New Year's Eve tonight

It’s New Year’s Eve, little sweetheart. You and I never got a chance to have one together but I do remember you calling me each year and especially one year when you were at a party and had gone into another room especially to book a flight to New York and called to tell me you were coming! 

It’s been a few years since I’ve seen your parents because of the pandemic but for several years I’d been with them and I began a tradition of making beef stroganoff each New Year’s Eve - which your dad, in particular, likes - so, that’s what I’m doing tonight. 

Probably be a quiet night, here. But my thoughts, as ever, will be of you and wondering when I will fly to your side. Whenever that may be, I will endeavor to do my best in this coming year. 

With all love forever.
 

Davis Christmas

I’ve so many memories of being with you in the beautiful house in Davis, little sweetheart, and the haven, the heaven, the sweet little retreat it was for the two of us to kind of get away from everything for a few days every now and then.

I won’t unpack every single one of them here just now but am thinking today of how lovely it was in the days after Christmas when, before we headed back to San Francisco, we first stopped off in Davis for a bit.

As ever, we started off by swinging by the Nugget Market for a few provisions, including all the ingredients I needed to make yet another batch of Christmas cookies. I had my mom’s vintage cookie cutters with me - stainless steel ones from the ’60’s in the shapes of a bell, a star, a snowman, an angel and a Christmas tree - but you encouraged me to use some cutters of your own and you retrieved them from the pantry to show me. I quibbled because they were decidedly non-Christmas shapes but you wanted to “shake things up”. Ha! Who could argue?!

I remember, even though California is not nearly as frosty as New York in December, that the house was a a little chilly when we arrived and that, instead of just cranking up the central air to a higher temp and heating the whole house - since we mostly stayed in the living room, your room and the kitchen - that we’d light the little potbelly stove just this side of the garden doors. It had a pilot light that required getting down flat on the title floor to find and engage its button. It was kind of a two person job - one person had to hold the button down from below and the other watch from the top to see that the flame went on. You took the hard part, the floor job, and we got it up and running after a try or two.

I also remember your “floor work” there because you’d recently gotten a new series of ear piercings, and ever vigilant, made sure to soak them in salt water for 2 minutes, three times a day. You’d lay on your side, little sweetheart, dipping your ear in a little teacup and ask me to time you. I have a picture! I’ve gotta find that!

Anyway, here is it, the third day of Christmas and my thoughts, as ever, are of you. Wonderful you. My treasure. With all my love…  
 

On Christmas...

We've made not one but two Christmas albums over the years, little sweetheart (!) - BPXmas in 2014 and Til Morning Is Nigh in 2018. 

This track, written for you, of course, opens the first of them. 

You are in my heart, my prayers, my every thought. Love you forever. Happy Christmas, little sweetheart! 

 

 

Christmas Day...

It’s Christmas Day, little sweetheart! Happy Christmas! I’m on my own but I’ll always remember our Christmas together with your folks.  

I’d gotten you a couple of things. As always, a little something from our London friend, Joy’s, jewelry shop in Newburgh Street near Oxford Circus. And I’d remembered that you’d said something about wanting a pink angora sweater, so I found a nice one for you from Karen Millen. You’d completely forgotten about it, so you were delightfully surprised.

Your mom made a point to give us a couple of gifts together, and because she knew we liked watching movies and shows together - “watching a story with my partner at the end of the day”, you used to say - she bought us a box set of the first season of Gabriel Bryne’s show “In Treatment”, with the instruction that we were only to watch it together. I loved that.

As everyone opened there presents in the living around the tree, you sat right next to me on the sofa and watched me especially carefully as I began to unwrap another present from your mom and dad. When I slipped the gift paper off, there was a small square box. I opened it to find what at first glance looked like an antique pocket watch but upon closer examination turned out to be a compass. I looked up and your dad said to me, “so you can always find us”. I burst into tears.

I’d lost my mother just a few months before. I’d been in London when I got the news and you and your mom had gotten me back to New York and then on to Detroit, where you met me and stayed at my side for that entire week as we planned the funeral and everything. It was the most extraordinary thing anyone had ever done for me and now this. When I turned the compass over, I saw that that very phrase “so you can always find us” had been engraved by your mom. Later she told me that when she had shown it to you before Christmas you had said to her, quite presciently, “oh, mom, you’re just going to make him cry”. The beautiful compass remains here, little sweetheart, on my mantle with many pictures of you and other treasures.

So many memories, my little sweetheart. I’m so very grateful. And I love you forever.

Christmas Eve tonight...

I’ll always think of you, little sweetheart, when I think of Christmas, even more than any I had as a child or the three quite magical ones I spent in Ireland in the years before I met and was found by you.

You brought me to your parents house that last and only year we were able to have Christmas together, and I remember pulling into the driveway and you cried out because you suddenly remembered that you’d left your gift for me back at your apartment in San Francisco! It would have to wait but it was well worth it - it was a lovely leather jacket that I wore every day pretty much from the day you gave it me until quite recently when I semi-retired it because I’ve nearly, literally, worn it out. (Don’t worry, I had it restored! Just being careful with it, now…).

Christmas Eve was really special at your house. We all went out to a Christmas Eve movie together and when we got home, your mom had new pajamas and slippers for everyone. We all got changed into them and that was our wardrobe for the next 24 hours - or longer, I kept my on for days, I think! And when we had to run out the next day for something we’d forgotten - extra eggnog, I think - your dad, brother and myself just jumped in the car wearing same!

It was a full house, too! Your folks and your brother and friends of his from Portland; friends of yours from San Francisco; as well as, Michelle and her kids. There might’ve been 20 of us! It was a wonderful night that stretched on late, even though Christmas Day was to follow.

It’s very quiet here tonight, little sweetheart. I’m on my own. I’ll make dinner tomorrow, getting the turkey in the oven after morning coffee and will probably watch Midnight Mass from bed in an hour! But as I lay my head down, I’m thinking of you - as ever.

With all my love.

The Winter Solstice

 

Tonight is the Winter Solstice, little sweetheart - the longest night of the year. It’s been a thing with me for a while, I guess. As you’ll remember - because you were in one of the casts! - my play, Seven Pages Unsigned, is set on the night of the Winter Solstice. 

When I was a good deal younger than I am now, little sweetheart, I think I used to enjoy the night - not just this night, but night itself - much more than I do now. I even rather liked cloudy, sunless days. But I’ve found that I’ve grown much more photosensitive. I really need and long for the light. 

That’s both a literal statement of fact and simultaneously the more poetic one - I miss and long for the light that is you. The light you brought into my life. 

Anyway, the thing about the Winter Solstice is that every day now until the Summer one (quite appropriately), the days will grow longer, the light come earlier and stay later. Something to look forward to, yes, little sweetheart? 

With all my love…

Angel Frequency....

When we were putting together Til Morning, little sweetheart, I very much had something I'd long admired in mind. 

Sometime around 2002 or 2003 I first heard the BBC broadcast of "Nine Lessons and Carols" - an annual Christmas Eve service performed by The Kings College Cambridge Choir. The mixture of spoken word and devotional music - much like Taize and Electric Hymnal - inspired me to want to do something in that vein. 

The spoken word component was helped tremendously by the literal godsend of Sylvia coming into my life, into our life, and as she joined the band with you and I. 

A further thing I admired about 9 Lessons was the tradition of a new work being commissioned each year for inclusion in the service. This often led to a piece being highly modern and I thought we should do something not unlike that. That as we placed older, less well known Christmas songs in new shoegaze-y arrangements, I also compose and record an experimental music piece to be at the album's center. 

And that's what the track "Angel Frequency" is. Below is the video we did for it. 

Happy Christmas, little sweetheart! 

 

 

On Irene's Show

Another of our champions, little sweetheart, the legendary Irene Trudel included a track of ours on her Christmas show on WFMU this week. Another of my favorites from Til Morning, mostly because it features your soaring vocals. It’s "Noel". 

The full show is amazing. It’s up on WFMU’s archive here. And the the track itself on Bandcamp here. 

Happy Christmas, little sweetheart!

Winter Birdsong

Little sweetheart, I saw some lovely little sparrows on my walk in Riverside Park today. Even though it’s gotten quite cold, they were out and up in the bare limbs of the trees, singing happily. I always stop to listen to their songs and think especially of you. It’s been a little while since I’ve seen a cardinal - which is always so magical - but I’ll be on the lookout. 

Our neighbor, KC, over on W51st, right next to the Sacred Heart rectory, has the steps and edifice of her brownstone festooned with lights and evergreen branches. The beaches are so thick and prolific, some robins have taken to nesting there! It's really wonderful to pass by and linger on the sidewalk watching them each day. And I'm right next door to say our prayer, after. 

Thinking of you, as always. Love you forever.
 

The 11th Album

We’re nearing completion of the new album, our 11th (!), little sweetheart. Just about at final mixes. It’s another double album, 22 tracks over two discs and 2 hours, and you, as ever, are at its center. Much more on this in the coming days!
 

"Finding Joy"

I’ve been following an account on Twitter for a while, little sweetheart, by an artist and illustrator named Gary Andrews. He lost his wife to a sudden illness a few years ago and later, when he could bring himself to, he began doing drawings of their life together and his life (and their kids - they had two small children) after. It’s very moving and lovely. 

This year he published a book telling the story - a book of those illustrations telling the story I should say. It’s called “Finding Joy” (Joy is his late wife’s name). I ordered a copy and it arrived a few days ago. I have it out here but I kind of can’t bring myself to read and look at it. But I know you’d tell me to, so I will and I’ll come back and tell you more about it then. 

Meanwhile, remember - I love you!!

Advent

I never knew much about Advent, little sweetheart, until a few years ago, but it’s kind of a wonderful season - these 24 days leading up to Christmas. There was a wonderful program on BBC Radio 4 a few years ago, I taped the broadcast and later burned it to CDR, all about the Advent service they do each year at Salisbury Cathedral. 

The service is called “Darkness to Light” and the choir and vergers move in a procession about the church as they sing and speak the lessons and light the space one candle at a time from a single flame. The program weaves through interviews with the staff while including some of the music both of the service itself and the choir - both children and adults - as they rehearse. It’s really wonderful and I listen to each year at this time. 

Darkness to Light is resonant, too, I think, little sweetheart because it so well describes my own journey and the gift you brought - the light and love you illumined my life with. How grateful I am! Love you forever!