Little sweetheart, this photo of you came up in my "memories" folder today, so I thought I'd post (or probably re-post) it here.
You're in all of your Burning Man gear - goggles, scarves - your hair up and dust-highlighted from the blowing desert sands. My intrepid adventuress!
Love you forever.
Little sweetheart, eleven years ago today, I learned that my mom had died.
I was in London for the Finborough Theatre production of my play Seven Pages Unsigned. I’d just arrived two days before. Rehearsals were to begin in the morning and I was too excited to sleep, so at about 4am, I checked my email and I had one subject-lined “EMERGENCY - YOU MUST COME HOME” in all caps.
I couldn’t dial out internationally because I didn’t know how and I was alone. I feared the worst and called the friend’s - Kris & Joy - whose flat I was staying at while they were on holiday in Wales. Joy told me how to dial out, I called and got the news.
Then, I called you in San Francisco. When I told you, you burst into tears and then told me to get on Skype so you could see and help me. You and your mom arranged fights for me to return and even a car service from North London to Heathrow.
While I was flying back to New York, heartbroken, you packed up one of my suits that was hanging in your closet, and got on a plane to meet me in Detroit. When I landed at JFK, you told me to go home to my apartment, sleep and get on a flight the next morning. You spent the night, all night, at Detroit Metro, waiting for me to arrive.
When I saw you, I ran to you and you took me in your arms. Your arms, that held me up all that week through everything as I buried my mother.
Ten months later, I would lose you, too.
You did so much for me, little sweetheart, but this act of love and kindness may have been the most incredible.
I will love you forever. I miss you terribly. And I pray with faith that I will be with you again, forever and soon.
With all my love.
Little sweetheart, I don’t know what brought me to this thought of late but I’ll share it with you, here.
I was just thinking of how you took care to have your surroundings lovely and comfortable and how you were used to having such nice things but that you never so much as winced or complained enduring my rather spartan (to put it kindly!) lifestyle. My “bed” an ancient inch thick futon laid frame less on the floor, the crazy kitchen bathtub without even a shower attachment to wash your long beautiful red hair (you admitted to me that sometimes you’d slip away to the salon downstairs for a proper wash and blowout but you never complained. Watching videos on my tiny obsolete TV - I think that’s what actually prompted this whole thought last night, little sweetheart, remembering that.
Whatever this rather comfortless squalor I’d simply made do with before you found me and saved me and illumined my life with your love and protection, you simply endured without a word of complaint. Only slowly, patiently, bringing me along by suggestion and completely innocent shopping trips to Bed, Bath & Beyond.
There are so many things when I think of them, little sweetheart, that you did to care for me more than anyone ever had in my life before I met you and I’m so grateful for every one of them. And for you.
How I love you! Forever!
Little sweetheart, during this time in lockdown when churches can’t receive parishioners, I’ve looked for services online to observe.
One of them - I think I was telling you about this on Holy Week - is the historical Trinity Church, way downtown near the Battery. Their online services are beautifully shot and very thoughtful. The music is lovely and I’ve come to really like some of the liturgy, as well.
This week there was a wonderfully thoughtful sermon about Time. It’s something that is so very relevant to me, as I’m sure you know, little sweetheart. I really think there is so much to Time that mortals don’t yet perceive but that you, little sweetheart, with the angels, know to be true.
Primarily, I have faith that all of our life that seems to have passed has not passed at all but is always and eternal and that we can zoom and linger there in The Forever, just as we can be in whatever the “now” seems to us as mortals, simultaneously.
Phillip A. Jackson is the speaker, here, and his sermon is called “One Foot in Eternity”. It’s really rather remarkable how resonant this is to me, little sweetheart. His words are both scholarly and inspirational.
In these difficult days, little sweetheart, I keep telling myself to simplify and just to have faith. And listen for you. I know you’re so much closer than I can imagine.
With all my love forever.
Little sweetheart, it’s May, and some of the non-commerical radio charts have been published. Incredibly, we’ve not one but two different albums charting the Heavily Played Records lists of two of the most beloved and important free-form stations in the country.
Deux Anges has charted on the great WFMU at the #23 spot (out of 150) just behind Juliana Barwick and Sir Paul Freaking McCartney!
And out in California, KFJC - which already had had Deux Anges all the way up to #21 in February - began adding some our earlier albums to its Current library, starting with Of Love and Loss, which is now itself at #28.
Hey, little sweetheart - you’re in the radio!
With all my love forever.
Little sweetheart, this may seem odd but sometimes I feel that I see you in little children.
I remember being so very moved at church a few years ago during a baptism. It’s wonderful to come across a tribe of little ones in the park, sometimes, so concentrated on and delighted in something as simple as rolling a ball across the pavement.
I see your bright, pure, beautiful spirit sometimes in little children and I feel such love and longing for you but also a recognition that you are everywhere and that I just need to follow in kindness and that you will find and take me to you again and forever.
Everywhere there are reminders of you, reminders that life still has things in store that may show me the way and that I just need to listen, simplify and heed them. You will find me, always.
Little sweetheart, today is Mother’s Day.
Your mom is working on the house down in Turlock, so I found a florist nearby in Modesto to deliver a little bouquet on Friday, a few days before, so she could enjoy them.
Mother’s Day is such a very wistful time for me, little sweetheart, both because I miss my own mom and because I miss you so very much and can’t help think how you wanted to raise a child with me and be a mommy yourself.
I think somehow, when things eternal are finally revealed to me, perhaps I’ll find that in the full realness of time, the non-linear more complete one mortals can’t quite know, that we will have a child together to love and protect and teach and cherish.
You’ve so much more to teach and show me, I know, little sweetheart and perhaps this is among them.
With all my love forever.
Little sweetheart, Deux Anges was given the most lovely review recently in the UK’s rather legendary music zine, “The Sound Projector”. I think I forgot to mention it here.
Written by its editor and founder, Ed Pinsent, it's very thoughtful and fulsome in its praise but I think what I liked most about it was how he recognized you, little sweetheart, as the very center and soul of the band, saying: "the (absent) main member of the band is Summer Serafin. This was Michael’s partner who died nine years ago, and since then it’s been Michael’s mission to keep the project (and her memory) alive, mainly by drawing on his personal archive of recordings of Summer’s vocal tracks..."
A further excerpt is below. As ever, little sweetheart, it’s all for you. With all my love forever.
"The group continue to deliver their unique brand of very understated guitar-pop with subdued vocals, hazy ambient melodies, spoken (or rather whispered) word recits, instrumentals - some enhanced with field recordings. All of 'Deux Anges' is steeped in a very wistful melancholy, a poignant longing. Lyrics emerge as a form of prayer and we continue to find allusions to the afterlife, heaven, angels, mortality, ghosts, miracles… and compassion, empathy, and hope. At two CDs and three hours, there’s also a lot of it to listen to, but BPX never outstay their welcome with their unassuming tone and the gentle, lulling pull of their mesmerizing songs."
-The Sound Projector (UK), Ed Pinsent, Editor
It’s May 1st, little sweetheart.
I remember when I was a little boy that we used to celebrate May Day in elementary school by making little baskets, cutting strips of colored construction paper and then weaving and taping them together, finishing with a little handle at the top. Then, on the walk home, gathering flowers - honestly, probably dandelions, mostly - filling the basket and then hanging it on the front doorknob of the house for our mothers.
How I’d like to do that with you and for you, little sweetheart. I’m thinking of you on this day and every day.
With all my love forever.
