Christmas Morning

Good morning, little sweetheart! Happy Christmas!

I’m kinda just taking it easy today, writing a little and recording a couple of basic tracks and thinking of earlier years when I was with you or my mom or later, with your folks.

Even though today is kinda lonely, Sylvia will be here day after tomorrow and we’ll have a little Christmas of our own, then, and the following week, head out to see your folks and have a second with them, too.

Today, I’m remembering especially our first Christmas, little sweetheart, when you gave the beautiful scarf you knitted while doing the play up in Boston and the breathtaking Christmas letter you included with it - part of which is now tattooed on my right arm.

Christmas is such a good day to remember all the things you taught me about love and all that really matters.

Merry Merry Christmas, my angel. Thinking of you with love and forever.

Christmas Eve

It’s Christmas Eve, little sweetheart, and I’m on my own, just quietly spending the evening watching on a movie and having a few of those cookies I bake each year. Sure do miss you tonight. We’ll be heading out to see your folks (Sylvia arrives on Friday) first week of January and I’m very much looking forward.

Tonight, I’m just keeping quiet and lighting a nice fragrant candle. It’s a pine and balsam one. I’ve never watched the hours long midnight mass from Rome that they broadcast on Christmas Eve, so I think I’ll do that in a few hours.

Thinking of you, as ever, and asking that you be near me tonight and in the days ahead. With all my love…

Hot Chocolate Memories

Little sweetheart, I made myself some hot chocolate last night and, of course, thought of you!

It’s so funny that I rarely think to do that for myself, I always like it once I have. At Thanksgiving I was looking for a packet of gravy starter in the little bin I keep seasonings in and I found a bit of hot chocolate mix. I set one out. That was weeks ago! I only got around to making it tonight. I’d even bought a bit of whip cream at D’ags last week when it was on sale but it had remained unopened in the fridge since then.

It was lovely sitting here on the plaid couch where you and I would often ensconce ourselves together, to sip from the mug quietly, listening to a show on WFMU and thinking of you.

I remember that although you most liked making hot chocolate with milk at home, that you kept a packet or two in your bag when we went out so you could ask for a cup of hot water and make it for yourself at the table.

There’s something so lovely in this memory of you carrying hot chocolate mix with you wherever you go, little sweetheart, and I’m so glad it came to mind tonight.

Thinking of you, on this morning after the night of the Winter Solstice - the darkest night of the year. With all my love.

Special Broadcast

Canadian podcasters devoted their entire show today, little sweetheart, to our album Til Morning Is Nigh. They broadcast it in its sequence and entirety and said the nicest things about it.

The introduction leading up to it yesterday began “Tomorrow! The best Christmas album of all time! The one and only Bipolar Explorer” and after the broadcast today they said “we couldn’t even think what to say after - it’s perfect!”

I listened later in the afternoon and it was so wonderful to hear your voice soaring above the guitars, little sweetheart. It’s funny how after spending so much time listening to every little detail while working on the albums that after they’re released, I might not listen again for months and then be surprised, as if hearing them anew when broadcast.

Feeling very close you, my little sweetheart, and sending all my love, always. Always.

Snow Squall

We had the craziest weather today, little sweetheart.

It’s been cold and rainy for days and I hadn’t been for a run in a week but it was sunny this morning, so I was able to get one in in the early afternoon. After I got back the weather was still really nice - the light bouncing off the buildings was almost a spring-like one, I noticed as I sat here at my desk. Just about 10 minutes later it had grown incredibly dark and was suddenly snow - the wind kicking it around even more.

After an hour it stopped and brightened again to twilight just before the sun went down. I walked up to the little church at 77th and West End for the Wednesday night candlelight service. They asked me to read the opening passage and later I came forward and lit a candle for you and said our prayer just like always. Both Christmas and New Year’s fall on Wednesday this year so there won’t be another service until the second week in January. I’m glad I went.

Then as I came out after, it had snowed a bit more. Everything was blanketed with a pretty covering of free snow and it looked rather magical. The walk home was cold but I was bundled up with the beautiful sweater you made for and gave me for our first Christmas.

The holidays seem especially sad this year, somehow, little sweetheart and I miss and my mom terribly. But I ask quietly to hear your guidance and to strengthen my faith that you are safely in God’s care and that I will be with you again and forever in just the blink of an eye.

With all my love.

Floor Work

Little sweetheart, I'm kinda full force going at two projects simultaneously - both, of course, always, for you!

One is the memoir and the other is the next album.

I've notebooks everywhere - some filled ready for transcription, others mid-scrawl - and little notes scribbled on random pieces of paper strewn about the apartment. Every morning I try to organize them a bit, get them in the queue of what next to address as work goes twofold forward.

Today, while I was going for a second cup of coffee I saw and remembered a few lyric ideas I had scrawled on the back of an unopened piece of yesterday's mail. I had several pieces like it for the same song already set out last night on the desk to my left where I put my coffee cup in the morning to remind me to work on the song today. I brought the pieces in the kitchen and my music notebook and those scraps on the desk all to the floor next to my guitar pedals and grabbed a pen spreading it all out. A dedicated spot for this work!

And I suddenly thought of something I once heard Joe Strummer say about writing lyrics - "grab whatever you can, push everyone out the way and fall to floor to get it down because it only makes sense in that moment when it comes forward. You''ll lose it if you wait. Get it down, then. Now!" 

This is so perfectly true, don't you think, little sweetheart?

It's coming. It takes time for it all but it's coming. As another writer I remember says about it - "think slow, write fast."

It will be done, little sweetheart, it will be done. I know because I know you are sending it all to me. And I'm listening, my love. I promise, I promise it get it all down - for you!

With all my love.

To Be Faithful

Little sweetheart, I sat down to watch Gandhi last night and was struck by the filmmakers preface at before the movie had even truly begun. All of it is terribly resonant as I write to, of, about and for you.

It helped me, once I'd begun composing book one of the memoirs, to write down a sentiment much like this, giving myself permission to get to as much as I can, chasing down every thought and memory and recording them but not cursing myself for not gathering up everything. Indeed, allowing for further volumes so that I can do just that and not setting about the impossible task of getting everything between the pages of just one book, so that even just setting out, we've already said that nothing ends, not even these writings - we just run out of paper, to return again immediately thereafter.

The most important part, just as in the last sentence of the image below, to be faithful in spirit.

Always, little sweetheart. May I ever be faithful to your spirit, faithful to you. With all my love.

As In Baking, As in Life...

I was making a second batch of Christmas cookies last night, little sweetheart. I wanted to do some work but it was so noisy on the street outside, I decided to bake instead.

I had on my playlist of Christmas favorites - you’ve heard a few of them - which included two 30 minute radio documentaries I recorded off the air when the BBC broadcast them years ago. One about the annual Advent service “Darkness to Light” at Salisbury Cathedral and the other interviewing former boy choristers and people involved with the famous 9 Lessons and Carols service at Cambridge.

Between the two of them is a song I heard a few years ago released by the Sheffield band, The Crookes - “You Bring the Snow”. It’s an incredibly bittersweet song longing for “just one more Christmas like when we were young”.

The first time I heard it, and I think probably every time after, it has made me ache for you… and it did tonight. Oven mitt in hand, cutting the little stars and angels and bells, the smell of ginger and molasses and longing for you, my heart so heavy, I just cried and cried and cried. Weeping, aching for you. And all the while shuffling along between the counter and the oven going on with my task.

Very much like how I keep going through my life. Heartbroken to be separated from you but with faith that you are safely in God’s care, that I will be with you again, soon and forever, and that I simply must carry on doing all the things I’m meant and you very much want me to complete.

Yes, little sweetheart, I will remember and honor and call to you always. Always. With all my heart, with all my love. Forever.

Remember!

Little sweetheart, in listening to and thinking of Christmas music, including our own, I sometimes forget that we've made not one but two Christmas albums!

There's been so much attention to the more recent and rather more epic one from last year, Til Morning Is Nigh, that sometimes the earlier one BPXmas (2014) gets less attention. That's okay, mostly, but I certainly wouldn't want the song I wrote especially of and for you - the lead track, "It's Christmas, Sweetheart" - to be overlooked.

It's one of the first of our songs that the great Irene Trudel played on her show on WFMU it could be seen as beginning their wonderful advocacy of us. We even did a video for it, which calls so many things to mind and memory, not least because Jason was still in the band at the time.

I know you are closer than I can imagine, little sweetheart - I have faith! - and that we will together again soon and always. With all my love...

Tis The Season

We're well into Christmas season, little sweetheart and I'm thinking of and longing for you.

We heard that a Canadian podcast is going to play our 8th album, last year's Til Morning Is Nigh, in its entirety in a special broadcast next Saturday, December 21st - the night of the Winter Solstice. I'll put a link up to it as soon as its available.

We did several videos as well as the documentary for the album but I think my favorite of them might be for Noel, because it features your vocals so prominently and there's lots of nice footage of you, mostly from our wonderful trip to Ireland together.

I love you with all my heart. Forever. Forever.

Enfolded

I went uptown to that little candlelight meditation, last night, little sweetheart.

I went last week too and found it was much colder walking home than walking there. I’d very much wished I’d brought the beautiful scarf you made for me. So, tonight, I put it and a pair of gloves in my backpack, not needing them for the walk top but at the ready for the walk back, in case it was so bitterly colder after, again.

Since last week, they’d put up Christmas decorations, little sweetheart. It was mostly pine wreaths and garlands. The had them wrapped around the banisters leading up the steps outside the front door and in wreaths around the crowns of the pews at each aisle. I sat in my place in the back and sang along with the chants, coming forward when it was time, to light a candle for you and say our prayer. The lights darkened after as the meditation began and everyone was silently in contemplation for a long while.

My thoughts, as always, fly to you, and after the service resumed with two final songs, a prayer and the benediction, I wrapped myself up in your beautiful scarf and braved the cold. I needed it! Just as I need you. And there is something so magical in being literally wrapped up, enfolded in the beautiful warm scarf you made for me with your very hands. It keeps me close to you.

May it be ever so. With all my love…

German Radio

Little sweetheart, you’re on the radio!

Over the weekend, the band made its German Radio debut. Radio TFSC featured “Flag Day (Summer Dream Version)” - which I think is our favorite mix of the song because your vocals are way up front and it has the backwards guitar on it - and then added it to their rotation along with another track featuring your central vocals, “No Answer”, both from our double-album, Sometimes in Dreams.

I don’t know yet if this station archives their broadcasts to MixCloud, but if so, I’ll get a link up to the programs right away.

With all my love…

Of Kindness...

I had my six month dental check up last week, little sweetheart, then dropped back in at the office today to ask about some issues regarding what my insurance was willing to cover. Nothing urgent but I thought it would go faster if I walked over there instead of trying to do it on the phone. The results were mixed, I think - it took a helluva long time anyway, the waiting room was pretty full.

Anyway, what I wanted to tell you was something else. When I arrived, the receptionist was speaking in Spanish to a rather elderly man who was sitting across the room. It kind of went on for a while even as other patients came and went or waited to check in. Me, too - I just stood there waiting.

Eventually the logjam kind of cleared. The waiting room emptied and the receptionist went in the back to talk to my dentist. There was just me and the elderly Spanish man and what seemed like maybe his brother.

The first guy was sort of taking care of the second. He got up and got their coats out of the closet and then helped the second guy put his coat on. It was very sweet. Then the second guy, who seemed a bit more frail and understandably needed a bit more help, took the first guy’s coat and helped him in turn. I wondered if they were brothers and the whole thing was so lovely and gentle and kind, it made me think of you immediately.

The second man had been looking at me the whole time. The first one spoke to me in English, then. He said they were dealing with some insurance thing. I told him, same here. And then I wished them both a Happy Christmas.

It was a really nice moment and when little things like this happen, I feel ever more close to you and the unfailing kindness that you brought to everyone whose lives you touched. I’m so grateful for you. And I love you with all my heart, forever. 

Voices... and Your Own

I was listening Carol’s show this morning on WFMU, little sweetheart, and I heard something that kind of stopped me in my tracks. It was a song by a group I didn’t know, The Clogs. but the guest vocalist on it was Matt Berringer from The National. His voice is so embedded in my memories of you that it takes me to you instantly.

I remember discovering The National together, little sweetheart, getting that “Dark Was The Night” compilation at Easy Street Records when we were up in Seattle together for the reading of 7 Pages, then you sending me an mp3 of that song from Boxer with the line about “I waited for 29 years to find you”. You were 29 at the time and it seemed so very much about you and I finding one another, you saving my life, filling it with light and love.

I remember tears pouring down my cheeks when you spoke of your certainty that you would pass away before I and that you wanted me to speak at your funeral and to listen to our songs and remember you. It’s so very hard to hear those voices and songs that meant so much to us, little sweetheart, that music that came to be our own. It still cuts me to the core. But I do love you forever and with all my heart.

Please be with me today, little sweetheart. Let me know that you are near and strengthen my faith to know that I will be with you again, soon and forever. With all my love.

December 8

Today is the 39th anniversary of John Lennon’s death, little sweetheart.

Although you were only one year old at the time, I think of you, of course, because you loved The Beatles and one of our first connections was you very sweetly, very thoughtfully bringing your DVD set of The Beatles Anthology to rehearsal to let me borrow. We hadn’t even spoken of it, you just knew that we both liked them so you grabbed them and brought them to work with you.

Tonight I walked up to The Dakota. There weren’t too many people around but crossing Central Park West into the park you could hear that folks were gathered there at Strawberry Fields singing along to Beatles songs. There’s often a guitar player or two there and people talking pictures but there was what sounded to be an entire band with full drums playing and a crowd circling them 10 deep singing along.

I climbed up on a park bench to get a better look. Everybody had their phones out and were taking photos or filming. And I did too. I took a little clip when everyone was singing the bridge of “A Day in The Life” - the sort of wordless bit leading into the last verse - and then the song that followed, “The Ballad of John and Yoko”.

It was a very New York kind of moment and you were, as ever, so very much in my thoughts. With all my love forever.

Theatre Dream

I had kind of a funny dream last night, little sweetheart, but was the more blessed for it because you were with me!

There were several of us all together in a group at some kind of theatre performance. It had a very fringe-y feel to it material-wise but also seemed to be in a Broadway house - like an old theatre with lots of seats, kind of cramped but grand. The show was some kind of one-woman show and a little weird, not exactly realism. The performer was even a bit confrontational and I can't remember if she directed her ire at us exactly but we were a bit unsettled and tried to slip away.

We had to go down some crazy side door stairwell, like an old emergency exit or something and we got separated at first. I was looking around for you as I headed down the stairs trying to make an escape into the street when you came out from around a corner. You'd been to "merch" table or something because you had on a tee shirt and had a bag of a bunch of other things. Crazy, right?

I'm not sure what all this means aside from let's-get-the-hell-out of-here-as-fast-as-we-can-but-first-you're-going-to-get-your-money's-worth. Most important, I think, of course, is that you and I are together. May it be forever so!

With all my love.

Material Memory

I’m being extra careful now, little sweetheart, with the beautiful leather jacket you gave me on our last Christmas together.

I had been pretty much wearing it everyday regardless of the weather for the last eight years. Like I told you, we were very worried that the wear and tear to it was too much, too far gone for a restoration but the great folks at Superior Leather did manage to repair it beautifully. I’ve only had it out for a month or two as the weather has grown cooler and am very careful with it, hanging it up after in a place of honor.

The other day I saw a tiny gap in the stitching, less than one inch in length, and took it back. Then said they couldn’t just patch up that tiny bit because it was at the join of the old leather and the new and there wasn’t quite enough mass to the latter for it to take hold quite right. They said we could eventually replace that half of the right sleeve but that if it didn’t get any bigger, it would probably be alright for now.

So, I’m keeping an eye on it and also wearing other jackets sometimes, saving this very special treasured one so it lasts as long as possible. And the nice lady, Samantha, at Superior said to go ahead and wear it! Not to be afraid. Just like she told me when I brought it to her last spring, so heartbroken, how kindly she told me that I “hadn’t done anything wrong”.

Anyway, I broke out my old 3/4 length black overcoat. Remember it, little sweetheart? The Calvin Klein one? It’s rather lightweight with a zip-in lining you can use when it gets colder and I used to wear it all the time before you got me the beautiful leather jacket. There’s tons of pictures of you and I together where I’m wearing it, including most all of the ones on our trip to Ireland.

Tonight, I was walking to D’Agostino’s with it on and when I reached into the left pocket I felt something - it was one of the pens, a black one, that I got when we stopped into a store outside Bantry during our Irish adventure. It had been in there since then!

It was raining out, tonight, so I also was wearing my black boots. I had such a sense memory of being in our neighborhood in San Francisco, of being in the Inner Sunset, because this coat, with a hoodie, and those boots were what I wore almost every day there striding up and down the hills just south of Golden Gate Park with you or dashing out to pick up something for us at the deli or Roxie’s or Crepevine of an evening before coming home to your warm, waiting, loving arms. What a lovely feeling it was! As if I could almost touch our life!
How I miss and love you, my little sweetheart. Please be near me today, won’t you? And take me to you the moment heaven will allow. With all my love forever. 

The Music Matters

Something reminded me today, little sweetheart, of the Pogues's song "Dirty Old Town". And it took me instantly to you.

I remember it being one of my favorite moments in Tir n nOg, at the end of the act, when we all came forward and sang it together. And I remembered you texting me a few months later when you were out and saying that it just come up on the jukebox in the bar you were in, that it made you think of me, think of us.

And it made me think in the way that I have so very often and increasingly since the accident that nearly took my life, that it is music writ large that is the primary moving force in our lives. In mine.  The instantly resonant power of music - hearing something that strikes you to the core and composing our own, too - that is such a gift in this life.

Just as you are. You - the greatest gift of all. With all my love...

First Snowfall

It's the first day of December, little sweetheart. Also the first day of Advent. And... the first snowfall of the season.

It's coming down very prettily right now. A little too warm to stick - 34f - but looking nice through the window.

It gets dark so early these short days of the year, little sweetheart, and being overcast all morning, the sun has never really come out yet.

I remember so well your coming here in mid-December right after the play closed in Boston and going up on the roof when we saw that it had begun to snow. You'd brought your trusty Nikon along with you and we took several pictures. One of them, with you all bundled up, the snow falling and the skyline behind you, became the back cover of one of the albums.

I'm feeling so sad today, my little sweetheart, but will try to busy myself with all the things I need to do. I know and have faith that you are closer than I can imagine. And my prayers and every thought flies to you!

Please be with me today. The beautiful snow, falling quietly in the darkness of this day, brings such memories - of you. With all my love...

Thankful... For You!

Little sweetheart, today is Thanksgiving.

I'm all my own but I learned a couple of years ago that even if I am alone - be it on my birthday or some holiday meant for gathering like this one - I need to observe and not shrink from it. That only makes things the more lonely.

So, even though I miss you terribly (and my mom, too), I am so very grateful that you found me, that you come to me still in dreams and in the most unusual circumstances to fortify my faith. I know we'll be together again and forever. And even though I can't quite see where you are just now, we are together even in your seeming absence.

I'm so thankful and blessed, my little sweetheart. And I love you. Love you forever.

Always...

Woke up this morning, little sweetheart, to the news that the video we did for "We'll All Go Together" is just ten plays from 1K.

Remember that song, little sweetheart? It's a Scottish folk song that we first heard in Ireland. A couple years ago to honor you on March 18th, I recorded and released it along with the video all in the span of 24 hours.

The video is a slideshow style one with lots of beautiful pictures of you. I think I probably posted it here at the time of its release but I will again.

Always, as ever, it's all for you. With all my love...

REM

I found myself watching a short documentary about REM last night, little sweetheart. And although that band wasn't strictly one of ours together, still, it makes me think of you.

The documentary is about one of their lesser known albums but one that I quite like - it's more of a promo, really, I guess - for New Adventures in Hi-Fi. I remember I was in Ireland when it came out and actually bought it just after I got back to London before flying home to New York. Kris and I listened to tracks on Irish radio as we drove along the dark, narrow, country lanes between Bantry and Kilcrohane, which I would visit for last time with you on our trip there together in 2010. Later the album was in heavy rotation at my old band's rehearsal studio in Brooklyn and on the jukebox at McCoy's.

One of the reasons I associate it now with you is that the 8th track - "Be Mine", with it's repeated chorus of you and me, you and me, you and me - played in the background of that little restaurant we used to go to in the Inner Sunset and where we sat one night having something to eat just before you took me to SFO.

Every time I had to leave your side, I would began weeping, often hours before departure.

Later, after your impossible and tragic passing, after I had come back to New York in the short weeks before returning for your memorial (held, ever incredibly, on my own birthday), I spent several days upstate with Sean and Megan and their two little girls, broken, inconsolable. Sean gave me a couple of CD-Rs and I took them with me when I flew back out. The REM one and another I'd only just gotten with you were the two I found myself playing endlessly in the rental car all that week.

The one Sean gave me was a double-disc of live shows recorded in Dublin - Live at Olympia. The other, ours, was the new Radiohead album - The King of Limbs - which had come out just weeks before the tragic events (and which you had excitedly asked me to download as you were driving home from San Jose as I was making dinner for your arrival. We had just begun listening to it together. Those two records were my soundtrack all that week and beyond, filled with sorrow and longing for you, dumbstruck and without compass... the unimaginable hole in my life.

It aches to hear these songs, little sweetheart, our songs. But you told me, didn't you, my love, to listen and remember?

How I love you! How I miss you. How I long, with faith, to find that you are only just around an invisible corner - alive and forever. And that we will be together again, eternal.

With all my love, forever. Forever.

Happy 40th Birthday, Little Sweetheart!

Happy 40th birthday, little sweetheart. We assembled this video for you and released it at midnight. I love you so very very much - forever!

Restless

I’m not sleeping well just now, little sweetheart.

Sometimes the silver lining is that waking so often during the night, I better remember what dreams I’ve just been yanked from, but sadly that is not exactly the case just now. I need to relax. To quiet my mind before going to bed, so I’m going to endeavor to do just that.

But I do know that you’ve been hovering in my dreams, even though I can’t quite put a finger on recalling them with any detail. I know you’re there. And that is the best of good signs.

Please do help me to hang on and know, wont you, little sweetheart? And thank you for coming near to guide me. With all my love forever.

All Soul's Day 2019

There's not a service to go to today, little sweetheart, but I'm thinking of you and saying quiet prayers for you on this day, All Soul's Day.

I know you are forever and everywhere - just around a corner I can't quite get a glimpse of yet, but ever so nearby.

I love you with all my heart and soul. I'm so grateful for you! And I know we will be together soon and forever again. God bless you, my little sweetheart!

More Thinking of Boston

Working on the book just now little sweetheart, I’m having occasion, again, to recount our time together in Boston.

It was just about this time of year, too, and everything still remains so fresh in memory. How cold and crisp it was already, even before Thanksgiving. How we stopped about in the snow on the way to the theatre where you were doing Rock n Roll. Cooking for you in the little kitchen of the sweet, cozy apartment they’d put you up in for the run. Taking day trip during your time off to JFK library and along Newburgh Street and some of our epic walks circling either bank of the Charles River.

You know, my darling girl, that even though I’ve been back to Boston probably a half dozen times since then, it is always you and our adventures that I remember when I’m there. It feels sometimes as I travel about that somehow we still are there together and then you’ll soon come around a corner and join me. There’s even a street as soon as you get off the train called Summer Street. So fitting, because I know, my little sweetheart that you are everywhere and forever.

With all my love.

On The Radio (again)!

We were back on the radio this morning, little sweetheart! Back on WFMU. Carol Crow featured us on her Sunday morning show and it was a really interesting program because she used interview clips of each artist to precede a track from one of their albums. The three hour show included Aphex Twin, Nick Cave, Philip Glass, Max Richter, Brian Eno and... us.

The clip Carol used from from Part 2 of the new documentary about Til Morning Is Nigh and she followed that up with “Angel Frequency”, so your vocals were way up front.

Hey, little sweetheart, you’re on the radio (again)!

Full show here: http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/89167

Listening For Signs

We’re right at the point of the autumn, little sweetheart, where we’re listening every night for some signal or sound that the radiators are going to whir to life. During the day it’s warm enough but by nightfall we’re both bundled up in hoodies and socks and straining to hear some indication that maybe a regulator has begun whistling and the pipes will fill with steam and warm the place up a bit.

I remember so well one of your last times here, little sweetheart, with that heat pipe in the WC so hot to the touch and you accidentally bumping up behind it and coming running back into the apartment to tell me.

Everything around me is evidence of you - thank god! It’s such an enormous comfort to have this shared history in events and phenomena, so that each time it comes around, my mind is flooded with thoughts of you. It’s such a blessing in your absence. And you are the blessing itself made flesh and spirit. You are the blessing of my life.

Taize Prayers

Taize - that little candlelight meditation on Wednesday nights - has started back up, little sweetheart, and I went tonight. I won’t be able to get back to another one for three weeks but that one falls quite wonderfully on your birthday.

Tonight I was asked to read a prayer at the end which was a actually composed by the Dean of Grace Cathedral where your mom and I have gone a couple of times in San Francisco.

It’s so nice just to sit at the back in the peaceful darkness of the sanctuary lit only mostly by candles, quietly sing the chants in my weird harmonies and come forward later to light a candle and say our prayer. It’s an hour of welcome quiet where I can reflect and feel close to you, listen for your guidance and tell you how much I love and long for you. And the gratitude I feel for your having found me.

Find me again, won’t you, my love? Over and over. Forever.

Your Favorite Holiday/Time of Year

It’s nearly Halloween, little sweetheart - which I think is possibly your favorite holiday maybe even rivaling Christmas, because of its inherent drama and fun and dressing up and things.

Your dad has told me such lovely stories about Halloween parties they had for you kids when you were little out at the beautiful sprawling home in Moss Lane, including one where you and all your little buddies were on a hayride and your dad was dressed up like Frankenstein to come popping out of some bushes when the wagon went by. But it took a wrong turn, wound up back at the house for apple bobbing and further festivities and left your dad lurking confused, waiting for a hayride that never arrived for an hour.

One of the most beautiful things about you, my little sweetheart, is how proud you always were of your parents, how very much you loved and admired and wanted to tell people so. And that you had such a treasured, happy childhood.

I think of that and all the wonderful stories you told me, often. And today, too, when I imagine how lovely it would have been to have had a little brood of our own, showering them with love and taking them trick or treating.

I think in another world and time, the one where you are now, closer than I can imagine that is possible. Everything is possible there. And with faith and listening closely to your celestial instruction, I will find you and all of it there.

With all my love forever.

Work On The New Album

It seems like the new album, our 9th, little sweetheart, is coming forward.

I’d begun just recording the very first few ideas on voice memo when Sylvia and I were on our trip along Route One in May. I’d taken along that First Act guitar I’d had at your apartment (that now resides in your closet at your folks house, at the ready when we visit) along with a little 9 Volt mini-amp and a cheap echo/delay pedal I bought to keep out there. In the evenings when we stopped for the night, I’d set it all up in our hotel room and play for a while. The first 3 or 4 songs seemed to come that way and their working titles are all places where we recorded them - Santa Barbara, San Simeon, Mission Street.

In the last weeks I’ve worked up a set list of about 16 songs that I play through every day and lyrics have come forward for some of them too. I’m excited to share them with you every day - I know you are both present as I play them and helping me to find things even as I lay asleep. It’s the best thing that I do with my time, little sweetheart and it brings me ever so close to you, which is all I want in the whole wide world.

I love you so very much. Forever!

White Cake with Icing

I suddenly got the thought in any head the other night, little sweetheart, to make a white cake. It struck me that even though I very much like a nice white cake with white icing, that I’d never actually made one myself. I had to read about it. You need to separate the yolks - I’d never done that. It came out pretty good, tho!

It’s so funny to think that I barely did any cooking, really, before you brought me into your life. I remember you eyeing my kitchen for supplies, then making a list and taking us to Bed, Bath & Beyond to kit everything out. It’s funny because I cook all the time now! I started of course because I so loved cooking for you. But I continue whenever I’m out visiting and parents and all the time when Sylvia is here and even really just for myself.

Making a cake always makes me think of you, of course, little sweetheart and as I was I also remembered how much you liked those little vanilla sandwich cookies - I think they call them “cameos”.

Sometimes, little sweetheart, I think there was and is a part of you that was always preparing me for everything I’d have to go through until we got to be in The Forever. Things I need, you showed me, you gave me the tools to do them - how to be good to myself and how to work, the work itself, too. Like a thousand other gifts, this was something you put into my hands when you took me into your life and heart. I’m so grateful for you, little sweetheart. Forever I am.

In Dreams Again!

You were in my dreams last night, little sweetheart! Thank goodness! I always feel so much better and feel like I’m doing good things when you appear. Thank you!

The one I most remember is the one this morning just before fully waking. It’s still a bit cloudy but we were with your mom and a couple of friends - I can’t quite remember who, they were two guys I knew from the old days, I think - and we had just arrived. Your mom had expected us to fly but somehow we’d wound up driving all the way to California from New York. We’d started out just to go a little way and then wound up driving the entire distance across the country.

Everything was a completely normal with you and I. Nothing bad had ever happened and it was just routine and altogether lovely. I’d just been for a run, too, I think, because my hair was still all wet and sweaty from my skully. Your mom was talking about a movie they’d seen and that we shouldn’t even bother. We could see it when it came out on Netflix or something.

What struck me most about the dream was just how wonderfully mundane it seemed. Everything was fine. We were together, all of us, and happy. Unworried.

Thank you for coming to me. I’m so grateful and I love you always. Forever.

Thoughts of Boston With You

Working on the book just now, little sweetheart, and I’m thinking of our time together in Boston as I write about it. The season has something to do with it too because it’s nearly autumn here now and it was late autumn then.

I’ve so many memories of being there with you in the little apartment you had on Bay Street Road while you were working at The Huntington. Even though I’d been to Boston several times before and many times since, any time I’m there or even think of the city, my thoughts are of you. It seemed, like indeed every moment that I spent with you does, to be bathed in a golden kind of light, glowing and brilliant and perfect.

When I think of heaven, I pray that these times are for all times. That we can remain in each moment as long as we want to and fly to another as the whim takes us. As long as I am at your side my heart is full.

How very much I love you, my little sweetheart. Please draw near me today and take me to you the moment heaven will allow. With all my love forever.

To Do Better

I had a bad night a couple of nights ago, little sweetheart, and awoke with such a feeling of regret and disappointment in myself. For the last few days I’ve been endeavoring to do as much as I can to get things done, be productive and find ways to be kind.

Yesterday, I picked up a few things at the grocery store and I stopped in the baking aisle and got some cookie mix. I decided to bake some cookies and give them away to my neighbors here on the 5th floor and the lion’s share to Sister Catherine and the nuns over at the rectory at Sacred Heart. Sister Catherine wasn’t in when I rang the bell but another nun, Sister Naomi was. She remembered me and I’d brought along one of our new postcards which has all the album and singles covers, so there are several pictures of you. She asked about it, so I told her some about you. Sister Catherine already knows and prays for you. I like meeting new people and being able to tell them about you.

And it made me think, also, of one time being in Davis with you when you suddenly just got up and decided to make some cookies. You were disappointed that they didn’t come out as good as you had hoped but I thought they were delicious and that it was a lovely thing to do. I was so grateful to be with you.

And I still am, little sweetheart, so grateful, indeed, to belong to you. My treasure. Forever. Please be near me and help me be the best person I can be. With all my love forever.

Mini-Documentary

Little sweetheart, we’ve finished rolling out the documentary about the making of Til Morning Is Nigh.

Each Friday for the last six weeks we’d been uploading a new “episode” of the six part interview and a new music video from the album. The whole thing is up now in a playlist entitled The Making of “Til Morning Is Nigh” on the band’s YouTube channel.

I think two of my favorite clips are Part Six of the interview, set in Central Park, because I talk quite a bit about you. And the video for “Noel” because your vocals are so prominent and there are lots of images of you including some footage of you on our trip to Ireland.

Thinking of you always and with love forever.

Jesse

Today, little sweetheart, is the sad anniversary of your beloved big brother Jesse's tragic passing.

It happened just a little over a year before I met you and was still so hard to comprehend - you loved and missed him so very much. And although I was not lucky enough to have met dear Jesse, I have dreamt of him many times, doubtless because he remains so very near us, even now, nearer than we can imagine - just as you feel so near yourself - and because you and your mom and dad and his dear friend and ours, Noah, have all told me so many wonderful stories of him. You never stopped telling me, little sweetheart, about Jesse. Just as you told me so many stories of your childhood, of your mom and dad and how very much you loved all of them.

Even before I dreamt of Jesse, I felt I somehow knew him. And I have dreamt of him, many times. Often, you are there, too. I'm always so grateful when you visit me in dreams, my little sweetheart.

One of the dreams that comes most to mind today is one where I was in the Richland Road kitchen. Your mom and dad were there and Jesse too, who was kind of holding court. He was charming and hilarious and we all were enthralled. Then, you yourself, little sweetheart, came through the swinging door from the dining room, as if you had simply come downstairs from your room. I ran to you and gathered you in my arms weeping with joy. I wouldn’t let go. Jesse lightly teased me until he understood and then he and your mom explained that everything was okay. We were all together now forever and nothing could take us away from each other again. It was okay to let go, really. The room was full of love and I felt like I wanted to be there forever. And I was.

I think this is something like what simply is but I just can’t yet quite see. I believe. I believe that you and your brother are so very near but just out of sight of mortal eyes. And that you are eternal and always - that we all are - and that I will find that, find you, on that day when I finally join you.

I love you with all my heart and soul. Forever. 

Little Flashlight

Thinking today, little sweetheart of that little flashlight I got for you. Do you remember?

You were working at ACT at the YC. Craig Slaight had hired you as the dialect coach for an Irish play they were doing. I came with you to one of the dress rehearsals where you both were taking notes and you noticed that he had this neat little flashlight, a kind of a very soft reading light, flat, in the shape and size of a Metrocard, basically, or a bookmark.

You were so taken with it, I began to look around to find one for you and when I got back to New York I found one in the gift store at The Met. It had a nice little print of a Degas on one side and when you squeezed it, a tiny soft little reading light came on. I wrapped it up with a little note and sent it straight out to you the next day by post.

One of the things I most loved and most miss is watching you delight in something and quickly procuring it and giving it to you. You are the great blessing of my life and I always want you to know how grateful I am and keen to make you happy. Love you forever!

This Warmer Weather

It’s nearing the end of September, little sweetheart, but we had an unseasonably warm day yesterday and and even hotter one today - it was nearly 90f! I don’t like running on the weekend because the path along the river gets quite crowded but I do tend to go for a long walk instead.

Today I was just going to go up to about West End Collegiate and back, but I decided to stop in at Zabar’s for a little snack and then headed farther up into Riverside Park to have it. I hadn’t been up there in a while and it was prettier than I remembered. I sat on a bench there overlooking the Hudson, the late afternoon turning to early evening and the light brilliant.

It made me think so much of you and the long days of September in San Francisco with you when it’s at its most warm and sunbathed. I thought of the two of us taking one of our epically long walks, maybe one of those in Golden Gate Park around the botanicals or maybe all the way to the windmill.

The changing seasons are always so bittersweet, my little sweetheart, and I ache for you. But every thought and memory lets me know that you remain, that you are near and forever and that I will be with you again and always. With all my love forever.

Faith!

I was walking over to the river this afternoon, little sweetheart, on my way to the pedestrian path to go for a run. I walk from the house over to where it starts just below Riverside Park and I was walking up 10th Avenue under some scaffolding that kind of cuts the sidewalk in half, making two lanes.

Suddenly someone came whisking past me very very close and startling me because they were talking. They weren't on foot. They were on an electric skateboard speeding past but very near because the sidewalk is so narrow there. I stopped in my tracks because it really did startle me and I watched him keep buzzing up the street, a bit annoyed.

Then, as I calmed down a little, I realized what he'd said. He had earbuds in, so he was probably talking to someone on his phone but all I heard was one word. It was this: faith.

What a strange and wonderful thing, however inadvertent. And it made me think immediately of you, little sweetheart.

Faith. Yes, faith, indeed. With all my love forever.

August Ache

It’s the last day of August, little sweetheart. And somehow it feels terribly sad.

There’s maybe something about the season you are named for and feeling, fearing its passing. There’s a kind of ache to it, somehow. I know I just have to live, to breathe in these moments and let them pass, feeling whatever comes up. There’s no fighting it.

And maybe somehow it will help inform the next moment and the next as I do my best to do as you would have me do.

I used to feel something else, I remember, in these days as autumn neared. It was a kind of renewed resolve to do good work and diligently as the last four months of the year lay ahead. Let me do that, now, little sweetheart. Let me continue with fervor and discipline and make you proud in these days ahead.

Please be near me, won’t you? Keep me on your true path. With all my love forever.

Incoming

Somehow, little sweetheart, it seems like the new album, our 9th, is beginning to come forward.

I’m not working on it in a concentrated way yet, tracking or anything. But I do record voice memos of ideas and guitar parts and sounds and melodies that you bring to me in dreams and the half waking hours.

I keep putting them in a playlist to listen back to and work from and it’s up 29 tracks just now! More than a few are just pieces, fragments, but even so, listening to the while thing in there background as I’m writing or working on something else, it catches my ear.

I’ve got a lot of work to do before I really get started in earnest but it’s surprised me how this us coming forward and how much of it already has.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be too surprised after all because how well I know that it’s you! It’s you who guide my hand and my heart. You who send me what I need to know and hear and have. My angel. My true love.

Yes, I won’t tarry. I will keep on, move forward and do as you lead me to. Thank you, my little sweetheart. In all things, please be with me. With all my love forever.

In A Wonderful Dream!

In a wonderful dream last night you were with me again, little sweetheart!

We were in SF and going around places together. You had little errands to run and were were stopping by places meeting up with people briefly who you had to check in with, have a word or two. I was so overjoyed to be with you and finally understanding that even though it seems like we die, we don’t really - we’re always and eternal and just have to find our way back to that, back to one another. I told you, my heart racing with emotion, how broken I had been when you passed, when you fell. How I stood every day in the ICU holding your hand praying for a miracle and waiting for you, giving you all my love. I told you now I understood better because of what had happened to me myself when my own heart stopped for ten minutes.

Life and death are not what we think they are until we really know and now I was so grateful just to be with you. I was worried about things from before. I didn’t want to make mistakes or let my ego ever get in the way, to be jealous or do anything that would be in even mild disagreement ever again. I just wanted to treasure and be with you. Always.

One of the places we stopped was to talk to a guy, he was sitting at a production table or some kind of desk maybe, at work, and you were talking to him about an apartment. I thought maybe it was the idea of trying to find me a place near you, near your old apartment in the Sunset but what you actually wanted and told me was something new - you wanted to buy a house that we could live in together. Also, this guy had something to do with theatrical venue or something. He was going to help us put on a play for you to be in, one of my plays, I think.

Mostly what I remember of the dream though, little sweetheart, is just the feeling it gave me. It was so real being with you, back at your side. It was absolutely exhilarating. My heart really was racing,. And it was such proof positive that nothing else in my life could ever compare to that feeling of being with you and belonging. Just magic. You are. My love, my true love. My miracle. Forever.

On Wings, of the Wind

Little sweetheart, we’re going back over the footage now of the documentary we shot that I was telling you about.

All of it is done on location and meant to evoke the nature of a quiet conversation and as it was recorded that way - quietly, with the ambient sounds of the city and other environs all around - Sylvia had the idea to add subtitles and close captioning (in both English and French). We’re working on that now, working ahead. A few episodes are already up but we’re working on ones that won’t be aired until next month.

The last one, part six, was filmed in Central Park. We went up to the north of the park to The Ravine, where I had never been, and saw the little waterfalls there and the big green pond they call “The Pool”. It went well but we tried a second time a little farther south by The Great Lawn and the light was really nice there, so I think that one is the keeper. The other one will probably be an “extra” after all six parts have been published.

Anyway, like I said, we both felt so close to you during all of this and maybe especially so on this day because I was talking about you a lot. And we didn’t even notice this until now, but listening to playback there is a moment where I’m talking about how I feel that the there of us, you, myself and Sylvia, almost become like one voice during the album, and this incredibly mysterious gust of wind just appears, like underscoring all of that as I say it and then ascends.

How well I know that you near, my little sweetheart. How blest I am. How very much I love you. Forever. Forever.

"The Making Of..."

Little sweetheart, we’ve completed a documentary about the making of last year’s album, Til Morning is Nigh.

It’s a six part interview with me that Sylvia filmed just absolutely gorgeously on location in iconic setting here in NYC - up at The Cloisters, on the roof of the studio with the skyline at dusk, in Central Park near The Great Lawn - and it’s being released via Slugg Records episodically, a new part each Friday over the next several weeks. There’s also five music videos from the album.

It was so interesting to work on and you felt so close to us both as we did.

As ever, it’s all for you, little sweetheart. With all my love…

Days...

I so don’t want them to be, little sweetheart, but sometimes it seems that most days are bad days. I miss you so very much and the ache leaves me to just give up, lay down, hope that you’ll find me in dreams, linger in sleep.

And it hurts doubly because I know I need to be doing things - the things like writing for you that keep you near me and honor you. I feel bad and then I feel guilty and even worse.

I’m trying to get better at it. I’m trying to forgive myself when these feelings so twist me and bring me to a halt. If I can just live in the quiet of it and ask for your help, pray quietly and sincerely, in time the darker clouds will lift, they will pass and I’ll be able to do as I’m meant to, of, for and about you.

Please help today, little sweetheart. I miss you so.

NYC to SF - 1914

I was walking home after my run today little sweetheart and I saw something interesting.

There are little video displays on the bus stops in New York, now. The time and temperature and other info is displayed and sometimes little “On This Day in NYC” fun facts will appear. One of them day caught my eye.

It said that today - July 29 - in 1914 marked the first ever transcontinental telephone call and that it was placed in New York and answered in San Francisco.

It made me think immediately of you, of course, and our many many epic hours long call every night when we were apart, me here, you there. Before I had a decent cellphone, I’d lay on the plaid couch with my bottom of the line AT&T Nokia balanced on my left ear talking with you into the night or sitting on the floor of the kitchen under the window on the old landline. Hearing your voice every day made being apart bearable, little sweetheart.

And now, talking to you every day in my prayers and later night conversations before I fall asleep, devout in my faith that we will be together again and forever is the thing that fortifies me. Please by near me today, little sweetheart. Today and every day, until That Day. With all my love forever.

Dutch Radio

You’re on the radio, little sweetheart! In The Netherlands! Last month we heard from a Dutch radio program that very much liked last year’s double-album Sometimes in Dreams, and tonight they let us know they were going to feature one go the tracks on the air last night. Radio Hoogveen is the Dutch station and the program, De Mist, plays mostly post-rock.

They broadcast “Never” from disc one. The intro and back announce weren’t in English so I’m not entirely sure what he said but I think it was good! Ha!

In all earnestness, I got very emotional. I hadn’t heard the track in a while, maybe since we were working so assiduously on the album prior to its release. My heart immediately soared to you, as it often does. You are always in my thoughts, little sweetheart. And tonight you’re on the air! In The Netherlands! With all my love forever.

DCfC

Little sweetheart, Sylvia and I walked up to The Met yesterday through Central Park from the west to the east side. I usually take the same route, crossing over around W66th Street near Tavern on the Green, past or through Sheep’s Meadow, past the bands shall and then down the stairs to Bethesda Fountain before continuing on past the Boathouse.

Yesterday there were a couple off buskers, a guitarist and a drummer, playing songs through a small cube amp with both the guitar and a mic for vocals. We walked around past them slowly watching and listening - they’d set out a little box for tips and had their CD for sale -  then sat on the far side of the fountain looking at the surroundings, including the lagoon which was at high tide after all the rain we’d gotten here.

The duo was transitioning into another song, I thought I recognized it. Then it came to me. It was  DCfC’s“I’ll Follow You Into The Dark”. Tears came to my eyes instantly as I sat there listening, little sweetheart. I remembered you taking me to see them in Sacramento for my birthday and how I held you and we listened and swayed and cried together. I walked over to the buskers and put five dollars in their little tip box and put my hand to my heart and said. “thank you”.

You are with me, I know. You are with my everywhere. Until that day when I may truly join you with faith and pure love. Forever. Forever.

New Single

Little sweetheart, today we released that new track I was telling you about, the one I composed and we recorded  for the experimental radio show, The Dark Outside, in London. I did a bit more work on the mix after it premiered on the special event broadcast on 87.7fm London the night of the Solstice and today we released it as an exclusive single on Bandcamp and Slugg Records.

I love how you central you are - your soaring vocals - to the track and I’ve been hearing the same from lots of people who haven’t heard us before. It will always be so very much of, for and about you. I’m starting to do the earnest pre-production work and composing what will be our 9th album.

Please be near me as I continue. You make everything better. You are everything itself. With all my love forever.

First Burning Man

In those days that I had to wait so impatiently, ten years ago, for your arrival, little sweetheart, you surprised me by saying that you had decided to go to Burning Man for a day or two. You’d never been before and, frankly, I couldn’t understand exactly why you wanted to now - you hated being in the sun or being too hot and it didn’t seem like something you would enjoy but your friend Danya had been many times and she was going again this year and she convinced you to try it.

You found your way but mostly only coming out at night, staying in your tent and trying to keep cool and sleeping until the sun went down and then galavanting around the desert after dark when it was cooler and the nightlife was in full swing. You loved dancing, even just on your own, and that mostly what you liked at Burning Man, I think.

There were some things you didn’t like about it but mostly you wanted to do it again - with me. You thought of all the ways you could make a second time a bit more comfortable and you said you’d been thinking about how much you wished I was there for all of it with you. I remember how excitedly you told me about it after and even a month or so later when you and I were together in Davis - I can remember exactly where we were getting out of your car and continuing talking down the street to Blockbuster to get a movie - that you wanted to go the next year with me.

I never got to do that with you, little sweetheart. And even though I’m a bit sun averse like you and the desert and club scene didn’t immediately appeal, there’s nothing and nowhere I could be with you that wouldn’t be magic. I think of it still. And I love you forever.

On This Day in Summerlove History...

With you, little sweetheart, and your parents, on July 4, 2010, during our vacation on the Oregon Coast. Love you forever.

Butterfly Way

A butterfly followed me for an entire block, little sweetheart, on my way home from my run, this afternoon.

She fluttered in close around my head and then high away at my right, only to return, circling around again and again and leading me on. I spoke, saying "thank you" and "hi, sweetheart" because I knew it was you encouraging and comforting me and strengthening my faith.  How I love you!

Thank you, my little sweetheart! Love you forever.

10 Years

It’s a new month, little sweetheart, it’s July and I’m thinking that ten years ago I had just returned to NYC. I’d been in San Francisco almost all of 2009 at that point, only coming back to New York once for a week at the end of March to deal with a few things. I’d deferred a jury duty notice to July 1 because I’d heard that that was a good time for scheduling your service - no one wants to impanel a jury over the holiday - so I flew back. It also coincided with me getting a call from Wilson to help him out on a play he was directing. Wilson and you & I had been working together on one of my plays and would continue, actually having a reading with you in the main role later that August - but right now he’d lost an actor in his show and wanted me to replace him.

So, I was going foo NYC for jury duty and to stay on for the play. It sort of turned out to be the end of my tenure in SF. I’d come back again and again to be with you and it didn’t seem final at the time but I think going back to NYC and getting this job and then another and then another after that, may have marked the end of my trying so hard to fit in San Francisco’s scene which seemed closed and uninterested after Chris had left the Magic. I didn’t miss that but I missed you terribly. And it hurts my heart even now to think of an email you’d sent me about a friend of yours looking for a housemate, which you’d sent on helpfully but added that you thought that time had passed for me to settle there.

The better news, developing, was that you too had become disenchanted with SF and were thinking more and more about coming here to live. Indeed, in a year’s time we had serious plans for you to move here and your parents were even on board offering their help too. Ten years ago, little sweetheart, ended one chapter of our story but began a second one when you joined me here a few weeks later to see the play and stay on doing a reading of 7PGS at Rip Torn’s house in Chelsea, meeting more people here and beginning work with the band in earnest.

You called me that weekend after I got here to say you were at Outside Lands, a music festival that The National was appearing at and that it seemed ridiculous at I was not at your side. It was for us. For us together. Soon everything would be and I would have you in my arms again. Just as I believe now with faith will happen again and forever because it the way of things. It is the Meant To Be. With all my love forever.

Christmas in June

Little sweetheart, I have so long treasured your last Christmas present to me - the beautiful black leather jacket you gave me that December morning in 2010.

I've worn it almost every day since, even in quite warm weather and, sadly, the jacket had been showing signs of it. There had begun to be quite dramatic damage and tears to the leather particularly under the right arm. I'd been thinking about taking it somewhere but wasn't sure where to go.

When I was last out in NorCal seeing your parents, I told your mom about it and she thought maybe it could be patched, but when I actually showed it to her she thought it was too far gone. I'd very much underestimated its damage when telling her, I guess, because I didn't want it to be so. I stood there in the kitchen and cried and cried. But I didn't completely give up.

I looked up leather restoration places in NYC and found one that had been in business since 1930, and had really good reviews, over on Lexington Avenue. I sent them pictures and they told me to bring it in. Even they were shocked by the damage that looked worse in person than in photos. The woman there cautioned me that it was a very big job and would probably require replacing both arm panels. She asked if I'd ever wear it as a vest. That's how bleak things looked.

She could see how upset I was. I should've taken it off whenever I started sweating, I said. And I should've brought it in at the first sign of damage. But the lady was very kind, "you didn't do anything wrong", she said. "I'm not even sure we have this kind of leather, she added, but I don't know, let me see."

She went into the back and I felt like when you're at the doctor's office and waiting for the test results. She returned with a big piece of fabric. "We do have something!", she said. It was black and soft leather like your jacket. She said it was pigskin. Did I want to leave it and think about it over the weekend? It was 4:30pm and they were closing until Monday. I didn't know what to do. I wanted to call your mom. Finally, a bit lost, I said, okay, I'd leave it and think about it.

When I got home I told your mom. And I decided. There are so many things I can't change, little sweetheart. Things I would do anything to make right. But I can't. They're out of my control. But at least I could do this. I could try.

That was three weeks ago. Yesterday I got an email from them saying the jacket was completed, that it was beautiful and that she thought I would be thrilled. I walked over there this afternoon and it was true. The jacket is saved. It's perfect. No one would ever know there had been the slightest damage. They replaced both arm panels and it's impossible to discern they weren't the original. The lining is the same as it was but also completely mended without a trace of errant stitching. The cuffs have been redone and reinforced. And they treated the leather over all.

It's miraculous. Just like you, my miracle girl. I sent pictures to your mom and she agrees. I'll be more careful with it from now on but it is a treasure forever, as are you. Thank you, my love. Like Christmas in June.

Soaring! Ascension!

Little sweetheart, we got a surprise tonight. We thought the guys from the London radio show, Sonic Imperfections, on Resonance FM were going to play a track or two from Sometimes in Dreams, and we are assured that they will be in an upcoming program, but instead they played the closing track from our album, Dream Together - "To The Other Half of the Sky".

It's one of our most personal songs, little sweetheart, and nearly eleven minutes long. It took up quite a chunk of their broadcast. They said incredibly lovely things, too, calling it their favorite and saying it had been on their turntable at home for months.

One of the things that's so powerful about it, of course, is you, little sweetheart. Your soaring vocals, solo, open and close the song that builds and builds and builds and then slowly unwinds, ascending. Below is the video we assembled for it, for you.

I need you more than ever. With all my love...

Resonance FM - London

Little sweetheart, just got word - more London news - that we will be featured on London radio again this coming Monday June 24th. Back on London’s great Resonance FM.

Their experimental/post-rock program Sonic Imperfections will be featuring tracks from last year’s double-album, our 7th, Sometimes in Dreams.

The live broadcast goes out Monday night at 10pm UK time but it will also be archived and listenable on the station’s MixCloud. I’ll post that info after air.

You’re on the radio, little sweetheart - in London! Love you forever.

Sugar Fox

Little sweetheart, as I work as diligently and as best I can every day on the book, my desk is filled with open note books, scraps of paper, post-it’s, and scribbled notes reminding me of something I need to make sure to get down.

Aside from having the most unintelligible scrawl, impossible to decipher (excepting for you, so proudly an expert and discerning and reading my handwriting, the chief translator of my words to anyone listening), I don’t anyone could piece this thing together the way I have its contents laying abut everywhere. Part of my prayer every day for you, for us, is that, if possible, let me finish all I’m meant to do before I go (and gratefully join you) because no one else could make head or tail of this, I’m afraid.

One little note here, meant for inclusion in the chart about our time in Boston when you were doing the production of Rock n Roll up there, is Jack Willis overhearing you talking on the phone and explaining to someone how to spell Serafin.

I’d heard it many times but it was his inaugural one.

“Serafin”, you would say. “S’ as in ‘sugar’; ‘F’ as in fox”.

Shaking his head after you hung up, he smiled and said, “Sugar Fox. Of course. Of course…”

Damn straight, my gorgeous girl. Sugar fox, indeed. Love you forever.

On A Night Such As This

Little sweetheart, with London so in mind from both remembrances of our travels together and the current goings on there with the band, I’m reminded just now of a wonderful photo that Joy took of us your last night in Kentish Town.

We’re at The Boston Arms up near Tufnell Park and she snapped a shot just after I arrived, sliding into the booth with you and you, a bit tipsy on gin and tonics, gave me a big kiss.

What a lovely memory. What a wonderful picture. Love you forever.

Dark Outside

Little sweetheart, one of the upcoming London things is something Sylvia actually came across and let me know of. An experimental radio project in tandem with the London Borough of Culture is broadcasting a night of music - 24 hours - over the Summer Solstice and looking for unreleased material to premiere during the event.

It won’t be streamed or archived. You have to actually be within the transmission range of London’s 87.7fm. And the whole thing is coming from the woods of Waltham Forest. You would love this, little sweetheart! I wish we could actually attend.

But even though we won’t be there in person, I did compose, record, mix and submit a piece to be part of it. It’ll go out over the air sometime during the broadcast overnight on June 20th. It’s an exclusive for the project which is called The Dark Outside but we thinking of maybe releasing it later as a digital single, a limited release, possibly on Bandcamp.

As ever, one of your soaring archived vocals is at the center of the piece. You’re on the radio, little sweetheart, in a forest! With all my love forever…

London (Keeps) Calling

Little sweetheart, just after the news I was telling you a few days ago, we had occasion to hear about a couple of other London-centric things regarding the band, which I’ll tell you about in due course, of course!

But I’m also thinking how very fitting it is both because 11 years ago about this time is when you and I were first in London together and coincidentally I’ve been writing about that very trip at this point in the book over the last several days.


I won’t repeat everything there here but I am reminded, it’s so fresh in the memory, how wonderful it was to be there with you, walking around and visiting old haunts that had been my own and I so wanted to share.

On one of those many nights, walking along the Thames hand in hand, it struck me how terribly lonely I had been, maybe for my entire life until there was you. And coupled with the overwhelming feeling of love, holding your hand as we crossed the bridge I began to cry. And you held me and said, so very kindly, so very gently, so very wisely, “don’t start missing me yet, I’m right here”.

Yes, my little sweetheart. Quite right. I know you are. Closer than I can imagine. With all my love forever.

From London tonight...

Little sweetheart, we've gotten news of quite a lovely review of our album, Til Morning Is Nigh, from London tonight. The review is by Ed Pinsent -  the editor of the long-running UK music zine, The Sound Projector and presenter of the Friday night radio show of the same name on London's Resonance FM. An excerpt below. As always, for you, little sweetheart. All for you.

(excerpt):
NATIVITY GIFT
Bipolar Explorer - "Til Morning Is Nigh" (Slugg Records)
Review by Ed Pinsent, Editor

An unusual and touching album of songs and spoken word from Bipolar Explorer, a band in NYC calling themselves a “dreampop trio”…Til Morning Is Nigh: A Dream Of Christmas (SLUGG RECORDS) offers their versions of various old and obscure carols and Christmas songs from England and France, all sung in an extremely low-key DIY fashion not too far apart from the school of Sebadoh.
 
I’ve never been keen on the term “shoegaze” for this sort of introverted music, but Bipolar Explorer happily embrace it and wear it as a badge of pride. The album is interspersed with spoken word elements and recitation, all in French, all similarly unassuming – telling the Christmas story, in tones that are reassuring and sincere. The entire album is programmed to “segue”, meaning all 23 tracks are delivered in a continuous rush, and the aim is to create an impression of a radio broadcast “drifting over the late night airwaves”.
 
By now you may have formed an impression of the romantic and poetical sensibilities of Michael Serafin-Wells and Summer Serafin, plus their French protégé Sylvia Solanas (who joins them) with this new record that beguiles rather than overwhelms the listener.
 
Enchanted by dreams and dream-worlds, the themes of the oneiric life of slumberland and night visions regularly surface in their work. Indeed the album before this was called Sometimes In Dreams.
 
There’s a tragic dimension to the band’s history too, since band member Summer Serafin passed away in 2011, leaving partner Michael to carry on the project; and he’s pretty dedicated to preserving her memory, through photographs and texts – and even recordings of her voice, which continue to appear; she’s on this record.  He bears this tragedy with humility and acceptance.
 
Maybe tragedy is one of the hallmarks of Bipolar Explorer’s music; Michael himself nearly joined the angelic choir recently, suffering heart failure outside the hospital he’d just been released from, after being hit by a car.
 
Let’s hope he sticks around long enough to keep making music, as this album is a tiny gem; its simplicity can’t help but win you over, and its sincerity pours out of every moment. The record becomes mesmerizing and fascinating through repetition. In sum, voices, instruments and production all come together with lashings of heart and soul.
 
Intended to be heard all the year round, but now I’m looking forward to playing it at Christmas.
 
-Ed Pinsent
Editor, The Sound Projector - London



(Article in full here)

Memorial Day

It's Memorial Day, little sweetheart. Often seen as observing veterans of foreign wars, I think it's even more appropriate for remembering those we love, regardless.

Happened to watch our video for "Ocean" last night and it made me think so much about you, who it is very much for and about.

With all my love forever.

You Are So Good To Me

Whenever I’m feeling regretful, which is often, little sweetheart, and my heart is breaking for how much I miss you and how much I hate myself for wasting even a moment of the precious few I was blessed to have at your side, I hear your voice and it helps and comforts me. Whenever I think of something you used to say to me, maybe the thing that you said most often. And that is :

“You’re so good to me.”

You have no idea (or perhaps you do, you know everything, don’t you my darling girl?) how much remembering you say those words lightens my heart.

Perhaps, somehow, you knew exactly how very much I would need them.

Thank god (literally) for you, little sweetheart. When I despair so thoroughly, it is you who always picks me up, reminding me. That you felt that and told me so so very many times helps me forgive myself for all my many failings.

Thank god you found me. Thank god I found a way to show you my love and gratitude.

How I long for you! Thank you for sending these words back to me again today when the clouds were all around me. You clear my clear. You are the sky itself.

With all my love forever. Forever. 

Winding Down

I’m coming up on something of a milestone, little sweetheart. My physical therapy is winding down. They all think I’m doing very well and have made significant progress in the three months.

I’ve been going since July. I had to wait until my legs, which were so badly injured, had healed enough for me to begin rehabbing my shoulder. I’ve been going 3 times a week since then. But they’re finally about to “graduate” me next week.

In all of these challenges this year, little sweetheart - waking up in the ER, dying for 10 minutes, the long recovery - I’ve felt that it was only because of you having planted seeds inside me that I could find the strength to keep going. You, from your celestial vantage and dear dear Sylvia, who has been my earthly advocate along with your wonderful parents.

In all, I’m very grateful and seek to know what I’m meant to do as I remain on this side of the divide. I know there’s a reason and I’ll try to quiet myself and listen for your instruction and guidance.

The PT has become such a part of my life. The staff are skilled and filled with kindness. It’s a beautiful place, really, being in the company of others wounded, vulnerable and trying their best to recover. It’s often so very moving. Knowing your own history of such struggles, I feel even ever closer.

Given how much it’s been a part of my life, Sylvia asks what am I going to do with all the time. Find ways to be kind, I think. Do my work, our work. And, like you yourself, my glorious angel, give love and gratitude.

With all my love forever.

Change and What Remains

I finally got back up to the little church where they have the Wednesday night candlelight service, little sweetheart. I’m glad I did because it was the penultimate one of the year. They usually go all the way through June before taking an hiatus until October but this year they’re ending next week.

It was good to sit quietly, thinking of and praying for you. To sing the songs all the way at the back, on my own. To come forward and light a candle and say our prayer. To sit in the silence during the centerpiece meditation when the sanctuary grows yet darker and to hear birdsong outside, knowing you are near.
For nearly three years this ritual was a very integral part of my life, little sweetheart. Its mindfulness helped me quiet myself, I think, and keep you near.

I was on a walk yesterday and wound up going past. I found myself thinking how much had changed there, two of the main pastors moving on to other parishes and all that’s happened to myself, how I nearly died and did leave my body for ten minutes. While I was looking at a block of Broadway just north of there that is now, shockingly, half vacant, one of the first people I ever met at the church happened by recognizing and calling out my name. She was very involved there and has retreated now herself.

I’m not sure how I would characterize my own experience. Have I retreated? I just know that although things change and the ways in which I seek you do themselves, you remain constant. It’s all for you, little sweetheart. You are my home. Please always be with me.

With all my love forever.

Something About England...

For some reason, little sweetheart, England has been on mind of late. Maybe it’s because you and I both had such a history there - you going to grad school at Oxford and my work in the theatre in London - before our visits there together. Indeed, the last time I was there, you were at any side.

Perhaps because I’m in the midst of writing about some of that just now as I work on the first book, it’s coming to mind more and more.

I know much has changed there and it’s still almost unimaginable for me to think of going without you, but it’s all very much on my mind, somehow.

I’ll listen ever more closely, little sweetheart. Perhaps you’ll tell me why. With all my love forever.

Day 5

On the last day of the road trip, little sweetheart. It’s a mini version of something I’ve always wanted to do. I know it wouldn’t be your cup of tea - how you hated being in the car! Ha! But there have been lots of stops, pulling over and talking in the amazing vistas of sea and sky and mountains. We’ve taken lots of pictures and Sylvia has been filming as I’ve driven the winding mountain roads. I think we’ll certainly find some of the footage in future videos for both bands.

Last night we stayed in Carmel. We didn’t book the last night until we were already on the trip halfway down the coast. I was avoiding Carmel, to be honest, little sweetheart. Not because it isn’t lovely but because I spent such wonderful times there with you that I thought it would hurt far too much. I’ll tell you why, even though I know you already know. You know everything.

After your tragic passing, I still had over a week left before my originally scheduled flight home. It was less expensive to rent a car and stay in California than to change my ticket and go home and I couldn’t think what to do with myself anyway. I thought maybe I’d drive down to LA and see some friends, taking a trip along Highway One, just like this one Sylvia and I have finally done to Santa Barbara and back.

My first stop was Carmel, where you and I had spent such wonderful times. I had this idea that I would find your spirit, newly freed of your body, lingering there. That I would find you. But what I mostly found was unendurable pain. I walked the little streets where I had held your hand, just months before, and wept. I tried to go down to the beach where I had held you in my arms but I limped to a tree and hid there, too broken to make it to the water. I went back to the hotel room I’d checked into an hour earlier and collapsed on the floor in tears, trying to get someone, anyone, on the phone. A friend, one of my agents in New York, told me to get out of there. Just check back out, get in the rental car and drive back to Marin where I’d been staying with Chris and Sheri.

And that’s what I did. For a long long time, for years, I was afraid any travel would be exactly like this - that if it was a place you and I had been, it would crush me, and if it was a place that we hadn’t, I would miss you so achingly I would break in two. This morning, little sweetheart, I don’t feel that way - I feel you with me, with us, instead, finally.

We’ve been visiting some of the Missions along the way. I didn’t even realize Carmel had one of them. It turned out to be, perhaps, our favorite. Just before we went inside, locking the car, I looked down at my phone. It was exactly 11:11am. Angel time. How well I knew you were right there.

Later, we walked down to the beach. I went to the other side of that tree where I wept before and took off my shoes and headed down to the water’s edge. I went a long way down the beach. Sylvia had stayed behind just watching me as I prayed and spoke to you. She took the most amazing picture of the moment.

A year ago, for 10 minutes, my heart stopped. In that strange place between worlds I felt the efforts of you, little sweetheart, and angels on both sides of the divide turn me back, return me to earth. I still feel so devastatingly sad sometimes, little sweetheart, but I know there must be a reason I remain. Please help and guide me, as I know you’ve done today.

I love you with all my heart and soul. Forever. Forever.

Bixby Canyon Bridge

It’s the penultimate day of our road trip, little sweetheart. I’d read in preparation for it that we’d be going over the Bixby Canyon Bridge, known to us both from the DCfC song of the same name. I remember when the album came out, listening to it all and this opening track in particular, over and over. There was a line about “all the way from San Francisco” that had caught my ear and I kept singing it to you. You had to be the one to point out that, as often was the case with Ben Gibbard’s songs, the pretty melody concealed a very dark, sad lyric. It get that now.

There’s no sign anywhere near the bridge itself. The sight of it is pretty iconic but there’s a second bridge that is not unlike it, so it’s easy to get confused. Sylvia and I were trying to find it on Day 2 as we left Monterrey for Big Sur and it wasn’t until later that we realized we’d already crossed it. On our way back now, we made sure to locate it. It’s pretty spectacular. Maybe there’s no sign, if there ever was one, because fans kept making off with it. That’s my theory anyway.

We both got out and took pictures and when I turned around Sylvia snapped one of me with the bridge in the background. I’m wearing the leather jacket that you gave to me for Christmas, our last Christmas together in 2010. I wear it constantly. Indeed, some of the leather has torn under the right arm and I’m in a bit of a panic about it. I need to try to find a leather restoration place when we get back to NYC.

Meantime, here I am, listening closely and quietly for your voice, your beautiful spirit, your flawless guidance. I love you with all my heart and soul and always always will. Even if, as the song says,  “I’ve still got miles to go”.

With love forever.

In the Morning

I’m in California this morning, little sweetheart. Sylvia and I flew in last night. We’re staying with your parents and then going down to Santa Barbara on a five day road trip that will begin tomorrow. It’s a mini version of two little ideas I’ve had for the longest time:
1) to visit some/all of the 21 California Missions and
2) to take a leisurely trip along the coastal route of Highway One, stopping along the way wherever the spirits (namely yours!) may take us.

As I’ve woken here this morning to birdsong and the gorgeous warm California air - it’s 80f here and was still in the 40’s when we left NYC - I feel incredibly grateful, my heart full, to feel close to you and home.

It was late last night when we got in. The plane was delayed three hours. Your dad left the Enclave in long term parking for us to collect and drive back. We detoured through Davis but didn’t stop because it was about 3am.

Tomorrow, we’ll visit The Angel, where I know you are not tethered but merely alight to guide and comfort me when I myself stop by.

Please be with me, as I know you often are. With all my love.