Lost and Found

Tonight, little sweetheart, as I sorted through a few things in my endless tower of piles, much of it writing. I found what I just labeled as "The Last Notebook". 

For decades, as I wrote plays - often for you! - I would write them all out in longhand but I still had to cull them from these journals as I moved to my typewriter or eventually my laptop. This was one of the old style. 

My book for you is decidedly composed only within particular and dedicated notebooks- it's only that content, not an ongoing journal with the project included, ongoing. I have a pile of them. Once it is finally completed I may take a picture. The many many notebooks in heap on the floor of this apartment that we knew together. Perhaps with me perched upon all or near it. 

But something happened tonight. 

I found the notebook I was writing contemporaneous to your passing. 

We've returned from our legendary trip to Ireland. We have Christmas. I return for the screening of our film Two from The Line and Valentines Day and our production of Blackbird. 

It's all there, all our triumphs and failures and my own - my struggles, our own together - the normal give and take of our relationship, like any other - not knowing how little time we have or, even happy and in love, that it will abruptly end and the grief that will haunt me to my own grave. 

In the end I'm writing from the hospital and finally in the hours before you pass. It's harrowing. But I needed to see it. It's true.

I have so much work to do, little sweetheart.

We have a new album coming out, our 13th, in 11 days - on June 21st the Summer Solstice. 

I'm so much older now, little sweetheart, I wonder if you would even recognize me. I hope my work, our work, preserves and conjures and honors you. 

I would be lost without Sylvia - who I know you see and love, we'll all be together someday - and your parents, who are so dear to me. Our family. 

I want and need to just keep trying. It was a moment tonight that I won't forget. I've set the notebook aside and marked some of its pages. I think it will help me. I feel like you've told me something - both about our own story, however tragic, and how I must go forward in the love. That that is exactly what you want for me. Didn't you tell me yourself that when we love someone it is forever? We don't forsake them by loving another! It's why we are here! And this love binds us all! Even my faith tells me so! 

I'm so sorry that I make and have made so many mistakes. Thank you for finding me tonight - I often see you in dreams, and I need to write of that here more often. Tonight, I've set aside this "Last Notebook" I just have to fully take it in. 

Love you forever. -M

I Believe

Oh, little sweetheart. I heard the most beautiful song at last night's Good Friday service. It made me cry and cry. It's a quite recent composition and I heard the NYC Trinity Church Choir sing it but the video below is (I think) its very first performance. The young conductor comes out at the end. I'll leave the notes about it (and the amazing words) below. 

It just is a breathtaking expression of faith! How I miss you, little sweetheart, and my mom, too. I hope you two are having a root beer float in Heaven right now and not worrying about me too much, knowing that things like this get to me. We'll all be together again and forever, soon. I believe. With all my love...

NOTES about ""Even When He is Silent"

Commissioned by the St. Olaf Festival in Trondheim, Norway (Olavsfestdagene). 

The text was found in a concentration camp after World War 2: 

I believe in the sun, even when it's not shining. 

I believe in love, even when I feel it not. 

I believe in God, even when He is silent.

On Good Friday

Here, little sweetheart, are remarks I composed and delivered for a Good Friday service a few years ago at NYC's historic West End Collegiate Church. With all my love forever.

 

The 19th

Although the 18th is such a tragically sad day to remember each year, little sweetheart, I must remind myself that the 19th is actually a glorious one because it is the day that we recognized as our anniversary. Although we'd first met in December the year before and had our first kiss a week or so earlier that March, the 19th was the night you drove me home - or rather I drove your car, as you directed me to, with you next to me in the passenger seat - parked on a hill outside the place I was staying in Bernal Heights and made your move. "Oh!" - I finally got it and asked if maybe you'd like to come in and have a cup of tea. You did, of course, and there's far more to tell but it was very much our first night. Let's make sure we remember this glorious day forever. With all my love... 

Nightships

Written for you tonight, my little sweetheart. Sylvia will voice and I will underscore it on the new album. With all my love forever.  

 

NIGHTSHIPS

In restless hours, quiet angels -
Determined,
The holiest of ghosts -
Astride pinpoints of moonbeam
That stream between a gap in the curtains,
Alight beside us at bedside
As we lay dreaming.
Sensing trouble,
She reroutes our course,
Righting these nightships
That carry us far too close
To misadventure and rocky shores.
Anxious thoughts allayed,
Instead,
She steers us toward healing
And the bright horizon
As dawn approaches,
In hopes we will remember.  

 

 

On This Day (and every day)

Thinking of you, little sweetheart, on this day and every day. Some more words of, for and about you here. With all my love forever. 

Last Night's Dream

I had such an unusual dream last night, little sweetheart. You and I were at some awards ceremony - it might have for the theatre or maybe it was a film festival. Anyway, we both were nominated and we both won! I don't know why I dreamt that part - maybe because tonight is the Academy Awards (although I rarely watch and only mostly did with you and even then we usually forgot they were even on until an hour after it had begun and were like "Oh, yeah - the Oscars..." and would turn on the TV in your room, halfway through. 

Anyway, the more interesting part of the dream was after. We were staying in some little hotel and we had to check out by noon. We both got up and I thought you were in the bathroom but just then someone knocked on the door. It was room service and they were bringing up your breakfast order. I asked if they could bring something up for me too and the lady was a little flustered but said yes, she'd have to hurry because the kitchen was about to close. 

After she left I was getting dressed and I looked in the mirror and noticed I had a new line on my forehead. I started to examine and touch it and I noticed that I was bleeding. Like above my hairline and then all down my face. I tried wiping the blood away but it kept bleeding. I knocked on the bathroom door but you weren't in there, so I went in, put a washcloth under cold water in the sink and pressed it to my forehead until the bleeding stopped. I cleaned up and everything looked okay. 

Just then you came back into the room smiling and pushing an upright piano on wheels into the room. "I found it upstairs!", you said, beaming mischievously. It was like an electric piano, a Rhodes or something - short scale, 49 keys or so and a full on piece of work with a wooden base - not just a keyboard on a stand.  But also light enough to move around on casters somehow. "Let's take it home!"  you said. 

We were really happy with your find and our night. Then I woke up. 

Ha! What do you think it all means? 

With love... your Michael