It Is Winter

This is not an incredible poem but I was feeling a little neglectful of the blog and thought I might shoot this up there mostly to make me feel better. I regret not writing more but with the album about to come out it has been harder than I would have thought to find time to write.

Either way, I don't want you to feel concerned about the content of the poem. I'm not depressed but winter to me is depressing so it seem suitable to write in such a way that I expressed that.



It is winter
And I find now that I feel my breathe
I find now that I am more or less
I find now what I lost

It is winter
And all the memories come too
All the sadness and bliss
All the time

And in my heart the breadth of these days
Does not exist on the same plain
As the rest

It is not higher nor lower
But I am different
I am changed

It is winter
And everyone thinks warm thoughts
Everyone thinks of summer
Everyone but me

Me who wonders only how she
Can move toward being
better

If only it were possible
To ignore the cold
and just live

One more memory

I've been writing a song... unbelievable I know but this one I'm especially excited about.  

A couple days ago I had this memory pop into my mind.  It was one of my first memories and one of the happiest I've known since.  

My dad used to have this old, green mg complete with torn vinyl seats and rusty floors.  It was incredible.  As broken down as it was I still wish we had that car.  

Being the only girl of four, I didn't get much time with my dad so when he suggested going for a ride in his rust bucket of a vehicle I jumped at the opportunity.  He was taking me for a ride in the mg and I was going to sit in the front seat with my hands gripping the door handle and window all the way down just to let the breeze run wildly through my hair.  I wasn't even tall enough to see out the window.  The only thing in view from my sticky throne was the sky and some branches and I thought to myself, "This is heaven - my dad by my side and nothing to see but sky".  It felt like I was flying. 

I've never told my dad how much that day meant to me and it was easy to forget when other car rides piled on top of it - car rides to ballet, to lacrosse, to choir, to band, car rides to college and back, car rides with difficult questions to answer.

That ride was the beginning of many but it embodies the unique relationship this man and I share.  

It's protection.  It's challenging.  It's inspiring.  It's what I needed when I didn't want it.  It's realizing there is someone else just like me who doesn't care whether I failed a test or whether I sing the right words to Paul Simon songs.  It's the feeling of knowing there is someone riding right beside you who looks at the world the same way you do and treasures the view from an old car.

Long ago we got rid of the car and on that day my dad and I both cried.

Here it is:

It's the first time I'm going with you

It's the first time I'd even dare

The whole world passes by without a care

Gonna breathe it all in I swear

I'm too small they say

for the will that drives me on

I'm too wild they say

to contend as just a pawn

so I'll go, go, go until I'm gone

My happiest day would be 

not seeing what's ahead

The two of us not knowing where it's gonna end

and our futures charging the wind

I don't know the way

to live life on my own

I'm afraid to

race on all alone

but I still go, go, go until I'm gone

It's time that I hate

It's what's done me in

Oh the line we must walk all of us balancing

but if I look at you I forget where I've been

and we go, go, go until we're gone

Years ago, when I was a little girl, I remember my mother reading me this poem. Its simplicity struck me.  Its meaning was attainable to me even at a young age and it was poignant to me then though I still do not know why.  

Thinking back, I believe that was the beginning of my love of poetry - the rhythm, the meter, the mystery, the misinterpretation.  The whole experience was magical to me.  So, in light of this memory I thought that I might post it to help us all remember the joy of words and the beauty they bring to our lives.

Bed In Summer

In winter I get up at night

and dress by yellow candle light.

In summer quite the other way

I have to go to bed by day

I have to go to bed and see

the birds still hopping in the trees

and hear the grown up people's feet

still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you

when all the sky is clear and blue

and I should like so much to play

to have to go to bed by day?

-Robert Louis Stevenson

The Dirty Shirt Hearthbreak

 

You know that piece of clothing you wore when you were a kid that was just the berries?  Whether it was a dress or a pair of boots or a hat or a shirt, you would wear it every day and in between times too.  It didn’t matter how ridiculous it looked on you, you would wear it and it was the only thing that made you feel comfortable and made you feel like you.  When I was a little girl I had this dress that I loved but I was so clumsy and such a dirt magnet that it would get filthy quite often.  It never felt the same when it wasn’t on me.  This is poem is dedicated to all those pieces of clothing.

 

Dirty Shirt Heartbreak

 

My favorite shirt is dirty

It’s sitting within view

A top my pile of laundry

Still covered in dusty dew

 

How I wish it were clean

So that I could wear it

I wish I had not seen

The stain from that carrot

 

It doesn’t really look good on me

But it’s my favorite, my absolute favorite

It doesn’t really fit either

But it’s so soft, so absolutely soft

 

I don’t think I’ll go out today

I just don’t want to

There is just no way

I need my shirt, I just do

The Dregs

An ode to coffee - one of my favorite things to do and drink.

The Dregs

I have come to the end of my cup.

I see the leavings and little bits of things

Lying against the sides and

In the pit of this porcelain pool.

 

I did not think that such things,

Like coffee grounds and fuzz,

Dwelled at the bottom of such

A divine and able vessel.

 

They cling desperately to every surface

As if begging not to be consumed.

But I am not tempted by the traces of

This once glorious beverage.

 

I don’t want them.

Nor do I need the dried trails

Of coffee.

 

I want something even greater than it’s predecessor

 

I want the sweet lazy sugar,

Slow to dissolve,

That still lingers in the basin

Simply waiting to be devoured.

 

I take out my spoon

As if to say,

“I am done and shall not have any more,”

Then I lunge.

 

And savor

The sweetest part of the cup,

The best and the last,

The Dregs.

The Bloom

Here is today's poem.  This is dedicated to my mother, who taught me this great truth, and to Andrew, who continues to help me live it.

The Bloom 

It is said that a flower’s importance

Lies in the fact that she is completely useless.

 

She cannot serve to clean the pot

Or take out the mark of a coffee stained spot.

She only sits and basks

With her head to the sky and her feet in a flask.

 

She cannot bring you good advice

Or scare away your kitchen mice.

She can only embrace her beauty

And be…

 

Yes her only purpose is to exist

In lovely layers no bigger than a fist.

But it is this that makes her necessary

For she teaches us what is truly arbitrary.

 

Sometimes it is most important to be

Not to achieve, gain, speak, or even see.

We must always drink up living

And remember our lives are beauty giving. 

A new page

Dear blog readers,

As you know and have seen by the state of my empty blog, I have been a tad bit preoccupied.  The process of getting married and recording a new album, though wonderful, have taken their toll on writing any more than songs and thank you notes.  And though my blog's readers are few they are faithful and for this I am sorry.  Truly I apologize. You did not deserve the neglect that you received and as I ruefully look back at my behavior I have made a determined decision to change.

The blog will now take a more interesting format.  Instead of being a wordy and emotional train of thought, the blog will become a sort of challenge for me. 

Let me explain.

When I write songs I tend use my deepest emotion. I lean therefore toward a more contemplative and sensitive view of the world and often find myself drowning in imagery and history and poignant feelings. 

The challenge is to keep the energy flowing and continue writing despite the constant attraction of being caught up on an emotional roller-coaster and being unable to put anything down on the page.  The new blog is meant to keep the waters flowing - to keep it fresh.

Each day, or hopefully close to, I will write a new poem and post it for you to read.  Being from a family of poets this is an intimidating task so I will therefore make no promises of excellence.  Keep in mind that not all blog entries will be meant seriously.  Feel free to laugh or cry laughing or click the x box on your window. 

Enjoy the new blog.

Here is the poem of the day:

There is an open window

Propped there with  an old milk bottle

For it cannot stand up on its own.

Together they fight against the powers that do not show.

Gravity and wind around their efforts tangle

Breaking hope - faith now blown.

And why is it that they must stand so,

Poised and balanced at this strange angle

And Fate's purposes to them unknown?

 

But I, their silent master, now must go

Or I shall risk a breath fatal

For in this room rank smell has made a home

So stand strong oh courageous duo

And never falter in your battle.

You've saved me from this scent that through your port has flown.

No greater love could you have shown

Than to lay down your life so the smell will leave me alone.

The Radio Tower Must Come Down

I was a strange child, even more strange than I have become as an adult.  Indeed my current quirks and habits, my infatuations and my pet peeves are simply aged versions of the oddities that were constantly exploding from my childhood frame. 

 

The strangest thing about me, beyond the constant cravings for mayonnaise and my innate need to sing show tunes at the top of my lungs, was my love of the a-typical landscapes.  I loved water towers, rusty train tracks, and awkward buildings.  Their imperfections and bizarre qualities were beautiful to me or at least honest.  I felt at home among the broken things in our world – the shattered windows, the potholes, the fallen tree branches.  I felt a connection with the out-of-place pieces around me – Telephone wires, gutters, and cars unused in so many years that they had grow into the place they were left.

 

I felt a similarity to these things – an inexplicable kinship.   And there was one thing, one monument protruding out of the horizon of my childhood that echoed the awkwardness I felt inside every time I looked at it.

 

Out my window and stuck into the pristine and relatively untouched ground of Annapolis was a radio tower with its flashing red cap and skeletal form speaking to me a language I understood – a language to belong. 

 

“Oh that thing is so hideous. I can’t stand it.  Why can’t they put it somewhere else?” I would hear the complaints still every night I would whisper the unspoken poundings of my heart to this creature as if it were a star with its seat in the heavens.  It was a comfort to me though I had no idea why at the time. It accompanied my childhood and was a constant presence as I grew up.

 

Its feet awkwardly touched the same thick grass of the nearby field where I ran day after day with blades whipping against my bare and brown knees.  It sat there high above my town and saw everything.  It saw me grow up and it saw Annapolis change around it. 

 

Slowly and surely I forgot it even existed as we forget things that were once precious to us like a blanket, or a place, or a friend.

 

And now years have gone by without even a shudder.  They must pass and we must change. Childhood has gone.  The radio tower that was so familiar to me in my youth has not even a mark on the ground as a memorial of its existence. 

 

How does it happen?  Where do those things go?  Does God have some strange and divine storehouse where these things are kept?  Do they go to a place hung with pirate hooks, and fairy dust, and bright eyes? 

 

Though my life has changed and it’s landscape as well, I still search for things that echo the sentiments of my heart yet now, instead of looking at the broken things of the world, I look to the sky and I search for a small blinking red light and hope that it might give me some reassurance that I still belong.

Like Your Mother

Walking into my mother’s house is like a fairytale.  You feel like you’ve accidentally happened on a door that transports you to another world with bright colors everywhere and sweet smells.  The walls are filled with art and the shelves crammed with books, the tables topped with fresh flowers from her garden and a fire burning beside. 

Her house is a pair of red slippers, a wardrobe, a rabbit hole, and “straight on ‘til morning.”

You are no longer in a drab suburb but have entered a mystical land where the food tastes better, your hair looks great, and the beds are blissful mounds of cotton and silk ready with open arms to cradle you in sleep and lead you into dreams.

It is strange that such a person as my mother has been able to stay in one place so long.  Years ago, having lost her father to a heart attack and her mother to heartbreak, she came to this town with just a suitcase and alarm clock in search of the home that was stolen from her by tragedy. The free spirit and troubled heart of her youth chased her even into my own. 

Everything that my mother has done since then has been an attempt to create what she desired most and what she believed, beyond all trouble, existed – a home and a refuge from restlessness. 

A new and exotic kitchen color would appear on the walls, which she would inevitably want to change the very next day.  Not quite right.  Not right at all.  “I want to throw up just looking at it!” She would say. 

Home Depot’s color selection never fully met her vision.

When Mom was not teaching, running her own business, or writing, she was creating.  I never had store bought blankets.  I never felt a synthetic comforter around my body in fact the term seems to me an oxymoron.  No, my mom made quilts that she neatly folded and stacked high near every couch.  “You see this Valerie?” she said while spreading one out on my bed.  “This one is called trip around the world.” She would look down at it wistfully and then look at me with the same expression.

And she would travel, willingly throwing herself into any culture and finding the most charming corner only to return home again, carrying some piece of that world with her.  Every trip around the world would expand her paradise one more inch, one more keepsake.

Part of my understanding of this woman still lies in vivid memories of her standing in front of a window as if it were a magic mirror, her hair lit with the light of dusk and her expression one of deep and unreachable longing. 

I have always dreamed of the thoughts that she must have had in those quiet moments and over time I have determined that she must have been speaking with God.  She must have been asking him what heaven was like.  And I believe that her home is a painting, her scaled model of the things he told her.  I believe that he gave her dreams so that she would not have to search any longer.

Now her vision reaches far beyond the walls of her house.  She has dreamt greater things for me, her daughter, than I ever could have allowed myself to dream and has again and again invited me through the doorway and into her world.

People constantly tell me that I look like my mother.  This is compliment enough but I wish they would tell me, “You dream like your mother.”

This is a love song...

The smell - that nearly rotten brackish smell - twists through the stray wisps of my hair as I peddle my Schwinn down passed the large water-front homes and through the tall trees to the edge of the peninsula.  

Now I see the water logged stars and breakers go about their usual business.  Fishermen still sit with their polls beside them though time nears mid-day and the chances of making a good catch slim rapidly.  They hesitate to leave lest the perfect fish should pass and never return.  

A blue heron shoots a suspicious eye in my direction and launches in, to safer and quieter ground.  This native celebrity has no tolerance for interruptions.  You will never find her sunning at the community pool nor venturing out to the super market.  No, she keeps to herself and considers it an offense when others do not as well.  

In the distance cloudy-white patches of fabric rise from barely visible ships beneath them and labor to pull their vessels against the tide.  

I was born out of this river.  My hem eternally pinned to its shores by the warning lights that spear deep into its body along every inlet.  I am tied to its docks.  I am forever bound by this place for it holds captive the root of my peace - an unbreakable chain and the origin of its lock unknown to me to this day.

Whenever I leave, I feel as though I am a ghost, a breathless and inadequate print of my true self.  Always the sweet melodies of the Severn call me home.  And when I return my heart beat slows and steadies as the water against docked boats in the harbor.  

For truly my wholeness is here - my heaven.

If you'd like to know where I get the photos for my blog please visit www.andrewvache.com and see for yourself.  Trust me.  You'll love it.

Just a little green

There is this great Joni Mitchell song...ok, ok.  Bare with me here.  I have a point.

Anyway, there is this great Joni Mitchell song.  In it she says, "Just a little green, like the color when the spring is born".  Can't you see it!  Oh!

Today, the little green is here and it hasn't been easy.  As I look out upon the barely new leaves I can't help thinking how hard it must be for them to even get to this point.  "when the spring is born".  

Birth isn't easy.  For anyone.  Let's just settle that once and forever.

Strangely enough our longing for spring's arrival hinders our understanding of the inner workings of this particular season.  "It just happened.  Spring came over night." Like magic.  Right?  We fail to realize how much energy it takes to push a single leaf out of a stem or branch.  The ruff core hides the hardworking flesh beneath. But in the end it's worth all the labor because the leaf provides the plant with energy.  It's survival.

I've been writing a song recently that has me stuck (hence the blog) mostly because I know how important it is going to be for me to write and complete.  Songwriting is so cathartic for me that I often feel selfish. 

Who needs therapy?  Just write songs!  

It's survival.

I've been pushing and working, losing sleep, walking around like a zombie, feeling bare branched and frustrated.  I'm willing to go through the pain of labor just to have the product.

And I know that birth is inevitable.  It has to come.  Soon?  Please!  

Here's to birth!  Here's to spring!

the problem with binoculars

You've seen it.  You know exactly what I'm talking about.  

You're sitting down with a friend and you notice that they are not really paying attention to what you're saying.  "mhmm."  they say.  Some how you can't ever get them to listen to you. 

 They're just not there.  It's like they're focused on something completely different than the words coming out of your mouth.

 

Or there's the relationship you're in.  "When we're _____ (fill in the blank), then we'll be happy".  At some point in the future you'll be happy the only problem with that being that you're not happy currently.

Maybe it's your career.  "Ok, well right now I'm working a job I hate but in a couple years I'll get a promotion to a job I hate less".  

"I can't do that!  What if I fail!"  What if....

Everyone has glasses ...even if they have 20/20 vision.  Some people call this a world view.  I call it survival.

Just to get through life we pick up pairs of glasses.  We have bifocals for comparing the past and present and special glasses so that you can examine your current life situation more accurately with precision and wisdom.  You may have even heard of seeing life through rose-colored glasses...same thing.

The only problem with this is that we sometimes forget to take the glasses off and we keep piling them on the end of our nose until we have some sort of weird twisted binoculars teetering back and forth on our faces.  And this isn't just uncomfortable.  It's bad.  Really bad.  

When you're looking through binoculars all the time, you only really see a small portion of the scenery far away.  We begin to make judgements about our current lives based on the narrow perspective of what may or may not be our future.  

Maybe you've met someone like this - who can only think about the future and forgets to live their present.  Musicians have a an acutely difficult time avoiding this.  They want to succeed so much that they forget to enjoy music.  

The problem with binoculars is that you trip a lot more when you wear them.  Glasses are fine... but let's save ourselves from some serious pain and keep it to one pair.  

blisters

Blisters...stupid blisters

People always say that mistakes help you to learn or struggle makes you stronger.  I have a 

question for all of those people...when?

I recently had a voyage, and I call it a voyage mostly because the length was longer than I was expecting.  Yes, it was a voyage and one that I was insufficiently prepared for.  I brought no jacket and I wore high heels.  

It all started like this:  I was born... and twenty five years later my friends decided to buy me a drink to celebrate the event.  "How wonderful!", you might think or "What wonderful friends!".  I would not argue with you at this point of the story nor would I blame the outcome on these two lovely individuals.  

We decided to walk and we also decided to take the pretty way, which always means longer. Early on in my epic adventure my friend said, "Do you need to change your shoes?".

"No", I said, "these shoes are miraculous.  I could wear them all day."

My pompous claims soon came tumbling down and I began to feel an extraordinarily sower pain in my right heal...then my left.  

If at this point I had said something to my friends they would have insisted that we turn around and go back but I could hardly be expected to admit that I was a fool and did not in fact have miracle shoes.  Repentance fails to be one of my strengths.  

So my unseen blisters grew and grew and my pride fell.  

I now sit with flip flops on, having worn them for the last three days despite the 30 degree weather, simply because I could not fit shoes over my circular shame tattoos.  

This reminds me of my own life experience.  I often talk up my own choices (like choosing a thankless and penniless career) only to recognize that other people's choices are valid too.  I love taking the pretty way but my vanity often inhibits my enjoyment.  

So I have blisters.  I've made a ton of stupid mistakes but I feel more weak than strong.  Yes, weak in the light of self-understanding.  When does the blister heal?  When do you become stronger because of your poor choices or your failure to see passed your own experience?

I suppose I have learned one thing.  If you have a long way to go...leave your vanity behind.  You'll be better off without it.

Candles in the middle of the day

Why do you have candles lit in the middle of the day?

Are you nuts?

  

Or possibly just a self-employed musician with writer's block.  

People always ask me if I get writer's block.  I'm often tempted to glaring at them with one of those long open-mouthed stares.  

"Are you kidding me?!"  

"When do I not have writer's block?"  

Truly, with every single song or idea, even the ones that appear to be genius and possibly flawless, I've found that within days or even hours my once brilliant lightbulb will have shorted out and I'm left in darkness to figure out if the bulb was faulty or whether I simply tripped on the cord.  Yes, groping in the dark for an easy solution or for something that's broken and useless.

This is my process:

sitting down on the couch, in traffic, waiting for the train ;) , playing scrabble, running and it hits me.  Bam!  Maybe a line or a melody or even just a concept.  

I stop whatever I'm doing and feverishly try to find something to write it down on - a paper, receipt, my hand, or just miming the words in the air.  Anything to preserve my rare moments of unfiltered muse.  I go back to what I was doing with ease knowing that the following day I will return to complete my idea.  

The beginning always comes easy but then you have to give the song a structure and a progression as well as making it bad-ass and on top of that it has to be original.   This is the point in the process when you might happen upon an artist or writer or musician who is blankly starring at a white piece of paper with remnants of every junk food snack scattered in a circle around them and numerous used coffee mugs stacked on each other.  

Good intentions don't last long especially with every other activity you have going on.  Priorities are difficult to keep straight.  So at this point avoidance kicks in with gusto.  But avoidance can be one of an artist's greatest strengths.  If you try with everything else going on to stay away from your project but still end up having dreams about it or seeing it in the last bits of ketchup on your plate, it probably means that it's a good idea.  

So now comes the real crunch.  You've realized that your idea has potential - real potential - so you make a pot of coffee, you lock yourself in a room, and most likely lose a few useful parts of your brain having to do with social skills until you emerge victorious or at least close enough. 

So why do you have candles lit in the middle of the day?

I'm at the avoidance stage just trying to shed a little light on my malfunctioning lightbulb. And when I tell you I have new song to play for you...you'll be thankful I'm such a weirdo.

by the train

Most people find their muse in a person or a in a beautiful setting.  Maybe they are inspired by poetry or riding their bike.  For me...it's the Baltimore Light Rail.

Being from Annapolis, Maryland, the former Capital of the US and a small town in it's own right, the wonders of public transportation rarely found their way into my daily commute. 

Here everyone gets out their bike or their golf cart or their beamer or their boat to get where they need to go.  Some might argue that the Annapolitan's preference of private transportation has forever handicapped its ability to develop a reliable public system.  Chicken or the Egg - the situation is just bad.

After college I started working in Baltimore and decided that instead of paying for parking, which no Annapolis native will do in their right mind, I would take the Baltimore Light Rail into work.  So early each morning I would rise and go to Cromwell station to wait for the good old four car white stallion.  And every morning it would squeak in, rattling,  as if every bolt needed to be screw down and sodded. 

 

This hunk of metal was anything but faithful.  The power would go out at random and we would be stuck squirming in our seats (if you had a seat) for up to an hour.  The electric power lines would freeze and break on the coldest day of the year leaving hundreds of commuters out in the cold swearing just to keep their lips moving or a shooting on the north end of the track would shut down the rail entirely.  

Needless to say I got used to waiting and it was in this seemingly frustrating time of my day that I began to write.  It was here, at the convergence of every kind of humanity (poor or rich, snobby or kind, homeless and helpless) that music started to flow from my spirit into physical being.  

You see, waiting, though aggravating and inconvenient, provides us with a much needed pause, a rest, a break, to breath and observe.  It requires us to stop and just be (provided we don't have our iphones).  And this space gives us room to grow.

It was on the Baltimore Light Rail that I began my love affair with writing - a place to observe humanity and understand my own - but more so a place to slow myself down and truly see beauty everywhere even on the Light Rail.

late nights with friends

How often do you stay up late with friends?

But not the kind of late where you're out "towning" it up.  Rather the kind of late where you're on the cusp of something wonderful and you know it. 

Last night I stayed up late with two extraordinary people my friends Winship (you won't forget that name easily) and Lacey who conveniently are Married.  Both are artists and at the beginning of long and wonderful careers.

Lacey is an up and coming fashion designer doing some creative alterations and 

whose new line of spring skirts will be sold at shine boutiques in Baltimore.  She has this stirring vision for women's apparel. Check out her stuff at www.kalivoda.com

You'll kick yourself if you don't.

Winship is a multi talented musician, former member of Kentavious, and future record producer.  In an era when the information highway clogs your conscious with a lot of the unexceptional, Winship is the real deal...true talent...pure motives...bad ass music.

(this is just a great picture.)

So yesterday we expected to have a short meeting where Winship and I jammed and Lacey and I chatted about dresses yet we spent over 9 hours together talking candidly about art and the struggle involved in validating your life's work to the world.

How often do artists die before they are recognized as talented or even genius?  What's wrong with us?  Why can't we see it while people are here with us?  Artist after artist, musician after musician sacrifice any kind of comfort in life because THEY know their art is worth it.  

Just the other day a customer at a local coffee shop who I had started a conversation with told me that I was wasting my liberal arts degree.  My liberal arts degree...in Music performance...

Maybe it's really that I'm being wasted, that value has been skewed and our culture has made it necessary for people to work jobs they hate that distract them from what they were made to do.

Let's change.  Support Art!  And next time you stay up late with friends listen to some music, create, and open doors.

When do we wake up?

Devil's Got a Pretty Face

Here is a video taken at the last Rams Head show.

It features the incredible talents of Care Nebbia, my lovely sister, and Tim Cefaratti, our fearless drummer.

Shot with my big brother's digital camera, you may notice someone saying, "Oh girl!", in the background.

I think this adds to the feel of the piece.

Where they meet

There certainly is a lot of confusion here.  And by here I mean earth.  You know...that big green thing that races around the sun.  Sometimes I feel that all this turning gives us vertigo and our whole lives are spent trying not to bash into each other.

inevitably we do.

I recently heard this incredible piece on NPR (yes I am advertising for them - shamelessly trying to get on the radio in whatever way possible) about a philosophical monk.  Whenever I hear the word monk on the radio I get excited or at least curious.  What monk...yeah monk...goes on the radio?  Visions toss in my head of Sister Wendy with her habit and oversized glasses.   It's gonna be really funny or I'm going to have to pull off to the side of the road to wipe the mascara off my now drenched face.

It was the latter.  

This monk, whose name I now forget, described our human situation as the place where the invisible meets the physical.  So essentially what makes us human is our souls being connected to our bodies and our bodies being thus connected to our souls (insert sobs).  Invisible touches physical.

Then I thought, this in a way is true of music as well.  Music, the truest kind, the real stuff that actually moves us, that touches our invisible, is in fact the place where divine understanding meets human confusion.  

So essentially we know that we were meant to live better lives.  We know that life is unfair but we don't understand why it is the way it is and why things happen the way they do.  Music expresses these and without words.  It is a cry of sorrow for what we should be but have lost without knowing why.

No matter how I squint

“Sunset is an angel weeping, holding out a bloody sword.  No matter how I squint I can not make out what it’s pointing toward.”  -Bruce Cockburn

 

Years ago I was on one of my raids through my brother Eric’s album collection.  Many of his albums have disappeared this way and despite the fact that I have now extended this addiction to books and dishes or his ideas of general genius he has never once asked for one back.  Maybe my debt will soon be called up.  Hopefully he will not read this entry. 

 

Getting back to the story…years ago I was on one of my traditional raids when I came across a record that Eric had introduced to me once before.  It, all decorated in strange 90’s sparkle, was The Charity of Night by Bruce Cockburn.  I know initially I had made some sort of face with my tongue sticking out but after my second discovery, after popping open the plastic paradise, it quickly became part of my life soundtrack.

 

Unlike the larger majority of artists in the popular scene of music, Cockburn’s work extends beyond music and cd sales, beyond touring and his fan base.  He has dedicated his life to creating honest and stirring art that not only speaks of the human experience but advocates for the impoverished and manipulated among us.

 

As a musician and a person seeking deeper explanations of what we see here on earth but often do not understand, I found great nourishment and reassurance in the words and poignant melodies of Cockburn.

 

His song “Pacing the Cage” is the inspiration for this sight.  His career is an inspiration to my own.  “No matter how I squint I cannot make out what it’s pointing toward”.

 

-val