Dancing 'round the year, and blessed to be doing so again, because…
On the eve of solstice last night 33 years ago, my life was utterly changed in the slow blink of a tired eye, and I woke in St. Joseph's Hospital in Burbank, California, broken.
This morning, so many solstices later, I wake in my apartment, with my cat, Mrs. Peel, snugggled close.
I can tell you a story of the times between.
But first, listen…
AN ARCTIC SOLSTICE
Yes, friends, the darkness grows, but these short days so celebrate the light:
today the lemon sunrise lasted the few hours until sunset, all day the frost
glowed hyacinth and lilac on the trees. Winter’s not a time of black and white,
the sun is not at war with night. Renew your faith, my friends. We are not lost.
This is wonderful on many levels. It's a great story about jazz and the culture of jazz, a story about being, and trying to be, cool, and, most wonderfully, a story that can teach you how to tell a story.
The Manhattan Transfer opened for Mr. Cosby at the Las Vegas Hilton in – oh, what was it? – 1975? Maybe. It was an amazing experience, and not just because of Cosby. James Moody was in the house orchestra! Which was very cool.
This photograph – which is not a fake – is extraordinary in many ways, not the least of which is that is has countless layers of symbolism and story and the truth of dreams. Every time I look at it, I see more.
On the last page of every issue of her magazine, Oprah writes a feature called "What I Know for Sure". It is usually a distillation of – or perhaps the inspiration for – the theme of that edition. This month's theme was intuition, the feeling of just knowing that some course of action is right or wrong for you.
"The intuitive mind," said Albert Einstein, "is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." We all are intuitive, but we don't listen to our gut feeling. We learn not to, in fact. I often have to defend myself against myself, as logic and common sense and the "right" way to do things conspire to blow out the spark of insight and drown the fire in the head. Even when I do listen, I don't follow what I hear all the time. Bad marriages, bad business decisions – how many such griefs could be avoided by just paying attention to the little voice, the synchronicity, the dream?
In April 2002, I dreamed I was singing in a club with my band when, partway through the first song, the piano player started to collapse and couldn't continue. I wrote the dream down, and then forgot about it. Several months later, in August, 2002, I was playing the Rosendale Cafe with my band when, partway through the first tune, my piano player, Vinnie, started to collapse, and couldn't continue. A friend took him home. Eventually, he was diagnosed with severe Lyme's disease, and received treatment. I still didn't remember the dream. I only found it earlier this week, as I was tracking a different intuitive dream guidance that has been insistant, but that I, to my regret, have brushed aside for years.
Often I find I have to defend myself against myself, as logic and common sense and the "right" way to do things try to blow out the spark of insight and drown my fire.
Coincidences, or "life rhymes", are another of intuition's angles of appproach. Years ago, when I was nursing my dogs through cancer, I found Maukie.
Maukie is a little Flash cat that purrs when you "tickled" with the cursor. She – or he – is black, with white paws and white whiskers, and big green eyes. It cheered me sometimes, when I was feeling very dark, to hear that purring sound even though I knew it was ones and zeros, pixels and beeps.
Several years after that, when I moved back into the city, I discovered Diane Duane's feline wizards series, and The Book of Night with Moon, which I loved. Rhiow, the lead character, is described as a small black cat. On the book's cover, she is depicted as black with white at her neck, white whiskers, and green eyes.
This past May, Mrs. Peel stormed my Castle of Common Sense (impractical to have a pet in the city, I do too much traveling, vet bills, etc.). What did she look like, do you suppose?
One could say I was primed to choose the black kitten, but there was no other kitten there. She had been pre-chosen for me. It was a Divine set-up, and all my logic was worthless in the light of those green eyes.
Oprah's intuitions, she says, have led her to wealth, influence and success. Mine have not been so spectacular, perhaps because I have resisted them more often. I have gained confidence in fit and starts (much more slowly than I gained the appearance of confidence). Conventional wisdom and advice have not served me particularly well over the years, less well recently. I am renewing my membership in the Dream Library. Rhiow says, "A claw goes further into the ear than a thousand explanations." I intend to be paying keener attention to the wisps and the whispers, so as to not require the big fat can't-miss-'em signs, the claw in the ear, and the cosmic kick in the keister quite so often.
Another grey day. What to do? Even I can drink only so much tea. Mrs. Peel strolled into her little carry crate hours ago, curled up in a ball, and went to sleep. The crate is in my office, with its door always open; she likes to nestle there when I am at the computer. And indeed, I have been at the computer, trying to create and maintain an illusion called Getting Things Done. Things are never completely Done, especially when I am distracted. I miss my friends in England. In fact, I miss England.
I might need a scone.
A scone is, to me, what a madeleine was to Proust, and what the Tardis is to Dr. Who. But, there is no scone in this apartment, and there is no scone in this neighborhood, either. Without one, how else do I visit England in dream-quick time? It's actually easy.
Poets speak of "the wings of song", and for good reason.
Off I go, with two of my favorite British singers:
June Tabor…
…and Maddy Prior.
I'm back. The NY skies may still be grey, there may still be no scone, but the scent of the rain is sweeter, and the inspiration, bright.
About that painting up top…. That will be me and Mrs. Peel, in another 50 years or so.
A rose is a rose, even when it's a McCartney rose. It was many years ago today (or some other day) that not-yet-Sir Paul McCartney pulled a perfect rose from a table centerpiece and tossed it into my hands as I was singing Heart's Desire with my Manhattan Transfer colleagues at the Brit Awards. At least, I think the event was the Brits. I was completely focused on Sir P. I confess that I was singing right to (or perhaps even at) him, and he… well, the story is going into my memoir, which I had hoped to write this morning, but it's too darn hot.
On Sir's birthday, June 18th, I am going to be singing a few of his tunes in Beacon, NY. Not too many, though. I don't want to hurt Johnny Mercer or Willie Nelson's feelings. Cole Porter can be pretty touchy, too. With me will be Tex Arnold on the piano, and because we had such a good time in Washington CT last month, my sister Babette will again be joining me in a few songs, along with guitarist (and nephew) Alex Brown.
The Howland Cultural Center is a very interesting venue. Built in the "Norwegian" style in 1872 as a library, and placed on the National Historic Register one hundred years later, it is now a performance space and art gallery. It's geothermally cooled (which cannot be said of my apartment, alas). I hope to see some of you there. If you are planning on coming, please do make your reservation right away, so as to be sure to have a seat.
By the way, the McCartney Rose, shown above, is a hybrid tea rose, introduced in 1995. It is described as a hardy repeating bloomer (like me and my career!) with a strong and intoxicating fragrance. This pleases me. Though a rose by any other name would smell as sweet in Shakespeare's time, most of the cut roses one can buy these days have no perfume at all. One sniffs a bouquet, and there's nothing.
Heavy the heart that, via the nose, encounters the unscented rose.
At the junction of dreaming, myth, and The Little Prince is this brilliant piece, Born Like an Artist, on the Jellyvampire blog. Here is a link to the work.
Thanks to Stephanie, reader of Paul Overton's Every Day is Awesome, for recommending it in her comment there.
It's Mother's Day here in the States. In every corner of my city, folks are taking their mothers to brunch, or presenting them with flowers, chocolates, world's-best-mom cards, jewellery – all in an effort to say thanks.
Or in an effort to avoid the ill-effects of forgetting, or – heaven forbid! – willfully ignoring Mother's Day.
Or some combination of all the above.
Great moms grow great kids, we are told. These great moms, living and deceased (for this is also a day of memory, and of missing the first loved one), are already the topic of so many editorials, blogs, coffee mugs, and facebook comments that I want to take a moment to consider the other mother. The not-all-that-good mother. The bad mother. Because surely, somewhere, somebody had her.
And if great moms grow great kids, as the coffee mug says, what do bad moms grow?
Children who grow up with moms who beat them, physically and/or emotionally, whose moms couldn't be trusted, who forced their children to choose between mother and father – might be having a hard time with this particular holiday, and who can blame them? "I can never repay you for the gift of life," sing the cards. "Thanks, Mom." There is no flowery, verse-y card, though, for the gifts of the fist to the face and the assault on the soul.
We have a tendency to want to make things pretty, to look back fondly at a past that may never have actually happened. The happy Thanksgiving family dinner. The forefathers of our country agreeing on everything. Our foremothers happily consenting to be less than citizens. Many of us are taught, in childhood, that the Bible is a cohesive single text, and that everyone coming to America came for and received religious freedom – that kind of thing. But the truth is that life has always been complex, people have always endured great difficulties and confusions, and tried to do their best. And often failed, with consequences.
One of the best mothers I know is the thoughtful daughter of a bad mother, and I know she is not the only one out there. I want to celebrate the kids who had the not-so-good moms, but have carried on, teaching themselves how to trust, how to make friends, how to give and receive love. For these, the good mother is the one they have become to themselves. To all of you: you've done well. You are magnificent. Happy mother's day.
We don't always know where our strongest influences and deepest dreams are sourced. Nor do we know what event might reveal the man – or woman – behind the curtain. I enjoyed, last night, the first good night's sleep since Mrs. Peel (feline) took up residence here, so I can say, with great assurance, that the arrival of a kitten, however small that kitten may be, can qualify as an Event. My memory gates are being pulled open by a little white-tipped paw.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I saw The Avengers when my family was living in Europe, in the 1960s. The first episodes were in black and white. I think the series went to color when it started showing in the States. Perhaps there was an infusion of dollars into the production budget. But the feel of the show was already firmly established. A little zany, a little camp, very chic, and much more wry and understated than anything else I remember watching. And much much more sexy. Mrs. Emma Peel (and my teacher in Paris, Mlle.Thériot), gave me the first clue about what a sensuous, sexy woman is.
Dame Diana Rigg, at 72, is a stunningly beautiful woman; when she joined the cast of The Avengers, she was 27, and simply gorgeous. Auburn hair, long legs, a lovely figure, a supple voice, and a light in her eyes. Wow. The boys I knew were thinking "that's what I want!", but the girls were thinking, "that's what I want to be", a big difference, as life would repeatedly reveal. She was lovely, very smart (a certified genius, as I recall), quite independent, and self-assured. This suggested that – perhaps – one could get away with being intelligent, and thinking well of oneself. Somewhere, someone would be delighted by exactly that. Confirmation of that radical idea? John Steed.
Steed was a government agent, a Bond but not as young, probably not as promiscuous, and not as gadgety. He was the professional to Peel's "talented amateur", and clearly adored and respected her. Played by Patrick Macnee, Steed was urbane, unflappable, witty, and deadly when necessary. There was a tremendous mutual appreciation and sexual sizzle between the two characters, even though (or perhaps because) the nature of their relationship off-hours was never clearly spelled out to the viewer. There was also an obvious age difference: Macnee was 43 when the Steed-and-Emma episodes began.
To a certain extent, that kind of age difference is the Hollywood standard, even today. The parts seem to keep coming for aging male actors in a way that they do not for women. In fact, the parts for older women are so few that Meryl Streep can almost play them all and still have days off.
I don't know whether that thinking was in play when Mrs. Peel hit the small screen, and I didn't much care. The sparkling relationship entranced me. In it, I saw (subconsciously) that it takes a very confident man to give a smart woman the kind of acceptance that allows her to reveal how just how smart she really is. That kind of confidence has many roots; one of them is having lived a lot of life. So, perhaps from henceforth, the older and wiser man for me.
John Steed, preferably. But, you say, he is only a fictional character. Yeah, well, that there would be a problem, maybe. Or maybe not. Because to a certain extent, maybe we all are fictional characters. Really, how often do we look at someone and see them as they really are? Or as God sees them? Not very often, I think. We tend to see projections of what we want and need superimposed on the persons upon whom we're focused. When they turn out to be just themselves, and not our fantasy about them, disappointment ensues. Friendships shatter. Marriages fail. Who knew that Lassie would turn out to be a dog with shedding issues, and really big teeth?
I think it is safe to say that I still have not met my John Steed. If I have, I have not recognized him, perhaps because he is already partnered, or because he is only five years old so far in this lifetime. It's OK. I still have a fair amount of work and play to do in the living of this life, and I pray I will keep going, and going strong, until the day I die. At which time I hope that sweet five-year old, aged forty-five or so by then, will think, "Oh, how sad. She always reminded me of Emma Peel."
Dancing 'round the year, and blessed to be doing so again, because…
