Sunday, June 16, 2024

Throw Back Black n White

A favorite newly found picture of you here, little sweetheart, taken with one of those disposable black & white cameras I used to keep handy in the pre-iPhone days. You're in your PJs sitting at my desk. Love you forever.




Friday, June 14, 2024

Flag Day 2024

Little sweetheart, today is a funny little holiday called Flag Day. I always used to see it on the calendar and joke about it but it's kind of neat in its timing - almost the midpoint of the year. I guess the Summer Solstice is more like it but it's halfway through the sixth month. 

Anyway, I wrote a song called "Flag Day", as you'll remember, that year I was out in the Bay Area. You immediately came up with the backing vocals and later that year we recorded it for what was meant to be our first EP but wound up becoming Of Love and Loss. A few years later, re-imagining the songs from that album and including new spoken word narrative and underscoring, we released Sometimes in Dreams. This is that album's version - the Summer Dream version and below is the video for it. 

Thinking of you on this day and everyday. With all my love forever...




Thursday, May 23, 2024

About May 23

Little sweetheart, my mom died on this day 14 years ago. I've been thinking about it, of course - how you helped me and how cruel it was to lose you, too, just 10 months later. 

My little sweetheart, I don't post here enough - I'm working on our book and our music, but I'm tortured by the idea that I have not kept up this blog, too. I resolve to do better. In all things. 

Below are my notes about my mom. Love you forever. 


MAY 23rd, 2010:
14 years ago I was in London when I got the news, by email in the middle of the night, that my Mom had died.

I'd been up late, excited about starting rehearsals in the morning at The Finborough Theatre. Wilson Milam was directing my play "Seven Pages Unsigned" to help kickoff the theatre's 30th anniversary series - The Vibrant Festival. I'd only just arrived in London the day before. We - Wilson, I and the play - were featured in TimeOut and I sent the link to my mom. It was one of the last emails I ever sent to her.

I was still sending rewrites to Wilson and the actors that night because that was very much Wilson & me, changes right up to curtain - I had his new notes and had been writing all day. Summer was marked for the play, too - she'd read in Seattle and NYC, where we hoped to stage productions but she couldn't make this trip. It was still her part, wherever it finally went up and she knew that. No full production was going up without her - bottom line, understood. But this was a great development opportunity for Wilson and I to work on the play. And all three of us loved The Finbourough. Summer was keen to hear how it all went. And we had plans in NYC as soon as I got back in June - recording sessions for the new BPX record in Brooklyn.
 

Wilson and I cast a mostly RADA-centric cast, several of whom had been in my play DC at RADA two seasons before.

I was staying at my lifelong friends Binky St Joy and Kris's flat in Kentish Town. They were up in Wales for a few days but coming back for Vibrant. I'd see them in a day or two. I was alone in the flat and remember emailing and I think even texting Wilson (on my bottom-of-the-line free with a cell-plan VodaFone- Summer got one, too, from Orange, when we were last in London together, a few months before -we had to remember to pack and charge them the moment we got to England!) as we chatted about the play before I finally went to bed. There was a documentary about "Exile on Main Street" on Channel 4 and he was watching it, too, a huge Stones fan.
I finally went to bed and tried to sleep for a few hours, over-excited about the first day of rehearsal in the morning. I put Radio 4 on my MacBook and tried to get some rest. I slept fitfully, waking at some point and decided to check email.

My brother had written me in all caps: EMERGENCY! YOU MUST COME HOME NOW! Puzzled, I wrote back that it was after 2am, I was in London and what was up? Was Mom okay? "NO! COME HOME!" was the answer.

I couldn't call out on the landline because I didn't know how, so I woke Joy and Kris in Wales, dialing out on my UK cell to ask, saying I thought my mom was in hospital or perhaps, unthinkably, dead. I guess Joy told me how to dial out to the US. I don't remember but she must have. I don't remember talking to my brother but I must have. I do remember calling Summer and getting her voicemail. It was still early evening in SF and I didn't hear back for half an hour - she'd been at the theatre.

I think I've said the rest before - I told her the news and she immediately burst into tears and then told me to get on Skype. I did and there was my little sweetheart, the love of my life - thank god she and Mom got to know one another! "I want to see you drink an entire glass of water", she said, eventually. "And try to sleep. My mom is here with me and we will get you on a flight home. Sleep and I will watch you, I will watch you while you sleep", she said, my laptop remaining open.

Summer and Linda got me a flight and even booked a car to take me to Heathrow in the morning, a few hours away. At the airport, I texted Wilson - they'd stage the play without me - and wrote my mom's eulogy. Summer flew herself to Detroit. She and Linda had got me to JFK and I'd fly again the next morning- Summer wrote me, while I was in flight - to Detroit Metro to meet her.
She had brought my suit, hanging in her closet in SF. She slept that night in the airport, making friends with everyone working the overnight shift. When I saw her, I ran to her. I always did but this time remains especially burned into memory. I saw her before she saw me. I gathered her in my arms.

She'd brought a purple dress and my suit and we took them to the only drying cleaning place in town for a press. Later that day after my brother arrived and we talked, it was clear that he had no idea what to do. Summer was on it. My mom had a cottage on Lake Leeanne. She had hoped I would bring Summer out to see it and we thought that we would but, we ran out of time. I drove her out to see it. Summer loved the cottage. I imagined how much my Mom would've loved to see her there and pictured her any minute coming out of the house with a tray - "how about some root beer floats?" When we drove back, I saw an ice cream stand and took Summer for that very thing. That was the first day.

Summer was with me for the entire week as we planned my mom's funeral. I could not have done a thing without her. Her love was/is like the fucking sun. She saved me. My mom, more than anyone saw and knew that.

10 months later, Summer herself unbelievably, tragically passed.

I wasn't over my mom's death, honestly, when the second tragedy wiped out everything.
I once nearly drowned in the Atlantic. The first wave knocked me down but subsequent ones hit me with more force, making it impossible to see the surface and drawing me out to sea, toward my death. When I emerged, no one on the shore noticed, as if it hadn't happened.
I dunno. I guess your parents are meant to proceed you in death.

I don't think I was quite done mourning - I'm sorry, Mom - but losing Summer... what can I say? It was, it is, too much.

I miss my mom. I miss my little sweetheart. Love you both forever. Grief is the price we pay for love, yes?

Thank god for you both. And I know I will see you again - Faith! - soon and forever.

With love & faith....





Saturday, April 27, 2024

Saved, healed, changed

Little sweetheart, this was taken right after the DCfC show you took me to in Sacramento on my birthday weekend. We'd just arrived back home to Davis and you took this picture of us in the kitchen. This photo is another of my favorites of us because I can not only see but actually feel how happy I am. How happy you made me. Our friend Neal told me that after I met you I had changed so much that even my face looked different. That's how much you saved and healed me. Love you forever.



Thursday, April 25, 2024

On This Day

Little sweetheart, today is my birthday. My favorite birthday ever was spent with you, of course. We had a few days away from everyone and everything and retreated to the beautiful house in Davis to spend it together. You had tickets for us to see DCfC in Sacramento and on the day itself you made some ridiculously complicated and absolutely delicious chocolate cupcakes for us. Here you are providing the final touch, drizzling white chocolate sauce over each of them - and they're all HUGE, like each cakes in their own right! I think about how happy I was that day, that weekend, those years, and my heart surges with love. 

On my birthday I always also remember now the words I wrote and said for you on that day three years later. A recording of it is here

Thank you, my angel. Love you forever.



Saturday, March 30, 2024

March 30 - The Great Vigil

Saturday night of Holy Week concludes with another service I never knew of until a little over a decade ago, little sweetheart, called The Great Vigil.

After Tenebrae and Good Friday, the sanctuary of the church is left in darkness. On Holy Saturday, sometime between dusk that night and dawn on Easter Sunday, the tradition was to light a bonfire, an Easter Fire, outside the church, from which a single candle, the Pashcal Candle is lit and then brought into the sanctuary to light the rest of the candles in the church.  

It’s observed a bit differently from church to church but both the one I first saw at St Thomas and the subsequent ones at Trinity have been in two parts - starting very solemn still in semi-darkness for the first hour around 11pm and then literally brightening as the Paschal candle is brought in, the lights returned - and at Trinity - everyone ringing bells. It signifies Resurrection and the arrival of Easter (when before sunrise) sometime just after midnight.

Somehow, little sweetheart, going through the darkest parts of Holy Week seem to be the most resonant to me. I think it may be a place for my grief to be grounded, a quietness found and a resolve to keep the faith that you are forever and we will be together again, that you will, as always, find me.

With all my love, your Michael.

Friday, March 29, 2024

Holy Week - Good Friday

Little sweetheart, today is another of the days of Holy week that I always observe - Good Friday - and when I was active in that lovely church I told you about, West Side Collegiate, I was invited three years in a row to prepare remarks, reflections for the Good Friday service. The last year I participated, the service was recorded and later uploaded to YouTube. 

My faith is very grounded in the love we shared and my belief that I will be with you again, soon and forever. So, naturally, I speak of you in this address. I'm posting here below. 

Love you forever.