Tag: open mic

The Severing

Posted in An Ongoing Journal...8 Comments

There was a time when it was all on me.

Making money, taking care of the kid, the students, the Studio, the chickens and ducks, the house, all of it. Now, at least for the moment, nothing at all is on me. I am bereft of the many responsibilities that had once left me spent at the end of every day, while, unbeknownst to me at the time, had all been at the very heart of my purpose here on this earth. Now, with all of that tidily wrapped up, my purpose is not something I know with any certainty these days.

It’s not a pleasant feeling.

Yes, there are still some hurdles ahead which only I myself can navigate, and there are situations which would likely fall apart if I didn’t step up and do my job, but at the end of the day these will merely be administrative tasks. They do little to address the deeper issue that lurks behind my every moment these days.

Why the hell am I here?

The kid is successfully launched, my brother is on site to help mom out, and I have no one to whom I am beholden. Is this not precisely what I had yearned for all those years ago when I lamented the unending domestic drudgery that was my life?

Goodness, Elizabeth. Your future has arrived. Why then is it such a melancholic occasion?

I’m moved to write tonight, but my conscience is nagging me to get in the car and attend an open mic across town. I know there will be a keyboard, I know that I can join in. But I also know that it will almost certainly disappoint. There is a resting level of mediocrity which afflicts this town and its music scene. Swarms of not-quite-average musicians fill the open mic signup sheets by 6:30, promising a three-hour cavalcade of out-of-tune guitars, waif-like girls with nasally, warbling voices and miserably indistinguishable three chord songs.

I realize that writing publicly and honestly about my feelings may well have bad consequences, but at this point I’m not sure that I care anymore. The stakes just aren’t that high these days.

Last spring, the candor in my writing, instead of being seen as simply that, was taken to be a breach of trust within the band that had employed me. As the new member of an established family, I had marked myself a loose cannon from the start. There was no going back. No apologies or retractions were going to fix it. It made me physically sick for months. And, it had been such a musically successful endeavor, the likes of which I could never have guessed would come my way – that it made the loss even more tragic.

When my new musical venture vanished, so too did my hope. My desire to stay fit, to be healthy. Even my will to get out of bed. I forced myself to attend a handful of open mics in a desperate search for something, anything, that might help fill the musical void, but instead, the experiences made things much worse. I discovered that I was alone. Completely alone. To realize one is living in a community without peers is heartbreaking.

In an effort to pull myself up and out of a serious funk, I tried my hand at busking this fall. It went well, and I began to really look forward to future sessions, until one night when I was packing up my keyboard, I suffered two herniated discs. A lightning bolt of pain had me instantly on the ground. Crap. I’d finally come upon a promising solution, and in one split second it was gone.

The two months that have followed have been another challenging detour. It’s hard not to take shit personally sometimes. Things were looking so good just less than a year ago. I had a gorgeously promising foothold into another world, a higher tier, and then – I lost it. After a period of mourning, I’d tried to get back up again. I’d tried to take matters into my own hands, to be proactive. And then….

Seriously?

I’m going to try to check my self-righteous and self-sorry attitude and try to behave with some humility this evening. My plan is to go out shortly, armed with a wide range of material to offer. Folks seldom ‘get’ me at these things, so I’ve taken to writing songs that I think might resonate better with the room. Who the fuck knows what will fly and what will tank? I’m planning on doing “Twisted” because it’ll be fun, and, since it’s a basic blues I figure I can’t go wrong…. But I can already feel that sensation of losing traction with the audience. Joni who? Whatever. (Ok, yeah, I do know it’s Annie Ross a la Wardell Gray.) I’ve got an REO Speedwagon tune in my back pocket if all else fails.

Consider this a real-time post. I have now been to the open mic and returned. Some insights. Not a whole lot, but some.

When I realized that the first three songs out of the gate were Dead tunes, my perspective changed. It was likely a room of people with whom I had little in common. What kind of material did I possibly know that would they resonate with? Would I simply be met with blank stares? I myself was merely tolerating their music. Quite likely they would merely be tolerating me too. Again, I scolded myself: these were my fellow humans, the whole purpose of the gathering here was to be supportive of each other. My own piano student herself was hosting, and of course I was happy for her enjoyment and success. But it was a challenge for me to remain in the room. And although I heard no compelling grooves, there were a few people eagerly pounding on djembes and swinging tambourines – so the music had an obvious appeal to some.

Come on, Elizabeth, forgive the dropped beats and the out of tune guitars. You’re far from perfect, don’t be so snarky. Be nice.

So yeah, after a $3 whiskey (!) I did get a little kinder. And I listened. In between tunes the piano guy played “Christmas Time Is Here” from the Peanuts book, and he actually knew the bridge. So there was that. A fellow Greenfielder sat in on drums, adjusting his snare hits to fit the errant beats accordingly. The vibe was congenial, and although I’d never been introduced to some folks, they’d already known who I was, and that was nice, I suppose. Maybe next time I’ll get there earlier and play. After all, I’ve got a week to choose my angle.

About three months ago, in absolute despair about the next chapter of my life, I consulted a local tarot reader. She worked at the head shop which Elihu and I had visited since he was tiny, and from which I bought my first oversized gemstone rings (to accommodate my ever-enlarging osteoarthritic fingers). This woman was said to have been the “best there”. And so she did my reading.

Among the cryptic things she’d said to me (I took notes) was this line: “Soon, in late November or early December there will be a great severing.” My God that sounded scary. Of course my first thought was my mom – who knew, right? She was 87, after all… A friend had even suggested maybe this meant my son. No, neither of these could possibly be!

And then today, at a piano lesson, this young girl from across the road, whose family had taken in half of our flock (the favorites) when I left for the road this past spring, they had made the decision to “off” the hens, as they were old and had ceased laying eggs. The girl mentioned this in passing, as it is a common thing for farm folks to do and to talk about – in general it’s nothing more than a recounting of the week’s events. But this time – this very afternoon – to me it was a punch in the gut. I was stopped.

For a few moments I tried to process this. It’s been several weeks now that I’d been wanting to go over to her place and visit with my dear Hammie (a black and white Hamburg hen). My heart wished for that comfort, as the past few months have been pretty awful for me. I’d thought that once I was walking ok without the use of a cane, I’d take a trip across the road to see her… It was a hope I held onto; it was a tiny light I had looked forward to. I just wanted to see Hammie once again, to see her beautiful, familiar patterns… I wished to hold her in my arms and bury my nose in her side, taking in that lovely, earthy scent.

But – she was gone now. Head cut off and left in the forest, she’d been food for the wild creatures. Ah well. At least I know she filled a belly or two, and her parts have sunken back into the woods of Greenfield. She still rests here. And she was, after all, just a chicken. A reunion wouldn’t have been the same thing for her as it would’ve been for me. But still. My heart breaks once again. Great severing, indeed.

Time for me to sever myself from this day, from the unexpected sadness, from the way in which I miss so terribly the tribe I’ve yet to meet. I’m not as despondent as I was a month ago, but I’m not in a great place either. I miss my son (he won’t be here for break). I miss the music I used to make and the places I used to go. I miss having friends, I miss the body I used to inhabit. I’m just waiting now. But for what, I don’t know. Holding my breath in hopes that things don’t get too much worse, or at the very least that things don’t change too quickly, so my heart will have time to adjust.

But I’m certainly grateful that I don’t live in a war zone. I do have my home. It’s warm and it’s safe, the interior is cozy and beautiful, and the roof doesn’t leak – and since the mouse nest has been evacuated from the piano, all is well for now.

I experienced one very good moment this past fall; it was a happy and welcomed respite from the current bleak musical landscape of my life: Here I am singing “I’m Confessin” with a non-local band at a trad jam session which is held monthly in Saratoga.

A happy accident. Now this is what I need more of in my life.

Real Ideal

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Flight, Growing Older, The Studio6 Comments

Ever since some friends and I found ourselves painting the walls of my new home in a mad dash to finish the project on the eve of our wedding, I have adopted a phrase which has served me well through the years: “Lower your standards and you’ll always be pleased with the results”. (Jokes have subsequently been made that I may have brought the divorce on myself by setting the bar so low at the very start. !)

Nearly every endeavor of some significance seems to involve more plots twists and surprises than one could ever anticipate at the outset. These little ‘spanners in the works’ can leave one ready to throw a laptop out of a window or just stay in bed and hope the world outside might forget all about you. But the impulses are brief; after all you couldn’t get your work done without the laptop – however old it may be – and by 8 o’clock your child would be be desperately pleading with you not to make him late. And then there are always the roosters. They never let you forget it’s time to start all over again and get things done.

Initially, a great new idea buzzes with possibility. The idea inspires, promotes new ideas, it sheds light on a potential path into the future. For a moment, everything seems right. A vision emerges, a plan to bring the idea to life takes shape. But the reality that follows is so seldom as pure, easy and straightforward. And therein lies the challenge.

Traffic, spilled coffee, sick pets, sticking brakes, cancelled students, lost music, failing technology. Those are the fairly mundane bumps in the road. Then you have the state returning your non-profit forms repeatedly when you, your attorney and your accountant had thought it looked good and was ready to go. You have board members that don’t respond to emails. Your emerging business has needs, but no money. Your venue looks so lovely, and the calendar of events is starting to fill up, but then the new AC units get hit by lightning in the middle of the cooling season and the septic tank cracks. Yes, these things can happen. And yes, they happened to me. And I have staved off tears and desperation by reminding myself to lower my standards. To relax a little, because somehow, (as Martha Carver always said) “Things always work out.” That, and a little Monty Python skit here and there have helped tremendously over the past few months as I’ve watched how quickly an ideal situation can become a real one.

If my son remembers me for nothing else, he’ll remember me for saying this time and time again: “It’s not a mistake if you learn something from it”. There are so many tiny heart breaks in the craft of building model airplanes – the kind of model that actually flies, not the kind that sits on a shelf looking pretty. The practice of building and then flying a craft inevitably results in crashing. There’s a slogan model aircraft enthusiasts enjoy sharing: “Build, Fly, Crash, Repeat”. This is not a hobby for the faint of heart. It is not a hobby for mentally flabby folks like me, either. There’s a lot of analytical thinking that goes into the building and repair. It’s a hobby that involves a mix of unlikely gifts; the appreciation for aesthetics and beauty, the ability to physically assemble delicate parts, a knowledge of mechanics and technology, and the understanding of basic physics. And the underpinning of the whole hobby is that deep, unquenchable desire to know what it feels like to fly… A tall order, and thanks to the unrelenting properties of this physical planet, a plan that’s bound to fail at some point. I can think of no other undertaking that better illustrates the relationship of ideal and real. And let me tell you, the undaunted spirit of these flight enthusiasts is inspiring. We can all take a lesson from these folks. A crash is just a means to a repair, and who’s to say the new craft might not be an improvement upon its former self?

Another saying my son will remember me for is “You never know until you go”. Been saying that to him since he was a toddler. Truly, you can hear about something, but until you experience it for yourself firsthand, you can never really know it. Recalling to myself the several aforementioned philosophies has helped me to traverse a very challenging chapter in our lives over the past few months. An absence of posts here on this blog will attest to our busy life (never before in the 6+ year history of this blog have I let more than four weeks go between posts. Talk about ‘lowering ones standards’. !).

Readers may enjoy a little update on the Studio, and I am pleased to tell everyone that things are indeed a whole lot better than they were a year ago. I was glad for our insurance, because it helped pay for some of the AC repair – but at the end of the day it’s still mom who fills in the gaps. The deductible, the electric bill. The stuff for which I cannot find a grant to help subsidize. It’s easy to find a small bit of grant money for a sexy project – everyone loves to see high school kids performing and ‘staying out of trouble’, but no one – that I’ve come across yet – is interested in funding the repair of a septic system, much less helping to pay the monthly operating costs. I can’t provide a platform for things to happen until the basic costs are met, but that point doesn’t seem to matter to the folks giving out money. It may seem hard to believe, but just to keep the venue open, insured and heated/cooled, it costs me – out of my own, impoverished pocket – around $800 a month. Slowly some events are starting to help me cover those costs, but it will probably be another year before “we” (I have to bite my tongue all the time – I want to shout “We is actually just ME!”) break even. I’m going to boldly suggest that in a year’s time I might even glean a tiny income from the place. Maybe. I’ll set my standards low, so that I’ll be more than thrilled when the money does finally come in…

Last week I took our roos (and also our 12 pound duck whom we named Christmas Dinner) to the Amish farmer to be butchered. It was a fine, sunny fall day and every last corner of the hilly countryside and winding road looked like a perfect magazine shot. After I got home and the birds were tucked inside the chest freezer, it was off to the Studio for a sound check. Then I picked the kid up at school, made sure he had something to eat and a plan for his evening. Homework, tuba, building, get the birds in and collect eggs. Oh, and please don’t spend too much time at your workshop, I cautioned him as I left. I paused for a moment in the driveway to take it all in. I could’ve listed a dozen things that needed tending, fixing, or replacing, but for one moment I let them all rest, and I turned my attention to the miraculous moment in which I was existing. My son was happy, thriving and well-taken care of (and probably pretty psyched to have the house to himself once again), and I was about to join dozens of happy and excited kids at The Studio. What? Amazing. For just a moment it all seemed perfect. Maybe even ideal.

The life that I’m living now was certainly never part of the plan. If you’d have told me that one day I’d be a single mom living in the country, that my kid would play tuba, build airplanes and speak German, that I’d be raising chickens and selling eggs, that I’d be running a community arts venue on my own… If you’d have told me any of this a decade ago, there’s no way I would’ve believed you. Cute story – but not mine. But look, here we are.

Trips to the emergency room, cancelled events, governmental red tape and failing cars can wear a gal down, but honestly, this life has turned out to pretty close to ideal. Really.

 

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Here’s a link to the gallery page of The Studio’s site. The main page is not current – I will endeavor to make updates after I publish this post and before I finish the grant proposal which is due this coming week. ! Don’t even get me started about the annual Halloween party happening tonite – I will cobble together a costume in the 11th hour. Elihu however is well prepared and is thrilled to be going as Otto Lilienthal. Elihu will be proudly declaring the German aviator’s last words “Opfer müssen gebracht warden” throughout the evening. (Otto died of a broken neck after falling from one of his thousands of flights. His final words translate as “Sacrifices must be made.” Indeed.)

Learning To Fly

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Low Vision Life, Mommy Mind, Waldorf Life4 Comments

We’ve been a part of the Waldorf School of Saratoga Springs for just about two years. Elihu joined the class just after Spring break of 3rd grade, in 2012. He’d come home from ‘regular’ school one day beyond fed up. He was in tears (not the first time he’d come home like this) when I picked him up from the bus at the end of our long driveway. I got into the back seat with him, and he rested his head in my lap. He was sobbing, and through his tears he told me he was done with that school. He told me I could either home school him or put him in Waldorf, those were the only two options. He was beyond adamant. He was not going back to that place. In that very moment, I understood fully that our lives would be different from here on in. I had absolutely no idea how we’d make it happen – the school is private, and expensive. But as a mother I had no options but to advocate for my child. As I sat there, stroking the head of my weeping child, I wondered at the unknowns before us. It would be an adventure, that much I knew. On paper, it wasn’t logical. But in my heart, I knew it was right.

His former school, I feel I must add, was by no means a bad place. He’d even be the first to tell you so. It had even won the ‘Blue Ribbon’ award for being a top-tier elementary school of New York state. And we absolutely loved the principal – a cheerful man who knew the name of every last kid there, who dressed in crisply tailored suits to greet the students every day of the year regardless of the weather, a man who outfitted the school in authentic, mid-century office furniture (I know, right?), and who, above all, played drums (did I mention he was good-looking and kind?) – plus his name rhymed with Elihu. (We sometimes referred to him as Mr. Elihewitt.) We liked the teachers too. The biggest problem for Elihu was primarily the size and population of the place – that plus the relentless, bright flourescent lighting. Everything was color-coded and there were visuals everywhere informing students in every sort of detail; directions of floor traffic, rules, winners of this or that contest, kids on time-out, science facts, sports of the season, artwork, reading lists – you name it, every manner of information was posted on every available surface – and all for the kids’ benefit, of course. But if you have a hard time seeing to begin with, if color doesn’t even exist for you, and if bright lights are murder on your system – the whole thing becomes a senseless onslaught of meaningless information. And you are clueless, while everyone else is informed. And then there was the cafeteria. The single loudest room on the planet save a nightclub on the last set of the night. I could barely take it when I visited. And my son, usually a very socially interactive person, he would sit by himself at the far end of a long table, hands over his ears and head down as he tried to eat. He, like me, is predisposed to feelings of panic and anxiety, and it took great effort and concentration on his part to keep himself somewhat grounded in the midst of the lunchroom madness. I’d seen it myself more than once, and it was a heartbreaking sight.

So I understood. He’d cried about it before, listed his complaints, made his case. I’d been a very present classroom mom, and I liked all the kids, the teachers – and the school – very much. But still, I got it. The visual chaos, the overlit rooms – it all made for one disoriented and exhausted child at the end of the day. When we’d moved here at the start of Kindergarten, Elihu and I had visited all the schools in the area. He’d attended a Montessori preschool in Illinois, and it had been such a good experience that I thought it couldn’t hurt just to see our options. But the instant poverty that came with being cutoff from my previous married situation didn’t really show any other viable options but public school. And in the beginning, our local public school was wonderful. He even learned some meditative techniques and basic yoga postures from his Kindergarten teacher. (Plus she gave us the iconic phrase – one which we still use today: “You get what you get and you don’t get upset”. We will always love Miss Crooks.) But it had served its purpose in our lives, and now it was clearly time to spread our wings and leave the nest.

His timing was pretty good, because we had one more school day before Spring break. I wasted no time, and the very next day we found ourselves at the cozy Waldorf school, Elihu visiting the 3rd grade class upstairs, me sitting in a comfy wing chair in the director’s office just below. How kind, how warm, how – dare I even say this of strangers? – loving everyone was here. There was a sense of everyone being present that I had never experienced before in a formal school environment. And when my meeting was finished, and I went upstairs to collect my son, imagine my surprise when I saw the teacher receiving each one of the students in a handshake and a brief personal moment of connection before they were dismissed. I couldn’t help it, I cried. It was one of the most moving things I’d ever seen. (Later, when meeting a couple of parents for the first time and sharing our ‘how we got to Waldorf’ stories, the father admitted to having been moved to tears during a math lesson. For him, that was when he knew.) If I hadn’t been sure before that moment, I was then. This was going to be my son’s school.

A period of unknowing followed as we applied for tuition assistance, waited to see how Elihu’s teacher felt he fit with the existing group, as we made our way through the application process. The day after break we returned for one more visit. He went outside with the group, I went to the office. When I returned to pick him up, I saw that he had a band aid on his thumb, and was whittling away at a piece of wood with a long, sharp knife. ?? I asked that gal leading the small group what had happened, and she just looked up, smiling, and said that Elihu had cut himself. He’d been washed off and given a band aid. “He probably won’t do that again!” she added, going back to her own work. Ok, so some parents might have been freaked out. But accidents happen in real life. And real life involves sharp edges – and for once a real-life mistake hadn’t triggered a pile of paper work and incident reports, instead, it had taught a lesson. I can tell you my kid has a new respect for a knife. Plus he’s not bad at whittling. I was even more in love with this place. I fairly held my breath for the next week as we waited for the governing board to convene and make a decision about the new student. The day we received his letter of acceptance to the Waldorf school was one of the happiest days of my life. They say a parent is only as happy as her child – and my child was in bliss.

So here we are, not quite in our second complete year. From third grade to fifth, a lot has changed. The younger grades, one through five, have rooms upstairs in the quaint old building, the middle school kids are on the main floor. So for me, these final months of fifth grade are to be savored. In many ways it’s like the end of Elihu’s true childhood. I love that he and his classmates all make the trudge up that incredibly long, wooden staircase to their room. I love the sounds of the still-small kids. I compare them to the much-larger middle schoolers and shake my head in wonder that my own kid will ever be ‘one of them’. I take not one moment of this time for granted. I too am on a journey alongside my son. As I play piano for the eurythmy classes as well as do yard duty at recess, I’m present with my child almost all day long. And I count myself blessed. Not a day goes by that I’m not grateful to the clouds for our fortune. I made a promise to my son a year back that I’d see him through to graduation. That he’d be a Waldorf kid until the end of twelfth grade, on my word. If I had to sell my piano, I’d make it happen. And I have wondered sometimes, if left without the assistance of my mother – and recently the participation of Elihu’s other grandparents – how would this work? But I know that it’ll be fine. It can’t be any scarier than it was in the very beginning – I took off with absolutely no safety net. Now that we’re aloft, staying in the air is much easier.

Last night was another marker in our life here at Waldorf. The high school hosted an open mic as a fund-raiser for the eleventh grade’s annual trip to Ethiopia. I have a soft spot for the country; for nearly a decade I sponsored a girl in Addis Ababa, and I’ve been an enormous fan of Ethiopian food since my college years (Chicagoans, consider yourselves lucky), so it made me happy to be a part of the project. I did my little bit by playing piano for the now eighth grade teacher (teachers and their classes move together up the line from first through eighth grades) as he took to the stage with the very ‘un’ Waldorf (as Elihu described them, and I agree) ‘Old Time Rock and Roll’ (yes, the one you think I mean) and Tom Petty’s ‘Learning to Fly’. I had my doubts about the latter, and even sadly forgot to insert my quote of ‘Free Falling’ in all the last-minute, open-mic madness, but Brian’s beloved charisma and my son’s interjection of energy and pulse on his djembe made for a very lively mini set. And who knew that a roomful of today’s twelfth-graders would jump to their feet and start singing along with an ancient Bob Seger tune? Not me. But hey, I sang along with ‘What Does the Fox Say’, so ya never know. The night was such an impressive mix of things, from original poetry to call and response singing with the room, to a four hands version of a Scott Joplin rag, to an original, choreographed modern dance – one woman (the talented woman who does my acupuncture treatments) did a hilarious ‘impersonation’ of a piece of bacon frying in a pan. Elihu even got to sing a song on mic and sounded great. Such energy, such joy, and such good pitch! Proud mom. As folks began to strike the room the dj humored the remaining kids (me too) with some end-of-the-night standards. A very good night. My kid was dancing and singing, having the best time he’d had in ages. And I was too.

We’ve known that this is where we should be in our lives, and while I suffer the occasional existential hiccups and dark moods, I do realize that on the whole, things are going very well for both of us. Our life is a continuing adventure no matter what our moods may be, and day by day we’re always learning something new. These days, it seems, we’re learning to fly.