Best of 2021

Little sweetheart, we’ve been featured on a wonderful Year End program tonight. 

Resonance-FM (London)’s Fog Cast have been advocates of our work for the last couple of years. Deux Anges was among their Best Albums of the Year in 2020, and they devoted half an hour to Forests just before it came out on December 1. 

Tonight, Robin was doing his year end show and “Prayers Within a Cathedral of Trees” - the closing track from the new album - began the show’s last half hour. The show is up now in its entirety on MixCloud here. 

Listen, little sweetheart - you’re on the radio! 

Christmas Cards

Little sweetheart, we got the loveliest holiday card in the mail today! It's from our friend, your childhood primary schoolmate, Liz. 

She's an illustrator and in the past she's sent me some lovely drawings - almost like chapters of a graphic novel - of your mutual adventures as children, always with you as the heroine, of course! She loves you! And so do I! 

Here's a picture of the card with her drawing of us and her thoughtful greeting inside. 

Merry Christmas, little sweetheart!   

Don't Open til December 25

It’s Christmas Day, little sweetheart. It’s a bit rainy and unseasonably warm outside. I’m making a little dinner later, I’ll roast a chicken. 

Even though it’s a bit too warm today to be wearing it, I have right here beside me your first Christmas gift to me - the lovely blue and grey scarf you knitted for me, working on it daily, all during the Boston run of Rock n Roll. 

The words you wrote you me that Christmas remain with me always, too - the card itself framed and hanging on the wall in the red table room, a copy or two of it hanging over my desk and magnet-ed to the inside front door, and its last lines tattooed in your handwriting on my right forearm. 

Also, here, below, let me repeat them. I think somehow, little sweetheart, you knew you would need to give me instructions on how to carry on, something to hold to my heart and know that you would always be with me even if we were separated by mortality and the physical world. You gave me that not just with these words below but every day, with the great gift of your love. I’m so forever grateful. 

Merry Christmas, little sweetheart.

My Dearest Michael,
 

I’ve been working on this in the green room and backstage since we came to Boston. I’d drape it around my neck to keep warm while knitting in the dark of the freezing wings. The cast is decisively in favor of the striped color combination.
 

It’s Christmas day, and I’m wearing my pajamas. I’m in my P.J.’s even if you’re reading this when the sun has set. Ryan is making another bourbon and coke even if you’re reading this as the sun rises. My Dad is reading aloud shocking statistics about religion or politics, my Mom is spraying perfume on the dog, and me...? I am missing you. Maybe one day we’ll spend Christmas together.
 

Coy says “You are where you’re meant to be”, and while I like that idea, I know, far too well, what it feels like to be in a world where everything feels wrong – where everything is wrong. You have also been to that place. And as the world spins on its own axis, people are lost in their own needs and trials. We falter blindly, and strive endlessly. But no matter where you are, whether you should be there or not, and no matter who is present... know that you are a treasure in your own right. If the chest is buried, the key is lost, or the map stolen, it doesn’t matter; it doesn’t change the fact that it’s inside you. I just see what’s there. You carry it with you. What’s hidden can always be found.
 

I love you.

 

Your Gingersnap,


Summer


Silent-ish Night

Little sweetheart, it’s Christmas Eve. I have such memories of this night of the year going all the way back to my childhood and forward to those with you and now muddling through on any own. 

I remember a choir concert I was in one year in high school, given at the local college. It was dark early, as it is this time of the season, and as I drove home I found and listened to a show of early music on public radio. I liked it so much I turned it on in my bedroom after I got home. My room was in the basement of the house and somehow it felt very much like I was on my own. Almost grown. 

A year or two later I was singing with another ensemble, one that performed Handel’s Messiah every Christmas Eve in the rotunda at the art museum. There was an incredible snowstorm going outside but our London friend, Kris, drove all the way down to see it and then I went with him after back up the snowy roads to where he was at Uni. 

All through my childhood my grandmother, my mom’s mom, would make these special Christmas Eve sandwiches. She had an old hand crank meat grinder, and she would grind fresh bologna and mix it with herbs and things to make this sandwich spread that she would spoon onto hamburg buns, open-faced, and then toast in the broiler. In later years, my mom found a deli that made something similar, so she didn’t have to go through the entire byzantine process - you couldn’t find fresh bologna in stores anymore, anyway, only the prepackaged luncheon meat slices. 

I haven’t had a culinary tradition like that since my mom passed away, little sweetheart, but tonight I made a Christmas Eve quiche. It was Sylvia’s idea and a good one! I sautéed red bell peppers in olive oil, steamed some broccoli and then added them with sharp cheddar, sour cream, heavy cream, flour and eggs, garnished with lemon pepper, and put it in the oven for a little less than an hour. I think you’d like it! 

My favorite memories of Christmas and Christmas Eve are with you, of course, little sweetheart. Coming home from the movies and settling into the living room around the Christmas tree where your mom has left a package for each of us with new pajamas and slippers. Changing into them and wearing them all through the night and all day on Christmas, itself. If we forgot something at the store, we wouldn’t even change out of them - just throw on a coat and drive over to whatever was open, usually for extra eggnog, right? 

It’s quiet here tonight, little sweetheart. I’m listening to BBC 4’s Christmas Eve broadcast and my thoughts are, as ever, of and with you. With all my love…

Snow Swept

Little sweetheart, thinking today of that late December afternoon years ago when we looked outside to see it snowing lightly, quickly got dressed and headed up to the roof as the snowflakes dusted everything around us, the sun dipping to the horizon as we looked west. Love you forever.

Robins in the Wreaths

Little sweetheart, for years there was this building next to the Sacred Heart rectory on W51st Street that was covered in scaffolding. More than that, it was encased, it seemed - like a wooden box had been built over it hiding whatever renovations were underway from prying eyes. For years, I say. Like at least 5. 

One day late last spring all of that came down and you could start to see the renovated building - a three story brownstone - and even its interior through the windows. It looked amazing. One day I met the owner, Casey, a young woman with a toddler and a dog, outside the building and we hit it off. She’s super nice. Later I met her husband and her eldest boy, I think he’s about six or seven. 

One of the things that I’ve loved about walking past the house is how she’s decorated it festively over every holiday. It was amazing on Halloween with cobwebs and pumpkins and everything. And just now, for Christmas, it looks absolutely beautiful. There are lights - simple, pretty white strands - at night, and by day it’s just awash in pine and red ribbons. There are wreaths and the front stairwell wrapped in thick, beautiful pine branches all the way up. 

I was coming back from my run and there was a robin perched in the midst of it all. He didn’t even flinch when I approached. I think he thought he was a in a forest! And then when he flew up a bit higher, I could see there were yet more birds, a couple more robins and a handful of sparrows, also nesting within. The first robin hadn’t flown higher so much to get away from me than to have a bit of lunch - Casey had weaved holly within the pine branches and our robin was feasting on a couple of little red berries hanging there! 

It was absolutely magical, little sweetheart. I couldn’t wait to get home and tell you! 

With all my love.   

That movie... again?!

Little sweetheart, one of the things I’m doing through this week leading up to Saturday is watching some of our collections of Christmas movies. One of them that always makes me think of you is "Love, Actually". Not because it was one of your favorites but because I had never seen it before you and I met and then that first trip we took to England together I finally saw it on TV. 

Later after we got back and between me joining you in San Francisco or you coming back here to New York, we were on the phone one night. You had called and when I picked up you could hear the tv on in the background. You recognized what was playing instantly. 

"Are you watching that movie... again?!", you asked both incredulous and amused, knowing me so well. Yes, I had to admit, I’d bought it on DVD, even though it was July or something. 

I don’t know what it was that had so captured me, little sweetheart, but I suspect it was simply you. The way you had come into my life and opened my heart - like The Grinch’s growing three sizes that day - I was more vulnerable to the heartfelt, if you know what I mean. 

I know you do. And I’m so very grateful.

Christmas Week

Little sweetheart, it’s Christmas Week - the week leading up to the holidays which this year falls on a Saturday. Christmas Day actually is, like the song says, the first day of Christmas - we’ve been in Advent all this time prior, since December 1- and I like hanging on to and observing these twelve days and nights right up to Epiphany. Often, I make a last batch of Christmas cookies on Epiphany! 

I can’t help but think of you so deeply this week, little sweetheart, and how much you loved Christmas. One of the first things you said to me was how you wanted to spend Christmases together. It’s hard not to mourn our not having had more of them but I think I treasure even these ones alone now all the more because I had even one with you. 

You fill my heart with light, with love, and if I quiet myself, find ways to be kind, to be good, I will find you there, again and again, closer, always, than I can even imagine. 

Merry Christmas, little sweetheart.

Still There! Always...

Little sweetheart, we were delightfully surprised this morning! 

On Fridays even before I get up, I try to tune in to London’s Soho Radio to hear the great Max Reinhardt’s show. It's on in the early afternoon in the UK but because of the time difference, starts here at 8AM. He usually plays a set of music during the first hour and then has a guest or two for the second and third hours of the show. 

He was doing his back announce before cueing up the last song prior to his first guest and he started talking about us! He wound up saying the most wonderful things about the new album - Forests, Voices, Coastlines, Dreams - and about our work, little sweetheart. Then, he played the last track - quite a long track - from the album, “Prayers Within A Cathedral of Trees”, before coming back to say a bit more. 

It was all incredibly nice and we’re exceedingly grateful but I think the thing that struck me the most was how well he understood how very much this is, as I often say, of, for and about you. Max has said before of us that we are “liminal” - sort of meaning that the music inhabits this place between worlds, and when he named each of us - you, Sylvia and I - he began, as we always do, with you. 

He said your name and then before he continued he paused and said with some emphasis - “who’s still there” . 

It struck me so, little sweetheart. Because you are. I know it. I felt. I believe it. It really is all for you. With all my love…
 

In Dreams... and snow

Little sweetheart, you were in my dreams last night! In fact, you’ve been a regular visitor the last several nights now that I think about it and remember! I always feel so grateful after and it helps me so, little sweetheart, because it feels like I’m doing better when you visit me in dreams, like maybe I’m doing things well and right.

Settings, like the actual location that is the backdrop of a dream, can sometimes be mysteriously unknowable and altogether minutely detailed at the same time, don’t you think, little sweetheart? Sometimes I’ll be in a place that I seem to know quite well in the dream but outside of it, like when I wake up and try to recall, isn’t someplace I’ve ever known or even seen at all. This was one of those.

You and I were in a big, old, beautiful, many-storied house. There were other people there, too - I’m not sure who all, maybe your mom and dad - through some of the other rooms. One thing I do remember was that our London friend, Kris, was there.

You and I were going from room to room, just in the course of our day and getting things done, and I had a snowball in my hand. It wasn’t melting or anything and I wasn’t about to throw it, I was just carrying it like one might carry a book or something from room to room, not even remembering I had it in my hands. Finally you pointed it out to me. I hadn’t even seemed, quite absentmindedly, to notice.

“Where did you get the snowball?", you asked. And “do you wanna set it down somewhere, like in the  freezer or something?”

I have no idea what it might have meant, little sweetheart. I need you to tell me! Ha! Can you please visit me again tonight and explain?

With all my love…

"Forests" Release

Today, little sweetheart, the new album is released. It’s our 10th. It's called Forests, Voices, Coastlines, Dreams and is a collection of the seven tracks we recorded for that UK-based experimental radio project, The Dark Outside. 

It’s already had some very nice advance radio play, beginning with NorCal’s KFJC and continuing on with several shows on WFMU, London’s Resonance-FM, Germany’s TFSC and France’s CAMP, among others. It’s kind of exclusively the more experimental side of our stuff but, as always, finds your soaring vocals weaving throughout. 

Listen, little sweetheart - you’re on the radio!