a bit naïve to actually call myself a songwriter at this point in my evolution – I only have about 30 songs completed and ready to perform – but I feel as if it’s a really perfect tool of expression for all the interior stuff that’s going on in my head right now, and it tugs at me daily. And at this time in my life, when I am not distinctly in my middle-aged years nor yet in my truly aged years, it seems to be a sweet spot for this new adventure to take place. I can still carry and setup my gear, I’m able to offer enough interesting covers to fill some single jobs, and I can perform a few sets of well-written original songs decorated with plenty of charming backstories.
Panic attacks still tap me on the shoulder and threaten to reappear, but I’m working on it. Silencing the self-sabotaging monkey which pulls me out of that place where I need to be in order to perform well should be handled by now, but it is not. I’m working on it. It is getting better. And I also gotta slow the fuck down when I talk. These things I know, and I practice every chance I get. I’m deeply appreciative of all the time I have to write and all of the opportunities I have to perform – and to work on telling that monkey who’s boss. I’m trying my very best to ramp it up.
I’m no longer at the bottom (although I’m not even sure if I know where the top is). What I do know is that I’m somewhere in the middle of it all right now. I’m en route.
And even though I’m not “there” yet (and I do fully realize that “there” may well simply be right here and now), for the sake of naming things in a physical world where we organize our lives through time and accomplishments, let’s just say that I am definitely on my way to a new place.
For now, I reside in the ambiverse.
To my friends near and far, you can watch my upcoming solo set at Caffe Lena (here in Saratoga Springs, New York) through their live stream. The show is on Sunday, October 29th at 7 pm. I’m up first, so tune in close to 7 EST for my set. Link here.
You can read a sampling of my song lyrics here.
The Hillhouse 