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.