Musical Monday: Man in the Mirror

Once again, today, I sat before a mental health professional as they marvelled at the fact that I was alive. I felt, again, like the subject in the Natalie Merchant song, Wonder (a song I've found puzzling enough to never own though it would be so glorious to fit into it...).

Maybe there was less gawking than just pure appreciation. The disbelief part comes from within me, because I can hardly remember how bad I've had it, how crazy my world has been, especially for the year plus after Gavin died. Things seem so easy now -- they're not -- but I don't take credit for making my way through the muck and bricks and hurt of that time. I think so often of the caregiving, I ponder who I was at various points, what did I know? What was he thinking? Death and life and the big stuff. I turn these images over and over like minerals shifting color with the light.

And also, I have this concentric circles idea, that hurt and healing have led me back to finding a truer self and a path that has been nearly forgotten. That the farther I get from loss, the larger my life looks, the wider a perspective I can take, and the more I can heal from other damages, earlier and really really old. Somehow at this long view reminds me I'm not so old, really.

I'm still changing, and maybe even faster now, and it's still a load of work. So I heard Man in the Mirror on the radio today with fresh ears, irritated by today's burst of sunlight. Spring is playing with us, but our bodies must respond. I am stimulated and remembering how dark it was, how strong I must be, and contemplating as I usually am, the "what's next."

Man in the Mirror! Of all the superficial crap. I remember how that song sounded when it came out: like a distraction. It seemed to wiseass me that America had asked, "Mr. Jackson, have you had extensive plastic surgery to make you look like Diana Ross?" and received the answer: "HEY LOOK AT AFRICA." The song was not a pinnacle of honest self-assessment, and coming after the joys of Thriller and (especially -- my bliss!) Off The Wall... the whole album, Bad, just looked like a post-Michael-Jackson album.

Then again, who's a harsher critic than a student at a liberal-arts college?

Maybe I can have some empathy for what poor Michael went through to get there. Maybe I can listen to what he's saying. Maybe he has a good point.

Maybe I can look in the mirror, take credit for where I've been, and just... start.

Musical Monday: the Mary Ellen Carter

I used to have a roommate who occasionally played this song on purpose to cry. I thought it was weird then, but I think I'm getting it finally. In the midst of two interrupted series of blog posts -- one about my identification with my dead husband's body, and another about visiting the hospital to see one of his best friends (both of which will continue, just to make sure YOU'RE totally confused, too) -- I have to cry today and this is the way.

But I'm never sure it these are sad tears or happy tears, because the song is so hopeful. The video is not great and the audio is too low, and it's prefaced with a story of how the song saved a guy's life. (Big deal, dude. I'm-a-widow!) Look up the original song (by Stan Rogers, and it IS on iTunes) and cry your eyes out by my virtual side on this rainy, dreary, very sad day.

Musical Monday: Hanging by a Moment, or, Somatic Identification Part 1

"Hanging by a Moment" by Lifehouse is the song of my experience of my husband’s last few months. I’m talking about the period during which he dissolved: after the back surgery, before the shingles.

The song is aggressive and male and unlike all the other music I like, but it was on the radio all the time. The lyrics are final: “there’s nothing else to lose,” and stubborn: “I’m standing here until you make me move,” and all about extremes, but what got me glued to it was the refrain:

“I’m falling even more in love with you.” I sang it to myself over and over, every time I got in the car, every time I went somewhere on my own, taking the few moves I could make with any honesty and directness, a few trips with any direction at all, however mundane.

"More in love?" WHAT? Was I trying to convince myself that cancer brought “gifts?” Gavin was falling away, down to 100 lbs and shrinking as I watched, as I tried to move forward. Did he know he wasn’t part of the plan any more? Or was I not making any plans? Was it a mantra, nonsense, something in the chords that hit me? Or just the sense of uncertainty, that you can be strong and whatever but you have no idea what's next? Isn't that part of what the young blond dude (so young!) is saying?

It sounds, to me, like some truth. My body was inextricably stuck to his as it broke, our lives were shared and splitting silently down the middle. It’s called somatic identification, and it marks the last bit of grief that I have left to shed.

"Falling, hanging, desperate." The truth of my life as he was dying. There's a metallic drone in the song under the whine of the bass: and a beautiful buzz that makes me wonder if Lifehouse is a faith-driven act (despite the lyrics) or just your average white band.

I listen to this song, over and over, to recapture what I felt, the fact that I WAS feeling though it doesn’t seem like it when I look back. I’m convinced now I need to do this, though I’ve heard the advice over and over, this time it came from peers, not from Freud. This time, I was listening.

My peer Matt Logelin, author of “Two Kisses for Maddy,” said, “it was only by remembering and writing down those last moments when I saw Liz -- the smells, the sounds, that I became free to live again, and eventually, to love again.” (I paraphrase; he was more direct and less corny).

My peer Jennifer Silvera, author of “Believe,” said, “I had written. ‘We were in the ambulance, it took him to the hospital, but he was already dead.’ My agent pushed and pushed, insisting the story was more than those 3 phrases, but I didn’t see it, and when I did, it was ten pages of moments.” (I totally paraphrase and probably have important details wrong). (Matt and Jennifer were speaking at the author’s panel at Camp Widow). And you know what? I believe them. I’ve started posts on this topic a dozen times and quit.

I’m going to listen to this macho anthem over and over again until I get it right this time. Or wrong, but either way – DOWN. I'll get my own words down and let go of these.

Musical Monday: Not the Only One, Bonnie Raitt

I haven’t talked that much about the courtship between me and Mr. Fresh. But at our first dinner, the one I hadn’t expected to even be a date, one phrase stuck out. As we discussed what we’d learned about ourselves in relationships, our strengths and weaknesses, he told me: “I don’t have a romantic bone in my body.” It was clear this was a disappointment to the current girlfriend, the one he was ready to dump; likely it was even her phrase. I was familiar with men who tell you their shortfalls right away and I knew they can use this phrase as a warning, so that later in the relationship, they “told you so” and “never concealed anything.”

But you know my state of mind at that time – the skin hunger, the urgency, and heavens, now I had a trustworthy man smiling at me across the table, who’d appeared almost in ambush. And to me, with my experiences, "romantic" was not at all on my list. Isn’t witnessing your true love’s last breath just dreadfully romantic? I wasn’t on that page any more, if I’d ever been.

So, while it may have seemed to him like a disclaimer, a self-deprecating statement, and it may have disqualified him from a second date with many women, in my state all I could hear was “bone.”

Here was a live human male saying, over and over to me, “bone, bone, bone, bone, bone.”

Imagine my surprise on hearing, half a year after we were married, that he thought of this as “our song:”



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Musical Monday: When I Was Drinking

This is one of the saddest songs I know, one of loss and yearning. The original is by Hem, but I could not find a video, so I’m including this live performance by We Are Golden. The studio original (you can stream  it from the Hem website) is a bit cleaner and sparer, but this is lovely, too.

The bit that catches me is how, drunk, the couple had “nothing and no one to live up to.” How many of us were saved by parenting, by responsibility? I never drifted too low before my loss, never relied on substances, but my life was transformed by being a mother and knowing this two-way tug of love that you get from caring for a child.

And then, at the end, the pull back is so like grief, that we wish away and grow out of and still, always, save so we can relish another kiss. In her voice, you hear how durable this is, how loss leaves a stain and you can still be grateful and alive when it’s far away in the past.

Lyrics:
When I was drinking
when I was with you
living it up when the rent was due
with nothing and no one to live up to

you and me dying on the vine
holding hands and drinking wine
now I’m not the same girl I left
behind with you.

Twelve bars behind us
and twelve bars to go
bottles of beer lined up in a row
one for each hour you didn’t show

you and me dying everyday
getting high just to pass away but
that's not the reason I couldn't stay with you

Now I am sober
now I’m alone
three years have gone by since you have gone
letting you go
letting me go on

But I’ll raise a glass now to you and me
to lift me high so I can see
which of these blessings are killing me.


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Musical Monday: Show Some Emotion by Joan Armatrading

One of the Moms from church taught me this exercise to shake things up a bit when your kid is so angry neither of you can find a way out. “Okay, everybody, make an angry face, make a sad face, make a surprised face, make a happy face…” It nearly always works. The song, "Show Some Emotion" by Joan Armatrading, is sort of like that for me. When you’re really upset, there’s nothing like being reminded of the many emotional states that are available.

Aren’t grief and hysterical laughter so often side-by-side, each on the other’s heels? Both on the edge. Remembering the wheel of feelings can bring you back to center.

“Show Some Emotion” is really valuable for reminding us all our feelings are valid and real, which is a big emphasis in kids’ culture stuff these days. (When I was a kid, I was usually told to “stop being angry.” Absurd!) Somewhere I have started a playlist of alternative songs for little kids. The Cure’s “Friday I’m in love” introduces the days of the week, this song runs through the emotions, Mack the Knife is in for its condescending tone and what toddler doesn’t love sharks? There’s others, but who knows if I’ll ever uncover the list. It’s not a priority now, Shortie’s past suggestion, confidently making her own taste and scene.

I have always loved this song. Joan Armatrading was timeless, a hero to hippie and punk alike at my college. My friends and I sung her songs, melancholy when biking home at night, or rejoicing while we did dishes together. In this serious, joyful, generous song, which emotional expression is me?

“Some people hurting
Someone choking up inside
Some poor souls dying
Too proud to say
They got no place to lie
And there’s people
If they hear a joke
Can’t keep the laugh
Out of their eye…”

When I hear her sing that last line, I know Joan Armatrading has met me somewhere, that she’s teasing me to get back to it in just a little bit. And I start to breathe again in the corner of that smile.

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Musical Monday: Dancing Barefoot by Patti Smith

It had to be this song. Gavin found in Patti a muse, gazed daily at the postcard of her on his desk, a NYC Rimbaud, a true artist, a puzzle his own age. And Patti was mine, too, legend said she was at the root of the punk rock I loved even if she was a damn poet and easy to mock, Gilda Radner singing “Gimme Mick,” as she pulled out a hairbrush to work on her armpits.

Parody aside, we both could have been her. Beautiful, sexually ambiguous, her own woman.

Dancing Barefoot is a love song that’s not afraid of death. At its climax she reads:

the plot of our life sweats in the dark like a face
the mystery of childbirth, of childhood itself
grave visitations
what is it that calls to us?
why must we pray screaming?
why must not death be redefined?
we shut our eyes we stretch out our arms
and whirl on a pane of glass
an afixiation a fix on anything the line of life the limb of a tree
the hands of he and the promise that she is blessed among women.

It just had to be this song: perfect. A eulogist, the best man at our wedding, and his wife suggested it to me when I was coming up blank.
We played it as the recessional at Gavin’s memorial service, a hot day 3 weeks after his death.
First the minister strode up the aisle, then me, nearly running, as the service thank God was finally over.
(I know. The service was actually short. We cut off the testimonials. But I really wanted to get out of there.)
Crying just outside the sanctuary, a hug from one of my oldest friends, and my wonderful minister’s warm arms and iridescent green robes.

For months after Gavin’s death I played Dancing Barefoot over and over again, part of a “weepers” playlist, as the start of my structured nap/alone time, when I could get it.

This celebration of life, cry of passion, meditation on big stuff will always be part of my mourning.

Thank you, Patti. You'd become part of him and his art, he loved you, and you helped me sing him out.


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Kid Theology, Part 2

My daughter will only listen to women vocalists, and I make mix CDs for the car every few weeks so it’s not All Pink, All the Time. At 5, she comes up with some funny ideas about the songs, like in “Dancing Queen” she heard the lyric as “Cheetah girl, watch that scene, digging the dancing Queen” so we had to play along and refer to ABBA as the Cheetah Girls for about a year. (We did tell her it was ABBA at first, and she got angry. So PEH! And I kept the lie going, partly because it would save me from even being tempted to buy anything by the Disney act. We lived in dread of the day she’d find us out: sing “Mamma Mia” and come home pissed. That day never came.)

Like all kids, she’s very musical. And like all kids her age, she’s starting to wonder where things came from. Since age 2 or so she’s been fascinated by inventors, robots, and how things work. Now she’s beginning to ask what made the seeds that made the grasses, flowers and trees: “Mommy, I came out of your tummy, but where did the world come from?”

“A lot of people have questions about that,” I straightened up, pleased to have a “teaching moment” just show up. “And so they study science to learn about where seeds, and water, and even the earth itself came from.”

“Wait, Mommy! I know! God maked the whole earth!”

I shuddered involuntarily.

“Well, no one really knows the answer for sure, but that is an interesting idea. Yes, many people study religion to learn about how the world was made. So people can do work using science or religion to answer these questions,” I offered, without giving her creationism, I hope.

“No! God did it.” Sensing unnapped, late-afternoon ferocity on the horizon, I let her idea stand. That week, I think her image of God was an old man with a white beard that she’d heard about at school.

But come Sunday, I knew she had options. This year’s religious education program in our Unitarian Universalist church is about world religious traditions. In the past few Sundays she’s colored in Ganesh and Shiva, made a “stained glass” chalice out of tissue paper, and created a camel (part of a lesson on Islam) out of two humps of a paper egg carton and some pipe cleaners. And the questions, as you can imagine, are bound to keep coming.

And when she heard this song last week, she got very excited.

“If God had a name, what would it be
and would you call it to his face
if you were faced with him...?”

I’m pretty sure she thought the CD was reading her mind. “Mommy! What she singing is EXACTLY the same as what I am thinking!”






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Finding My Own Key

What does it say about me that every metaphor that comes up in my life takes the form of a cliché? Yeah, I’m a lazy writer, but as Gavin used to say, “All clichés are true.”

Each night for the past five years I’ve sung two lullabies to my girl- - “Down to the River to Pray” and a single verse of the Brahms lullaby. My Mom sang me to sleep with Brahms, never in her daily harsh judgmental tones, but with the sweet magic enabled by arcane words like “bedite” and the hard-to-decode “o’ersp’ead,” as much of a mystery as that “elemenohpee” two-thirds through the alphabet song.

Is every mother’s singing voice perfect and soothing? I can tell mine spins an oxytocin spell over Shortie, even with its strains and starts, even though I’ve such a limited repertoire.

It took me a while to wish to mix things up at lullaby time. Perhaps I’m respecting my girl’s new, strong opinions about music. (She’d make a fresh mix for the car every day if she could read.) Maybe I’m realizing that in my next career (which I haven’t discussed with y’all yet) my voice will have to lead. I do know that I’ve often been told I have a “good instrument” that could be trained for excellence, but since my huge mouth is usually what gets me into trouble, I’ve had no faith. Or been too scared.

Of course I wasn’t born like this. When I was a kid we sang in season: “Silent Night,” walking through the snowed-over West Village with candles sheathed in foil. “Go Where I Send Thee,” by the piano in a warm sweet-smelling loft on Second Avenue. “Star of Wonder” with incense in the local Episcopalian church (the one with the garden). And I loved singalongs at camp, if we were all together I couldn’t be picked on. But it was not permitted to be serious: music was my sister’s territory and in my “deep shadow” she needed it. (Art was my department.)

As a younger adult, when I made dozens of nativities starting every September, I spent hours singing the Roches versions of carols in my garret studio, the older and more religious, the better. Fortunately no one was listening.

It pulls a bit of the rug away from the self-conscious adult to know someone enjoys hearing me (though “NOT in the car, Mommy”). I can admit I really adore “Good King Wenceslaus” and that it’s fun to sing “Cielito Lindo.” Trying these a few nights ago, somehow, strangely, I shifted into a lower key. Wow: some weight in my throat disappeared. My voice opened up, stronger, even in lullaby hush-mode: maybe that word is “smoother.” All of a sudden I could choose my phrasing, instead of being forced into it. An occasional consonant dropped spontaneously, as it would have for Judy Garland, if I wanted a rounder note.

I’m growing comfortable with this voice. I’m moved to add “Dona Dona” and “Morning Has Broken” from camp; “Moonshadow,” “Swing Low Sweet Chariot,” and “Oh Mary Don’t You Weep.” Christmas stuff, free to lose the Roches’ harmonies, which I obviously can’t fake, even for my kid. And from church, “Dodi Li,” “Come, Come, Whoever You Are,” “This Is My Song (Finlandia),” and others.

I’ve heard music is natural, the notes like numbers, inevitable, not made by man. But I didn’t believe it till now. Is this what it means to find your key?

Yeah, I bet I sound like a broken record… change, transformation, metamorphosis, reinvention.* Blah, blah, blah. I doubt I’d sound anywhere near “good” to less loving ears, but it’s a sign.

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*Mr. Fresh wants me to write a post in the style of Don Marquis. So we’d add “transmogrification” to the list.


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