In The Hours...

I don’t want to go too heavily within these pages in talking about the band - even though, as I’ve told others so many times the entire project is of, for and about you. But exactly because it is so very much about you, I just want to say that In The Hours Left Until Dawn has somehow really seemed to have struck a chord with people and, especially, remarkably, in a spiritual sense.

A lot of reviews and broadcasters have focused on that. Montreal’s Jefffey Davison (CKUT) among them who said that all of our work has had a spiritual component but perhaps never more so than this album. Another, Portland’s Uncertain Reverie, has described it as “Beautiful, shimmering, hypnotic, dreamlike; always a sense of passage through unnameable dimensions; the haunt is palpable but as an enveloping wonder and at times I felt I was listening to stained glass…" .

An interview I did with Fringes of Sound editor Lars Haur a few weeks ago was broadcast on April 25 and I got to talk a lot about not only how much the project is devoted to you, little sweetheart, but how you yourself are the very soul of it. I love that people understand that. I think you may remember that I told you our friend Neal Huff did a podcast with me on the anniversary of the release of Of Love and Loss and one of the things that he remarked on was how extraordinary he thought it was that this project continued to bring you to others, for people to be touched, as so many of us have been so deeply, by your beautiful spirit.

That’s entirely why this project goes on, little sweetheart.

I had stepped away from this blog briefly last year and honestly I am rather daunted still by trying to complete the first book of memoirs for you. But I will continue to return here, just to tell you little things about daily life, my memories of us together, my enduring love and admiration for you, and my faith that we will one day be together again in The Forever. 

With all my love…

 

April 25th

There’s never a day I’m not thinking of you, little sweetheart, but some of them are even more keen than others and today is one of them. Of all our years together this day will always hold both great joy and great sadness. 

One year one this date we had a wonderful weekend in Davis together, you took me to see DCfC in Sacramento and made epic cupcakes for us. And just two years later on the same date I was speaking at your memorial. 

I remember being in the car with you once and you telling me that you thought that we had ten years before your health would fail again - you were so hyper-aware of your own mortality - and that you wanted me, after you passed, to listen to our music and think of you and also that you wanted me to speak at your service. I remember how the tears began burning my eyes when you said that and how I cried and told you I wanted to die before you. 

The words I did write and speak for you that day, that awful day, I returned to, recording this tribute for our album Sometimes in Dreams. 

I can’t say much more just now, little sweetheart, except that I love you with all my heart and soul and pray that we will be together sometime again soon and forever. With all of my love…

The Great Vigil

Little sweetheart, it’s Holy Saturday. The services are really quite special and I’ve only ever actually been to just one - the one at St Thomas years ago. West End didn’t have a Holy Saturday service. I’m not sure why. I think it’s almost exclusively Episcopalian. I may be wrong. 

It’s a midnight service and takes the form of what is called The Great Vigil. It’s the hours after Good Friday leading through the long night into Easter morning and the resurrection. At St Thomas there was quite a literal split between the two. The service begins mournfully and somber, much like the Holy Thursday and Friday services, around 11pm, and at midnight, full light returned in what was almost like the Easter Sunday service itself. 

Trinity Church’s service is a bit different and I think I might actually prefer it. It really is like Matins - early morning pre-dawn prayers -  beginning in darkness and progressing into the light, quite literally as a special candle, the Paschal Candle is lit from a bowl of fire. Liturgy is read, baptisms are performed and the entire service has a kind of ancient early church feel to it, evoking the four primal elements - fire, air, water, and earth - of the cosmos. It’s intensely moving, little sweetheart, for a variety of reasons, I think. 

When I was going to West End, I often found myself very moved by baptisms. I think so much of you when I see children now, little sweetheart, both because of your inherent goodness and because of your desire to raise a child with me. Easter Sunday is wonderful, too, with its bright colors and triumphant music, its flowers (I always make a flower donation in your name) and its declaration of faith, that death is not our end. But this journey through the night from darkness into light is one that resonates so deeply with me, little sweetheart, as I make my own long journey through the rest of my life as best I can until I may finally be reunited with you. 

How I love you! Forever!   

Also - Good Friday...

Today is also Good Friday, little sweetheart. 

At noon there are often services around the world and three or four that I have been to here in New York. The first one I ever attended was at St Thomas. I’ll watch the Trinity Church one today. And for many years, I attended the one at West End, including three consecutive years when I was one of the speakers. 

The Good Friday service is known for its prolonged silences, its meditative component, between the seven pieces of liturgy that are spoken over the course of a service that lasts between one and three hours. The liturgy consists of what are referred to as Christ’s Last Seven Words, although to be more precise, they are Christ’s last seven utterances, what he was heard to say while on the cross. 

Often, these services have seven parishioners choose one of these passages both to read and to compose a mediation upon its theme. That’s what I did those three years in a row at West End, little sweetheart. I always spoke of you, of course. And the final year, the service was recorded. 

That’s what’s here below, little sweetheart. My meditation on “The Seventh Word”, very much to do with you - my love for you, my grief, my faith that you are forever and that I will be with you again soon. 

How I love you! Forever! 

Today: April 7th

Today is April 7th, little sweetheart. 

It’s your late big brother Jesse’s 52nd birthday. I know you two are together now to enjoy it and to make your celestial presence known to all of we who love and mourn you - that you’re both helping and comforting and guiding us to you. 

Today is also, quite purposefully, release day for In The Hours Left Until Dawn. We picked Jesse’s birthday especially for it - this journey both through the literal night and through the night of our lives toward the dawn of being again with our beloveds passed into The Forever. 

I’m sure I’ll be back to tell you of how the release unfolds and how it may resonant with others because your spirit so brightly touches everyone who lets it into their heart. Meantime, I’ll just say that I love you so very much, my little sweetheart. Forever!

Holy Maundy Thursday

I think Maundy Thursday is perhaps the most resonant of all the days of Holy Week for me, little sweetheart, because of the Tenebrae service, which I only first knew of a few years ago. 

Not unlike Taize, the sanctuary is lit almost exclusively by candlelight and then, as each subsequent reading or hymn is offered, one of the candles is extinguished until just one is left, a hidden candle, leaving the sanctuary in darkness. The choir bang their hymnals and the organ sounds discordantly until the sole hidden candle is revealed and brought forward in procession and all leave in silence. 

It’s incredibly dramatic and moving and so rich in symbolism and resonance, little sweetheart, as concerns loss and grief and ultimately, faith. I haven’t been able to attend a in-person Tenebrae in several years now but tonight I’ll watch one broadcast online from Trinity Church downtown and my thoughts will be of you. 

With all my love.  
 

Holy Week: April 2-9

Holy Week begins this Sunday, little sweetheart, with Palm Sunday and then the very solemn days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday. 

Since the pandemic I haven’t had an in-person service to attend. You probably remember that lovely little church over on West End where I went for years every Wednesday to Taize service (which largely inspired our album Electric Hymnal) and often attended Sunday services too, not infrequently reading the lesson. Sadly, West End had both a change of leadership and closed its doors over the course of Covid. 

Having a regular practice of sitting in silence and prayer and song and worship really helped me, little sweetheart, to hold you near. I find others ways, of course, but Holy Week is a very good time for me to be especially observant and I’ll probably share little thoughts with your here throughout. 

Love you forever.