Tag: writing

Under Over

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This past week I’ve been feeling off. Down, dark and scared of the other shoe dropping at any time. Some moments it’s really terrifying. So I try to soothe myself by eating with a vengeance, or drinking as much as as college boy. I stay busy. I keep myself distracted. I pass the days waiting for the nights, when I take my faithful Ambien and check out. But even then my dreams won’t let me be. My dream life is rich and busy, and most mornings I wake without a sense of having truly rested.

Something has felt different for me over these past few months. Something is nagging at me, and it’s been growing and growing. I’m trying to identify it. So many stressors. Hard to know what’s at the root of my ill ease. It’s a cocktail of many things I suppose.

If there’s any wisdom that I have gained from 62 years on this planet, it’s this: take your hunches – your instincts, your tiny afterthoughts, your conscience (my son and I have always called this the “God voice”), magnify it ten times – and then do what it tells you. Hear the message, heed the message. (Most of the time it’s been a really useful tool for life. I recommend it.)

My thoughts have been consumed lately by one nagging thought, but I can’t tell if it’s the neurosis of an aging woman or an insight from the ether. The voice keeps saying “You just need to outlive your mother”. My mother is ticking along at 90, with only a few short-term memory slips. On the whole, she’s very much who she’s always been. Me, I kinda feel like I’m waiting for some major health shit of my own to hit the fan. So many of my peers have suffered awful and unanticipated health crises; why not me too? I’m concerned; as the cotter pin holding that’s holding the whole Conant project together, I can’t leave until stuff gets sorted.

I’ve had a couple of strange feelings in my body, one being a persistent pain which travels around the upper left quadrant of my chest, sometimes under the breast, sometimes in the armpit, sometimes like a line up the left side of my neck. I’ve thoroughly employed my “God voice” technique here – asking for an assortment of tests over the past year, yet at this point my doc and I are basically giving up the search and are attributing it to a referred pain from a decades-old broken shoulder. But I’m not convinced. What to do? I think I’ve done all I can. Or have I?

I’ve been working on the physical crap inside my house for a while now with some good progress. Elihu’s big move to Brooklyn this summer gave a huge push to our household’s downsizing. He wanted to move out with all of his worldly possessions taking up just the space of two large rolling suitcases. And he did it, purging the rest. Inspired by his progress, I took up the charge and continued the project after he moved out. But still. So much stuff.

Just how is the garage always full after ten years of garage sales? The way in which we Westerners amass physical clutter is astounding.

My mother has begun to let go of the idea that I will eagerly inherit her house and its contents. There was a time, a few years ago, when she’d thought that naturally I would move into her house after she was gone. When I pointed out to her that I already had a house – and that I, as an aging empty-nester would have no need of a large, four bedroom home, she looked genuinely surprised. She’d just assumed I’d want all this stuff. It’s been a journey, but I think she’s finally coming to understand that her Baccarat wedding crystal and her well-worn Limoges china are of little value in today’s world. It’s sad. It is. But it’s the reality of this physical plane. Dust to dust. Only so many museums. Only so much room for our stuff.

As a creative, I naturally have notebooks upon notebooks (let’s not even consider the hundreds of cassette tapes of demos, rehearsals and ideas). Even though the reality is that I will not revisit and reanimate 99% of those ideas, I still wish to keep all of these for my lifetime as space allows. They’re only of interest – and comfort – to me. Once I am gone, into the fire they can go.

What I do wish gone is all the extra paper that I’ve hung onto. Programs, set lists, photos, ticket stubs, doodles, letters, diaries and so on. Things essentially only meaningful to my mother, my son and me. I so wish that I could indiscriminately grab piles and throw them onto the fire pit! But then I see a hand written letter from me to my parents when I was a child at camp, and I think “Oh! Elihu and his children will get such a kick out of this one day!” Myself, I find letters and notes of a personal and intimate nature of interest. But will my grandchildren find this ephemera fascinating or irrelevant? Will I even have grandchildren?

I admit it, I’m stuck. Taking a breather here. The burn pile will grow. I just need a minute.

The Studio is finally on the market after two years of town bureaucracy and lots of other back-and-forth legal nonsense. I emailed the architect to tell him the news, and it bounced back. A quick search informed me that he had died a year ago. He was an old family friend, so this was sad news. But it also seemed to confirm that things were truly in cosmic order. The time had come to let the place go.

My brother Andrew is another item on the unresolved list.

Just last night as my mother and I tried to discuss the topic, I saw that not only were we not any further along in the process of discussing his caretaking, but we had backslid. My mother and those of her generation have a hard time getting honest about personal things, and having a mentally unwell child is, in my mother’s eyes, a failure on her part and a point of shame. So how does she deal with this? Denial. Lack of willingness to see the problem. You can’t solve a problem if you don’t think you have one!

My brother is as hoarder whose house is something you’d have to see to truly understand. He cannot throw things out, whether mementos or garbage. There is no distinction to him. He is a deeply intelligent person, but he has been consumed by his disease for most of his life. He hasn’t had a job in over 40 years. Has no dentist, no doctor. He isn’t even in the system; his dysfunction is such that he cannot follow through on any administrative endeavor. One year I got him food stamps, but he never followed through to keep them. He lives with an enormous inguinal hernia hanging over his crotch. He’s an alcoholic and does nothing but sit in front of the TV at mom’s. She gives him pocket money (his only income). She gives him her car to drive. She makes him dinner every night, fretting aloud about what he will and won’t eat, and what she’s got planned. Some nights he goes on a bender and never shows. My mother waits it out with no idea if he’s alive or dead (Andrew won’t answer his phone). Many times through the years I’ve had to peek through the window panes into his shack to see if he’s ok. But if he saw me doing this, he might fly into a rage, so there’s some risk involved. My brother showers, eats and watches TV at her place, then retreats to a tiny, dilapidated farmhouse at the foot of the driveway. Dysfunction of the highest order.

At present, everything is propped up and working. Mom has a reason to live; she has been a consummate chef and feeder of people for her whole life. She has someone to check in on her, take out the garbage and collect the mail. Andrew has dinner, booze, entertainment and shelter. They enjoy a symbiotic relationship. No need to dismantle things. But one day, shit’s gonna fall. And inevitably, it’s gonna fall on me. I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. But I’ll feel better once we finalize the will and get Andrew’s future care plan laid out. If mom won’t believe me that it’s a major concern, she’ll believe our family attorney. It’s on the immediate to-do list. Maybe my heart will lighten a little when we get our plans defined on paper. Maybe.

When I opened my eyes this morning, I turned on my phone and began the search for some dopamine to start my day.

Instead, I found a New Yorker article about a man my age of Jamaican descent who’d lived nearly his whole life here in this country and who had been deported by ICE to a maximum security prison in Eswatini. The agents employed needless violence.

The next story I read was authored by a mother who had lost her only two children. Both sons as teens committed suicide. They were deeply intelligent, insightful young men. But they were driven to such despair by either this world, their temperaments – or both – that they took their own lives.

Following in my feed came a post by a friend whose only child was killed a year and a half ago. She and I were both single mothers of only boys, both jazz singers, both from Chicago. I’d always felt a bond of some sort with her, and her loss has become a part of my life in some small way. I can’t help but feel a mixture of heartbreak and guilt when I think of her situation – and fear for the safety of my own son. But my reality is still comfortable. Hers is not.

This whole fucking world is brutal. And I am feeling it. I’ve got it good, I know I do, but I’m feeling the weight. The Trump era has ratcheted up the stress level on this planet for sure. It’s definitely playing a part in my unease. I long for freedom, peace and comfort for every last one of my fellow humans, but it seems further off now than ever before.

I’m under the spell of overwhelm.

My Line

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Yesterday I had a show. It was outdoors, a mild and windy fall day, with most of the audience seated many yards away, gathered around fire tables or under umbrellas. Not the best place to share nuanced music without the metronomic assistance and high-end sonic clarity of a guitar. But thankfully, at this point – now two years into my experiences performing as a singer-songwriter – I have come to expect the unexpected, and I’m able to make my thing work in spite of minor challenges and less-than-ideal performance situations.

So I did my job. I made the older women in the front row cry, I sent ripples of laughter through the crowd, and even had a mountain biker take a break from his ride to stop, listen and then wait to say hello afterwards. I also shared a song about my discontent with the nation’s politics, and although I could see the women in front squirming with discomfort as they disengaged from me, checked their phones and avoided eye contact, bless their MAGA hearts, they didn’t get up and leave. In fact, they came up later and told me how much they’d enjoyed my set. A win in my book. Message heard, if not received.

As I wrapped cables and loaded up my car, I was feeling content, and had a smidge of that post-show energy. Not quite ready to go home. I checked the Caffe Lena site and saw there was a singer-songwriter there, starting in just a few minutes. It would mean a chunk out of the money I’d just made, so I hesitated at first. Then, as I did a bit more research on my phone, I learned that this fellow had a congenital eye disorder. Like my son. Actually, just the opposite – this guy’s losing his rod cell function, and my son has no cone cell function. Either way, low vision and the diminishment of it has been a main theme of my son’s life, and at the forefront of my concerns as a mother. Easy decision. Let’s go hear this guy.

Being on a budget, I don’t often go out to hear what’s going on in the musical world. There are world-class musicians at Caffe Lena numerous times each week (I knew Lena Spencer as a child; the room has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember), yet I simply can’t afford to attend. A couple of years ago I took a chance and just decided to go there on one random, unplanned night. I had no idea who was playing, but I had a bit of cash and felt like splurging. I sat in the audience, mesmerized. Was that what a real singer-songwriter sounded like? Could you really tell stories in between your songs like this? People listened? Where the hell had I been all of my life? How was I only just getting this now? Having spent my musical life as a sideman in pop and rock bands, this folk world hadn’t appeared on my radar as an adult. And since I had just written my first handful of songs at that point, Grace Pettis got me thinking… This looked so satisfying, so gratifying. Seems strange that it was all so new to me at the age of 60. Ignorant old newbie.

Once, a year ago or so, an old friend of mine in LA texted and said that a fellow who he’d produced was playing in my town – did I know the venue? – and if I did, he’d get me a comp. It was Caffe Lena. So of course I went. The singer I heard was Chris Pierce. It was the second big step in the expansion of my songwriter’s mind. By that time I’d written over 30 songs, and I’d begun to do solo shows, so I had a different perspective from the year before. Meeting him afterward was also enlightening. Me, I’m often a bit short with folks after I play; I kinda want to get my car loaded and just go home after a show. But that’s no way to build relationships. Honestly, it’s just not being very nice. From Chris I learned the importance of warmth and connection. He was patient and unrushed, listening to folks telling their stories of when they’d heard him before, or how much a song had meant to them. It was a beautiful thing watching him hang afterwards. It was a lesson in humility for me. A huge gift.

And then there was last night. The fellow I went to see was Mark Erelli. I wish I could say that it was inspiring, but actually, it had me feeling like a clodding fool of a writer. I’ve come to be a little jaded about songs; even though I myself employ all the standard conventions and forms, I’ll sometimes think to myself, when hearing a songwriter, “here comes the bridge”, or “here comes the six minor” or some such nod to the next likely move. Last night, as I struggled to convey my feelings about the show, I blurted out that the fellow’s bridges were somehow “bridgier”. Seriously. Every one of this man’s songs was a profoundly beautiful surprise. Though I’ll admit that I still don’t listen to a lot of songwriters even now (most of those who I do listen to have me checking out after the first chorus), last night I was enraptured (as was everyone in the room). Plus, his duo partner James Rohr played not only the most sonically gorgeous piano sound (from a keyboard) I’ve yet heard, but he supported Mark with just the loveliest and most economic comping, fills and solos. The composite sound of the two of them was a warm bath of rich, deep, pure sound. What a lucky thing I decided to go out last night.

This morning, in an attempt to feel a bit less disheartened about my abilities as a songwriter, I turned my attention to the song I’d written most recently. The ideas had been in the back of my mind for a few months already, and I’d just been waiting for the right moment to try and get them all together in the same song. I sat on the couch in the warm morning sunshine last week and scanned through a couple of notebooks, reviewing the lines and ideas I’d written down. Somehow (as it often does for me) the song came together within a couple of hours as I sat down at the piano began to play and sing. And, as with most songs, it wouldn’t leave me alone for the next two days. This earworm of a song on repeat sometimes convinces me that I’ve just written something really good. But then today I had to remind myself that “good” is relative. Yeah, my songs are mostly good, a few are great, but many are (maybe they feel even more so now in the wake of hearing Mark) just placeholders. Experiments, moments in time caught on paper and in my memo app. And while it’s tempting to feel down about my lack of subtlety or ingenuity, I’m going to choose instead to remember that I’m new to this. That I am expressing myself in my own voice. Hell, I suppose it’s a minor success that I’m even writing. I’m not disappointed in my work so much as I am aware of how much room for improvement there is.

I’ll never be Nashville slick. But I have so much more on board than I did at the start of this new chapter. It may well be the main endeavor that sees me to the end of my turn on this plane. When Elihu left home I didn’t know how I’d make it through or what I was even waking up for, but now I think I have a better idea. And after hearing some truly great songs, I am humbled, but not deterred. Writing and playing songs has been a fine use of time. My ending became a beginning.

And I’m happy it turned out this way. (Hey – now there’s a good line for the notebook…)

Upswing

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This sure is a crappy time in history in which to be experiencing an upswing in my life. But I’m going to fully embrace the exciting experiences that lie ahead. I’m never unaware of my privilege, nor am I unaware of the horrific downturns that will befall so many souls on this planet in the coming months and years. Nonetheless I am going to put all of my energy into my music, my recordings and performances. Many of my new songs express my feelings about the turmoil of the planet, and that, I have to believe, is my energetic contribution to the world. I send the world my love as I offer up my music – holding my breath all the while, along with so many of you, as we watch the upheavel of our world.

There must be some energetic component to my current state, otherwise I could not possibly understand it; everywhere I’ve gone these past few weeks people have been offering up such lovely compliments. Strangers at the Y say they’ve noticed the progress I’ve made in my fitness, folks I know in town say that I possess a certain look in my eye – some have even offered hugs of what I can loosely describe as being congratulatory. But for what, exactly, are they congratulating me? What is it that I present which compels them to approach me and offer such kindnesses? I have stalled in my weight loss and I am wearing the same old clothes I’ve had for years. I certainly look older than I did even six months ago (this is the witching decade as far as looking ‘old’ takes place – that will have to be an entire essay in and of itself). What then is this ephemeral hint that I am broadcasting? Perhaps it’s confidence. I dunno. Maybe it’s because after a long window of child rearing and then empty nest grieving, I’ve finally discovered something that I am good at – and which I deeply enjoy. Maybe it’s reflected in the way I carry myself. Dunno. Not entirely convinced. But I do feel more hopeful about my prospects for creating and performing than I did a year ago at this time, and maybe that’s the thing that folks are responding to. Really, who can know?

There’s not much more I feel the need to add here. I’ve just felt a shifting of things in my life recently, and having not written much lately, it seemed to merit expression. Thank you for being here with me for this, which feels like a new chapter in my life. Thank you for bearing witness. I really do appreciate it.

Passage

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The longer one waits, the more difficult it gets. It’s been half a year since I’ve written anything here. Since our visit to Scotland and Sweden this past spring, our lives have been dense with activity. Elihu has been immersed in his final year of college, and I have been busy writing music and working with a new band.

Moments of clarity and inspiration have come and gone… In a flash, I’ll know just how to approach an essay; there will be a certain insight, a certain story that calls out to go first, but then I’ll get pulled away by a domestic task or the bell of a notification on my phone, and my attention immediately spins in another direction.

And then there are the larger distractions, too… A tree falls across my driveway. My hot water heater craps out. The zoning board denies my application. My keyboard won’t power on. My tire keeps going flat. I forget passwords and waste an afternoon resetting them yet again. The inboxes of my too-many email accounts are hundreds of messages deep and need tending, and I almost always have music to shed for an upcoming rehearsal or gig. Never mind. If it was such a clever idea, it’ll come back.

Um, not likely. A fickle memory has become my new normal.

These days my ongoing mantra is WRITE IT DOWN – no matter what it is. Interesting thought? Song idea? Lyric? Errand? Write it down. In a mere two seconds it will disappear forever… I don’t really understand how or when this all happened – but something has changed. My logical mind searches for landmarks or easily recognized turning points, single events which might help me quantify the process – but no distinct evidence emerges. It’s taken me the past six months to understand that the me who exists today is not the same woman who existed one year ago. It appears I have undergone a change. I believe I have become old. And if my flimsy short-term memory is not enough to convince me, the crepey skin sure is.

Before you protest, please know I am simply being factual. I wish it were OK in this culture to declare oneself old, and have it be accepted. Euphemistic phrases like “such-and-such years young” and “age is only a number” loudly convey our denial about being legitimately old. And it drives me nuts. I am old. It’s not my favorite thing to say out loud, but the markers are here. As a woman who has derived a good bit of pleasure from looking sharp, put-together and, well, young, this is not an easy admission to make. But who ever said life was easy?

I have really bad osteoarthritis in my hands too, and it’s gotten noticeably worse over the past half year. Over the past two months even. It’s tempting to feel sorry for myself – what a lousy fate for a musician! I was wise to make a little video a few years ago of me playing my tenor uke – cuz I can’t come close to pushing a string down on a neck. I feel ironically fortunate that my instrument requires only open-handed, lateral movement. It’s becoming a bit harder to navigate some fingerings, but for the most part I’m doing OK. And these days I don’t take this stuff for granted.

Elihu is doing very well in college, and is finishing strong. I look on him in utter amazement. He is not only academically successful, but he is a thoughtful observer of life. He has a clever sense of humor and a compassionate heart. The eye of an artist and the rigor of an engineer. Too much? Meh. Indulge me… My son has maintained an A average in his studies of aeronautical engineering, he has started some clubs on campus (indoor aeromodelers, philosophy, international language group) as well as served in a group of Chinese language mentors, and he is also in student government, requiring late nights of administrative tasks and budget allocations. He’s now fluent and literate in five languages, and conversational in several more. He also plays tuba in the symphony and a variety of wind ensembles – plus he gets all over town on public transit with his tuba in tow, sporting his favorite porkpie hat, sitting in with funk and jazz bands. Proud much? Maybe a little.

In spite of feeling the mortal clock ticking faster these days, I am in a very nice spot right now. I’ve lost some weight, gotten quite a bit stronger (I racewalk 2-3 miles a day and spend about an hour weight training) and – this is the biggee for me – I am writing songs regularly. Year before last I wrote my first song, and I’ve been writing ever since. Sometimes a month will go by and I’m too busy to sit down and listen for ideas and I panic, thinking surely I must have written my last song. How in hell do ‘real’ songwriters do this? Come up with albums and albums of material? And yet, I’m beginning to get it. Kind of. I now have many more songs than I could ever hope to record, and even choosing ten out of the lot is difficult. But now I must choose just five songs for an EP that I’ll be recording in the new year. Not easy. I’ve ended up sending out my homemade demos to a number of friends in search of their input – informal marketing research of sorts. But it has not yielded the consensus I’d hoped for; my tallies show almost all songs getting equal votes. Not a bad problem to have though.

One year ago I made a decision to play anywhere and everwhere I could. Performing my songs was still a new thing and I wasn’t as in control of my performances as I wanted to be. Tempos weren’t locked in, my focus was easily thrown off, and being in the spotlight as a solo artist was new and I felt a bit unsure of how I needed to present myself. The only way to get better was to be persistent. I find open mics to be grueling affairs, but they are also a great resource. Between those and a good number of solo shows, I’ve learned a lot this past year; it’s been surprisingly fruitful.

The exciting thing is – it’s not over, in fact, it’s kinda just beginning. I’m in pursuit of some future I do not yet see very clearly, but one I am trying my best to create. It’s a little scary sometimes to think I’m starting something new at this age – but isn’t that what we humans do? We move, we pursue. And as Elihu launches himself into the world this year (he will most likely be attending grad school in Stockholm, so his absence from my life will be profound) I too will be entering a new chapter.

It seems we will both be graduating soon.

Chameleon

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big hat 2

I am not a fan of change. Not at all. I pretty much like things the way they are. I like things simple, and I really like routines. I fairly thrive on the predictability in my life. But I’m also big on wild, serendipitous romps, and those who know me well will understand I’m not terribly keen on rule-following, which can make for some fun life adventures. These two approaches to life might seem at odds with each other, but for me they’re not. It’s not terribly hard for me to slip into other people’s worlds, observe, participate as if I belonged there, and then retreat back into my own private universe when the party’s over. I’m pretty good at wearing a bunch of different hats. Seriously. You should see my closet.

Recently, I enjoyed an unexpected foray into the horse racing culture here in my town. I’d had a good look at it from the inside the year before, so this year I had a much better idea of how to dress, what to say, what not to say. I was thankfully in the company of pals from back in my high school days on Chicago’s Northshore, so my edit function was a bit softened. But not so much so that I didn’t ask questions, that I didn’t pull out my small notebook and jot down some observations. And when my friend shouted, “Liz, winner’s circle, now!” after a race, I readily dropped my phone, bag and journal and followed the entourage down the stairs and out onto the side of the racetrack, where we lined up for a group photo of the owners and trainers. My host’s girlfriend refused to join us, maybe because the whole affair was intimidating. I can see how it could be. But me, all I could think as I looked back up at the grandstand was “once in a lifetime”.  And although the cheap fascinator clipped to my head had seemed a weak choice all afternoon, it turned out to be just the ticket for the photo op. I could just imagine my mother saying to me as she had all throughout my youth and young adult life: “Kid, you live right”. Yup, I admit it. Sometimes I’m lucky.

If it weren’t for the fact that I’ve been raising poultry for almost a decade now, I might still not believe that I myself really am a country girl. It flatters my ego to pass insider small talk at the feed store, and especially at the livestock auction house – where for goodness’ sake the workers always remember me and ask where I’ve been after long absences! – but secretly I almost always feel like I’m pulling one over on everyone. I’m not posing, not at least at this point in the game, but deep down, I always feel as if I kinda am. My muck boots and brown felt farmer’s hat guard against anyone being the wiser, but me, I always know better. Am I a country girl? Yes, and no…

When you play piano for three hours at one sitting in a busy restaurant, you never know who’s listening. Sure you can eye the crowd, get a good feel for the demographic, overhear a conversation or two to help inform your musical choices, but at the end of the day (or the end of the night as it were) you really can’t know. A couple of weeks ago an unassuming middle-aged foursome left the room after tucking a tip in the jar. “I really enjoyed Where Are You? ” one of the men said, smiling and waving as he exited. That was a tune very few would’ve known, and the generation that did was getting a bit too old to be making their way to this downstairs dining room. Musta been a musician, I’d guessed. You just never know the hats that folks are wearing which you just can’t see…

At the age of seventeen I was hospitalized for depression. I guess. Back then folks didn’t know the nuances of mental illness; panic attacks were simply lobbed into the mix with bipolar disorder and anorexia and any other possible affliction of the mind and spirit. We who suffered from any of these ailments were all sent to live with each other in close quarters, and made to push our chairs together in a circle each day to unburden ourselves to the room. It was there that I met a very drugged up man in his late twenties (all ages from teen to elderly shared the unit) whom I’d been quick to dismiss as all but lost. I remember his round, balding head, that he shuffled about, unable to lift his feet individually, and his lips were always shiny due to a constant drool (which I knew he could not control but which did not stop me from passing an unfair judgement of him). He and I were talking once and I had lamented how no one could understand me. How I just plain felt different from everyone (yeah, I know this is the song that every 17-year-old on the planet sings, but please just go with me here). Tom said he knew what the problem was: I was a chameleon. He’d observed how I’d changed my way of speaking to different people based on what I thought would make them comfortable. He said that he’d watched as I’d become someone completely different with each interaction. Immediately, it hit me. Yes, I did that. Yes, he was right. This man, so terrifically slowed by his meds, so dulled by his interminable residency there, he had observed me as no professional had. “You’re a chameleon” I remember him repeating, to make sure I understood. He wasn’t just saying some shit inspired by antidepressants. This guy saw all the hats and knew that none of them were mine – and all of them were, too.

Wearing so many hats can be thrilling, but it can also become a tad burdensome. The hats that I present to the world here in my writings can give some folks the illusion of having a personal relationship with me, when in truth, there is no such relationship. Recently I’ve been getting a little insight into what being familiar to a lot of people might look and feel like in real life (I hesitate to use the world ‘famous’, but well, you know what I mean). Mostly I’m pretty thrilled to get private messages from folks, and I’ve even made a few friendships through this platform, but wearing so many hats – and wearing them so publicly – makes it easy for folks to think they know exactly who I am. As a friend once said so candidly about my writing: my words are ultimately self-selected. One might take this to mean: how would you know if I was making it all up? How would you know when I embellished or when I omitted things to skew the results, to make you like me better or sympathize with my plight?

The answer is: you cannot know. Because I simply have too many hats in my closet, too many dresses in too many colors. I am, after all, a chameleon.

 

 

Words of Wisdom Won

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I know, right? Who am I to be offering up words of wisdom? For one, I just blew one of the cardinal rules of blogging for the first time in my 616 posts here: never begin a post with the personal pronoun “I”. Off to a good start…

Lying on my side in bed this morning, ruminating over the many things I have to do, and working on defining the most effective ways in which to execute them, I was inspired. Ah, you know that fragile window in time, don’t you? Those first fleeting moments of the morning when just a hint of inspiration overcomes you, and for a split second all things feel possible – and the stirrings of these possibilities begin to motivate you… But like a dream which one struggles to remember upon waking, the spark begins to fade the harder you try to bring it into view. And then you realize, fully, what you are in for. Yes indeed. You’re back. Phooey.

Yeah, it’s easy to feel inspired when you’re horizontal, when you’re warm, when you’re not hungry. That brief moment before anything really starts to hurt, before you remember that you forgot to wheel the garbage out to the side of the road… it’s easy to feel that lifting of spirit when your mind is empty of static, and the fragments of possibility sparkle there in your thoughts, beckoning you to rise from your bed and do, do, do, be, be, be… The challenge then becomes somehow holding on to that feeling, and coaxing it alive as you move through your day.

The idea that best helps me out when I want to forget the whole affair and just go back to bed is this: Face the Monster. Lately I’ve been taking the single most frightening thing I have to do each day and putting it on top of my list. It’s actually brought some impressive results. I’m still really scared, but I’m forcing myself to do things that I dread, and it’s not all that bad of an experience. I’m still rather consumed by insecurity and trepidation about my future survival, but I’m wading forward through the muck in spite of it. I’m in absolute awe of the human beings for whom this earthly life is but a trifle. Those folks who find their path, make a livable wage and own late-model cars. How in the world do they do it? I sometimes wonder if I will ever get it. Will I ever be unafraid? Will I ever earn a living wage? Sigh. Back to the list…

So, today “Facing the Monster” will entail going out to schmooze, where I will meet some artists and non profit types (they intimidate me greatly as they all seem to know exactly what they’re doing; they write grant proposals and deal with all that administrative nonsense while continuing to produce their art, uncompromised) and hopefully sit in at a local piano bar. Now if this doesn’t sound all that daunting, you’re probably right. But from where I exist, here on the inside of my skin, it has “panic attack” all over it. Really? Meh, not as bad as once upon a time, but still…

As many may know, The Studio has experienced some tremendous milestones over the past few weeks. Firstly, a local news channel produced a lovely piece on the venue, which was just what we needed. But then? A day before it aired we lost ALL of our power to the free-standing venue. After forty years the original underground power line went kaput. Who knows how, who know why – and at this point, who cares? Bottom line: ALL programs had to be cancelled as I set to figuring out how – or even if – I was going to make this pricey repair. At the end of the day it’s still just me piloting this silly ship, and I was completely out of money and answers. For several days I chose not to even think about it, because I was just plain out of steam. Metaphorically speaking, I went back to bed.

Then one morning, I said ‘fuck it’, and I Faced the Monster. I created a GoFundMe page for The Studio, held my breath in and hit send. I had no idea, really, that it would work. I knew a couple of folks would help out, but in fact the response has turned out to be so much more than I’d ever expected. It’s been deeply touching, yes – that would seem pretty obvious – but what this experience is also helping me to understand is that this venue, while ‘mine’ in some ways at this point in time – is not really mine. And soon, in order to survive and thrive, it must be handed over to a greater population. At some point, this simply cannot be my baby anymore. It needs to belong to a community. Seems obvious, right? I mean it’s a ‘community arts center’. But until now, it’s been basically my personal pet project (and my mother’s too; she would very much like to see the Conant/Studio legacy live on). And I won’t lie; surrendering control and seeing other folks come in and make it their place too seems a little scary. I need to learn how to keep my vision for the place clear and evident while at the same time sharing the reins with others. It’s obvious that I, by myself, cannot do all of the things which successfully running an operation like this entails, so I’ll need to Face the Monster once again. Next up, I need to find my posse…

But first comes today. Art opening, piano bar. Sounds fun. I get to wear nice clothes for once. Even sparkly things, which I secretly love. I’ll meet some people, share my vision for The Studio, sing some songs and make some people happy. And I’ll remember today’s piece of wisdom; Face the Monster and scare him back under the bed – at least for now.

 

Five Hundred and One

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Growing Older2 Comments

This is my five hundred and first post. I hadn’t intended to pass up post number 500 on such a mundane subject as Spam, but very anticlimactically, there you have it. It seems the tally of my published posts was one behind, causing me to miss my landmark. But then that’s not so very important as is the fact that I’m still at it, over three years and five hundred posts (and dozens of unpublished posts) later. The result represents several thousand hours of writing, editing and re-writing. And while I don’t yet deign to claim that I’m a professional writer, I do however, with a small amount of confidence, now identify myself to people as a writer. Not a blogger. I’m a writer with a blog, not a blogger who writes just to generate content. (Lord knows generating content has never been my problem. !)

Bloggers enjoy making entire paragraphs out of one single sentence for effect.

Not me. Well at least not yet. Never say never.

That’s precisely what turns me off when I visit other blogs. That silly, truncated format, those tiny look-how-clever-I-am paragraphs, that sing-song, cutesy tone. Just doesn’t do it for me. Kinda like the Dead. You either dig them, or you don’t. The typical blog format either works for you or not. A particular style of music can either fill your heart with joy – or make you want to rip the radio out of the dashboard. Me, I don’t write in order to have a blog; I write because I’d probably go nuts if I didn’t have an outlet. To be entirely honest, I’ve come to rely on you guys. Having an audience – dare I even say a family? – with which to share my ruminations and experiences is what has motivated me to get out of bed on many a morning.

I don’t think my writing is necessarily great stuff (no false modesty here, I really do think it’s improved in some ways), but I believe what gives it integrity is that I actually write down the things that run through my head. I don’t believe that I’m terribly different from most folks – I just think aloud, that’s all. But in that lots of people get a kick out of watching other people’s tiny dramas – or in some cases rubbernecking at their worst train wrecks – I figure at the very least The Hillhouse offers up some form of entertainment, if nothing else.

Elihu and I went to see comedian Steven Wright the other night (first time I’d popped so much money on a ticket in my entire 51 years on the planet. Hope the kid treasures the memory, at least I know that I will…) and in the days that followed I began to think more critically about what made comedy compelling. What made writing compelling for that matter. And while it may seem simplistic, it seems to me it’s mainly about the truth. Why are some things so goddam funny? Why is some writing worth reading? Because either you’ve already thought the same crazy thought yourself (and thought it was just you thinking it) or have never heard a certain situation expressed before in such an obvious, truthful way that it gets your attention. It’s either been your truth at one point too – or at least you can feel the truth in it. You get it. And that’s why I’m here. Because I need to know that you’ve been here too. Or at least that somebody else gets it. I don’t have the immediate feedback of hearing your laughter, but I do feel the presence of somebody else in the room, and it feels nice.

I’m so glad you’ve stopped by here at The Hillhouse to share in a tiny portion of our life. You’ve given me such a gift in your audience, in your emotional support and input. It continually blows my mind that we’ve had visitors from over 170 countries now, many now regular readers (before this experience I wasn’t even aware that there were so many countries in the world!). I still wonder at who many of you are – expats lonely for home, far-flung childhood friends of mine, people who arrived here on a late night Google jag…? Just who, I wonder, are you? I do know one thing: you are my friends, wherever you are, whomever you are, and whatsoever brought you here. And in exchange for your love and support I send you my energetic good wishes for a life as free from emotional stress and strain as possible, and for many wonderful surprises in the future.

My grandma taught me that the best way to accept a gift is with sincere thanks. And so tonight I thank all of you with my very warmest regards, five hundred and one times over.

Woman of Oz

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Divorce Diary, Farm Life, Mommy Mind4 Comments

When I write my posts, I sometimes remind myself of the Wizard of Oz. Or rather, the man behind the curtain pulling the levers and speaking into a mic. It’s an interesting feeling to sit in my comfy chair, alone in my room, ‘talking’ into the box on my lap. Feeling quite alone as I do (except for the constant crowing of roosters outside my window), it’s nearly impossible to realize I’m speaking to a group. And yet, luckily for me, I’m still able to do my thing, relatively unaffected by my growing and invisible audience. I had wondered recently if this might become challenging as time went on, but I’m happy to find that I can still tap into that universal mind and enjoy a line free of outside interference. As those who create will know, when things are going good and stuff is just coming to you, that’s a spiritual sweet spot. It’s kinda like getting in a canoe and joining the already moving water. Off you go… The trick here is not only knowing that I’m not exactly alone in my thoughts (nor would I want to be; the point of a blog is to share ideas), but that everyone in my life’s wake is privy to these thoughts and observations. Because of this, there are sometimes repercussions. But this is my life’s art for now, so on I go, broadcasting from my little chair behind the curtain.

Keeping one’s voice the same, without modifying its tone or exaggerating the day’s events when they seem a little too common, these are some of the challenges that face me. Thankfully, they aren’t affecting me at present, nor are they really concerning me. I’m surprised at this. Thought by now things might be getting trickier. You know, running out of ideas, becoming bored with what I already got goin. But I’m alright. My mind rolls up and down all day long as I tend to my outdoor work and I make mental notes to examine things more closely when my work is done. The biggest hitch in all of this is just remembering ideas later on. Guess that’s why writers take notes. I have a dry erase board in the kitchen, and a small pad in the car. If I’m lucky I’ll be near enough to one or the other that I’ll get something down in time. And while it aint Alzheimer’s yet, I forget far more than actually occurs to me – and this has me wondering sometimes if it’s not a foreshadowing of the fate awaiting me. But I’ll no doubt write about that chapter too when it descends on me. Cuz no matter how my aged years present themselves, whether it be memory loss or the inability to get around (hopefully neither!), that will be an entirely new adventure that will bring with it its own observations. And as long as I’m able to write, I’ll probably be letting you know exactly how I feel about things.

It seems that from the observations and ruminations I’ve published through these last few and difficult years, I have actually concluded the makings of what might be my first book. In this particular moment, my life has come to something of a stopping – and starting – point. Divorced, the ex married off, small farm chugging away, son just about in his pre-teen years… All of that, plus a recent little explosion of reaction to the blog on Facebook, and I think things are fairly tidily wrapped up. A period has been placed at the end of a long sentence. Life is by no means a static thing, and I am still grappling with some of the same challenges, but I feel a bit more confident these days, thanks to the most supportive readers and loving friends a gal could have. It strikes me as a bit ironic that at the ‘dreaded’ age of 50 my life is beginning again! I feel possibility now. As I watch the new garden outside my door begin to take shape and become real – all from the birth of my simple imaginings – so too I feel the birth of whole new future taking shape. I feel a little relief with the onset of this new chapter, too. A friend had suggested to me recently that this was the start of Elizabeth 2.0. I really like that. Nice way to welcome the new into my life, in all the forms it may yet assume. And with that, I’m think I’m done for now. Off to work in the garden. Pay no attention to the woman behind the curtain! The great Oz has spoken…

Old Dog

Posted in An Ongoing Journal...7 Comments

Spent the day trying to teach myself some new tricks. On the computer, that is. The most basic skills still elude me, and my excuse has been my 24/7 job as mom. I still stand by it; there’s just so much one person can do in a day, and in between writing, teaching, playing piano, keeping house and home and being mom I have about eight hours left in which to sleep – and I aint about to give that up. ! Plus I like to read at bedtime. That habit in addition to my chronic insomnia helps me define my priorities. So finally, with Elihu in Chicago for a bit, now I’ve got some time. Already hooked up my long-paid-for domain name with this blog – that in itself was a minor victory for me. Next on my list is to get some hyperlinks goin. It can’t be that difficult. I hope you’ll indulge me as I do a little experimenting in the following paragraphs…

“My son and I recently took a lovely little vacation together in Chicago. We thoroughly enjoyed a boat cruise (on both the river and the lake), one which I highly recommend, given by the Wendella Boat Line.

After that spectacular tour, we headed north for dinner at the Heartland Café in Rogers Park (which is no longer owned by local legend Michael James. Although it’s clear they’re trying to march forward in the same spirit as before, the unmistakable vibe that’s been present for the past thirty-something years is sadly no longer part of the Heartland experience.)”

Ok. That seems to have worked too. This is all fairly easy stuff. Feel kinda silly about having put it off for so long. But the linked words still show to be underlined and blue in the working copy I see in front of me. Really? Hm. Gonna save and preview again…

So. Ascertained that the links are the same color as the text. Good. And while they appear sort of highlighted, they aren’t underlined. That’s good too. I’d rather  that the text appeared the same as the rest, but then again I suppose you wouldn’t realize that it was a link. I guess. Now my only concern is that until I go ahead and actually publish the post, apparently I can’t check to see if the links actually work or not. Really? Am I missing something? Here I go again…

Although unrelated to my above ‘hyperlink challenge’, I feel I must mention that my edits aren’t always successfully saved, in spite of my quite definitively hitting ‘save draft’. It is beginning to piss me off. Gotten to the point where I save the same version a over and over a handful of times until it seems to take. (When saves don’t take, it becomes insanely tedious to go over the entire bloody text trying to re-create the previous changes. Like it did just now as I re-wrote this past sentence for the third time. Really.) Upstairs, on my tiny and ancient little Mac, I’ve noticed that updates stop saving well after just a few versions… might be due to many pages up in sequence. Don’t really know. My trick is to close em all and restart. But now it’s happening on my ‘new’ (updated) PC. Seriously. What am I missing? Screw it for now. I won’t worry about it tonight, cuz I’ve got a pile of books I can’t wait to get to beside my bed. Been at my desk nearly ten hours now and am done. I think I did pretty well today for an old gal. Schooled my own way over, around and through some unforeseen obstacles, and in the end feel like I actually learned a couple of new tricks. Good dog.

Near-immediate Post Script: WordPress just told me I have a more current version of my post in autosave. Naturally I panicked, then checked it out, and realized that no, it is not the most recent, updated version. ! And I can also now see that my shiny new hyperlinks are bridges to nowhere. Sigh. Maybe it has something to do with the domain change today. Oh how I had hoped to get over these few hurdles by now. Good thing I still got lots of time to figure it all out. Thanks for your patient audience as I fumble about here…

A “refreshed the next morning” Post Script: Have re-pasted the links. Ok. Got in now. !