San Simeon (You Said)

Little sweetheart, our earliest champion, the great Irene Trudel, played a track off of our double-album, Deux Anges, today on her legendary show. It's always an enormous honor and all of the songs are truly prayers to you but I'm so glad she played this one - "San Simeon (You Said)" - the 3rd track on Disc Two. 

The beginnings of this record found their origin on the road trip that Sylvia and I made down Highway One in California - a trip I always wanted to make with you (even though I know you hate being in the car!). We'd flown out to see your folks and were with them before and after. Your dad let us borrow the Enclave (it's the spare car they have hanging around - what replaced the beloved Rendezvous) and we headed down the coast for a five day trip down to my birthplace in Santa Barbara and back on the coastal route, stopping at a few of the Missions along the way. I wrote about it (and Sylvia posted it) on the special mini site about Deux Anges. 

All along the way on the overnights, I played my Westerberg electric (the one I kept at your apartment in the Inner Sunset) through a cheap echo pedal and a 9V mini Marshall amp. I'd record via voice memo and the first three of the 30 songs on Deux Anges were birthed that way. 

All them them - Santa Barbara, Mission Street (Carmel) and San Simeon - retained their titles for their geographical origin. All began as instrumentals and "Santa Barbara" remained one. "San Simeon" was the last to have a vocal. Indeed, I put the vocal on and later had to learn how to play and sing it simultaneously(!). It's incredibly prayerful when I do, now. 

The lyrics are very minimal but perfect somehow in evoking we three - you, Sylvia and I. I know how you are with me. You were that night when I played the lick in our hotel room. You were when these words found me. You are even now. 

With all my love forever.

As Close As Breath

There’s something I’ve begun to notice, little sweetheart. I’m very affected by the sound of someone crying.

All this time I’ve known that if I even breath a little hard hard or too deeply that I myself can fall into weeping because the grief is so close to the surface, always. I don’t desire its absence - far from it - “never be ashamed to cry for that girl”, I’ve been known to say. I wrote that an index card and it hangs here over my desk. My grief is part of me and connected to you. I don’t need to do anything to bring it forward but I know especially that it can be triggered by breath.

The newer thing I’ve begun to discover, little sweetheart, is that when I hear others cry - a child or even an adult in some difficulty or anguish - it engages my own emotions so viscerally, I often begin to cry myself. In a way, that is, like so many other things, a testament to you. To the great love and empathy that is such a characteristic of your beautiful spirit.

You continue to mould me, little sweetheart. Reaching out to me from the place I cannot yet see to make me a better, finer person and to teach me all I need to know for the journey. Even through my tears, how grateful I am that you found me.
 

Cardinals in "The Wild"

Little sweetheart, I went for kind of an epic walk this afternoon, farther north than I’ve been in a while. So far, it was dark by the time I finally got home.

At the northernmost point of Riverside Park, there a section of called Forever Wild. It’s trails, a forest and woodland, almost 60 acres. The big highlight in Riverside this year, little sweetheart, is that the parks conservancy have introduced half a dozen goats into part of it so they can feed on invasive species of undergrowth.

I had a mind to go that far up and see if I could spot them but the real treat turned out to be all birds I spotted and a very quiet overgrown spot where I could hear cicadas - I’d been wanting to do a field recording as a base track for our next Dark Outside track.

Right around where I recorded the cicadas in a grove of trees, no sign of the city around me, I saw two cardinals! They were as close as I’d ever been to one. We’ve had a lot of rain of late, and there was almost like a little stream running there because of the run-off. A couple of sparrows and a starling were taking their turns, having a drink and splashing about and the cardinals - at first poised on a railing, only an arm’s length away - flitted down to the spot and joined them.

It was truly magical, little sweetheart, and I felt so very close to you.

I’ve been carrying that blessing my heart all day. Thank you, my angel.

With all my love forever.

A Memory...

Little sweetheart, I don’t spend a lot of time on Facebook. I check in once a day because we’ve sometimes gotten messages for the band’s page there, so I try to be watchful for that. There is a feature there called “Memories” and it reminds you of something you may have posted or that happened on that particular day some years ago - like its anniversary, whatever the post or event might have marked.

I mention all this because, one day, the feature reminded me that that last play I wrote for you, My Before & After, had its performances with Seattle’s ACT eight years ago.

Your mom came up to Seattle to see the play and stay for the talkback - the after-show Q&A between the playwright (me), the Literary Manager and the audience. ACT had flown me out to be part of a program with one other playwright in a co-production with The Icicle Creek Theatre Festival. Each year they select two new plays and cast a company to play roles in both, then put everyone up for two weeks at an Arts Retreat in the mountains in central Washington state, work on each play, presenting them at the end over consecutive nights, before coming back to Seattle for the performance at ACT.

It was really kind of lovely. I had my own little cabin - with air conditioning and wifi! - and there would be two rehearsal periods each day, a morning one and an afternoon one, which we’d alternate each day, one play or the other. The rest of the time I was working on rewrites in my little cabin or going for long walks in the woods. But I did have one entire day off and walked into the nearest town, about 3 miles away.

And that’s what I’m remembering most today, little sweetheart. How I ached and longed for you and how good the long walk felt. How I wandered around in the little village full of sweet little shops that I’d so like to have taken you to, have had you with me, seeing it all together, and that somehow, I think you really were at my side.

All kinds of little coincidences kept happening. I’d hear a song in one of the shops, a song that I’d heard you play on your little MacBook Air when we were together in your room. I stopped by a gift shop and was browsing there and found a necklace with your name on it. Silver chain and “Summer” in silver, too, at its center. There were just two of them in stock and I bought them both so I could give one to your mom.

Finally, I was really hungry and wanted to find something simple for lunch - I was really craving just a nice tuna salad sandwich - but there was some kind of majorly German vibe to the entire town and all the places were that kind of beer and sausage cuisine. Like Octoberfest all year round. I finally settled on a place that had a kind of sea theme, unusual I thought for a small village nestled into the mountains.

Again, it brought you to mind so much, little sweetheart, for your love of tales of pirates and sea lore and I felt as if you had led me there. I sat down and looked at the menu and lo and behold, there was exactly what I’d been craving - lovely fresh tuna salad, fresh greens and some hand-cut fries. It was mid-afternoon but nice and cool and unhurried inside. Very homey with dark paneled walls and decorated with nets and other sailing paraphernalia. I kind of felt like having a beer, something locally brewed, an IPA, perhaps, and they had one that looked good. You order a mug or what they called, charmingly a “schooner”, so I got the latter and it arrived in a tall, rounded glass.

I’d set out that late morning so very sad and lonely, little sweetheart. I’d met my lead actor for breakfast before I left and over coffee he told me he thought I was the saddest person he’d ever known in his life. How I longed and ached for you!

But I think you sensed that, little sweetheart, and came alighting near me all day to help buoy my spirits and keep me going. You fortified me. I remember thinking that very thing at the time. Memories, indeed.

How I love you! Forever!
 

Some thoughts

I don’t think much about the theatre, anymore, little sweetheart. But when I do you always come quickly to mind.

I was watching an interview last night that Stephen Colbert did with the great Robert Duvall. He asked him something about Brando and it made me think of you and want to tell you about it, too. Duvall, of course, famously worked with Brando in “The Godfather”. They were a generation apart and I think Colbert’s question was an acknowledgment of that, sensing Brando’s importance to the generation of actors who followed him. Duvall spoke about himself as a young actor, an acting student, really, in New York, along with his friends Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman, who was also his roommate.

Duvall said of Brando, “He was our godfather. Me and Hackman and Dustin used to hang out and if we talked about him once during the day, we talked about him 25 times. Gene met him, by accident, for the first time, on the street and he almost cried.”

I don’t have that kind of feeling about the theatre any more, little sweetheart, but I remember feeling it many years ago, when it was so important to us both. I remember how serious it was to you and I am still so very proud of you.

Your mom used to say that you were the most talented person she ever knew and I know that feeling myself. As I’m writing our story every day, of late, I’ve been telling the tale of your performance in “The Blue Room”, which remains simply the most breathtaking thing I ever saw on a stage anywhere in the world over the entire course of my life.

I knew you’d understand exactly what Duvall meant and I thought of you even as he said it, wishing you we’re sitting here with me, watching it together, as you used to say - “watching a story together with my partner at the end of the day”.

I was, I am still so proud to have been called yours, little sweetheart. And I know you are here. Closer than I can imagine.
 

With all my love forever.
 

Songs Are Like Prayers

It’s funny, little sweetheart, how when working on an album for months and months, after its completion and release, that I might not pick up my guitar for weeks or even a month. Finally, I return and I need to remind myself how all of the songs actually go! Ya know?

I made a list of about 40 of ours songs I wanted to review and have been playing again regularly each day. Just me with my pedals, going through the Vox AC-30 using the big halfback Mesa cabinet (what a huge sound!) and the PA powered up for vocals.

When I return to these songs and play them, little sweetheart, it is physically and emotionally healing and I wrote down a phrase after as I sat waiting for the tubes to cool down before I shut everything off for the night. “The songs are like prayers”, I wrote.

And they are. I need to play and sing them and when I do, it brings me closer to you.

It’s the most important work of my life, little sweetheart, to honor and conjure you. How I love you! Forever!

Butterfiles - at last!

Little sweetheart, for much of this season I’d been disappointed not to spot many butterflies in my walks through Riverside Park. There’s a wonderful garden at the top of The Serpentine near W91st Street where they would often alight. Monarchs, especially, seemed to like quite a big tree at its upper edge, but last fall the gardeners trimmed it back extensively. I don’t know if the two events are related but all through the spring and into July, even, I’d only seen Satin Moths, no butterflies. Until yesterday!

Maybe its something about the month of August. Perhaps that is really high season but suddenly they’re back.
It was so wonderful, that first sighting of a monarch. Then another and another joined the first and the three of them flew and flitted about alighting on flowers and branches - and one another even! - before taking flight yet again. Shortly thereafter, I also saw a Swallowtail - a male with black wings and yellow highlights (the female is the reverse color scheme - yellow with black highlights).

I wasn’t alone in my delight and relief, little sweetheart. A couple of other people had stopped to patiently, quietly stand still, watching and waiting to take a photograph or two.

Like birdsong, little sweetheart, butterflies seem to me a harbinger of your celestial presence. They bring me closer to you. And it fills me with gratitude. As do you, always. I am so very grateful for you, my little sweetheart.

With all my love forever.