More Thinking of Boston

Working on the book just now little sweetheart, I’m having occasion, again, to recount our time together in Boston.

It was just about this time of year, too, and everything still remains so fresh in memory. How cold and crisp it was already, even before Thanksgiving. How we stopped about in the snow on the way to the theatre where you were doing Rock n Roll. Cooking for you in the little kitchen of the sweet, cozy apartment they’d put you up in for the run. Taking day trip during your time off to JFK library and along Newburgh Street and some of our epic walks circling either bank of the Charles River.

You know, my darling girl, that even though I’ve been back to Boston probably a half dozen times since then, it is always you and our adventures that I remember when I’m there. It feels sometimes as I travel about that somehow we still are there together and then you’ll soon come around a corner and join me. There’s even a street as soon as you get off the train called Summer Street. So fitting, because I know, my little sweetheart that you are everywhere and forever.

With all my love.

On The Radio (again)!

We were back on the radio this morning, little sweetheart! Back on WFMU. Carol Crow featured us on her Sunday morning show and it was a really interesting program because she used interview clips of each artist to precede a track from one of their albums. The three hour show included Aphex Twin, Nick Cave, Philip Glass, Max Richter, Brian Eno and... us.

The clip Carol used from from Part 2 of the new documentary about Til Morning Is Nigh and she followed that up with “Angel Frequency”, so your vocals were way up front.

Hey, little sweetheart, you’re on the radio (again)!

Full show here: http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/89167

Listening For Signs

We’re right at the point of the autumn, little sweetheart, where we’re listening every night for some signal or sound that the radiators are going to whir to life. During the day it’s warm enough but by nightfall we’re both bundled up in hoodies and socks and straining to hear some indication that maybe a regulator has begun whistling and the pipes will fill with steam and warm the place up a bit.

I remember so well one of your last times here, little sweetheart, with that heat pipe in the WC so hot to the touch and you accidentally bumping up behind it and coming running back into the apartment to tell me.

Everything around me is evidence of you - thank god! It’s such an enormous comfort to have this shared history in events and phenomena, so that each time it comes around, my mind is flooded with thoughts of you. It’s such a blessing in your absence. And you are the blessing itself made flesh and spirit. You are the blessing of my life.

Taize Prayers

Taize - that little candlelight meditation on Wednesday nights - has started back up, little sweetheart, and I went tonight. I won’t be able to get back to another one for three weeks but that one falls quite wonderfully on your birthday.

Tonight I was asked to read a prayer at the end which was a actually composed by the Dean of Grace Cathedral where your mom and I have gone a couple of times in San Francisco.

It’s so nice just to sit at the back in the peaceful darkness of the sanctuary lit only mostly by candles, quietly sing the chants in my weird harmonies and come forward later to light a candle and say our prayer. It’s an hour of welcome quiet where I can reflect and feel close to you, listen for your guidance and tell you how much I love and long for you. And the gratitude I feel for your having found me.

Find me again, won’t you, my love? Over and over. Forever.

Your Favorite Holiday/Time of Year

It’s nearly Halloween, little sweetheart - which I think is possibly your favorite holiday maybe even rivaling Christmas, because of its inherent drama and fun and dressing up and things.

Your dad has told me such lovely stories about Halloween parties they had for you kids when you were little out at the beautiful sprawling home in Moss Lane, including one where you and all your little buddies were on a hayride and your dad was dressed up like Frankenstein to come popping out of some bushes when the wagon went by. But it took a wrong turn, wound up back at the house for apple bobbing and further festivities and left your dad lurking confused, waiting for a hayride that never arrived for an hour.

One of the most beautiful things about you, my little sweetheart, is how proud you always were of your parents, how very much you loved and admired and wanted to tell people so. And that you had such a treasured, happy childhood.

I think of that and all the wonderful stories you told me, often. And today, too, when I imagine how lovely it would have been to have had a little brood of our own, showering them with love and taking them trick or treating.

I think in another world and time, the one where you are now, closer than I can imagine that is possible. Everything is possible there. And with faith and listening closely to your celestial instruction, I will find you and all of it there.

With all my love forever.

Work On The New Album

It seems like the new album, our 9th, little sweetheart, is coming forward.

I’d begun just recording the very first few ideas on voice memo when Sylvia and I were on our trip along Route One in May. I’d taken along that First Act guitar I’d had at your apartment (that now resides in your closet at your folks house, at the ready when we visit) along with a little 9 Volt mini-amp and a cheap echo/delay pedal I bought to keep out there. In the evenings when we stopped for the night, I’d set it all up in our hotel room and play for a while. The first 3 or 4 songs seemed to come that way and their working titles are all places where we recorded them - Santa Barbara, San Simeon, Mission Street.

In the last weeks I’ve worked up a set list of about 16 songs that I play through every day and lyrics have come forward for some of them too. I’m excited to share them with you every day - I know you are both present as I play them and helping me to find things even as I lay asleep. It’s the best thing that I do with my time, little sweetheart and it brings me ever so close to you, which is all I want in the whole wide world.

I love you so very much. Forever!

White Cake with Icing

I suddenly got the thought in any head the other night, little sweetheart, to make a white cake. It struck me that even though I very much like a nice white cake with white icing, that I’d never actually made one myself. I had to read about it. You need to separate the yolks - I’d never done that. It came out pretty good, tho!

It’s so funny to think that I barely did any cooking, really, before you brought me into your life. I remember you eyeing my kitchen for supplies, then making a list and taking us to Bed, Bath & Beyond to kit everything out. It’s funny because I cook all the time now! I started of course because I so loved cooking for you. But I continue whenever I’m out visiting and parents and all the time when Sylvia is here and even really just for myself.

Making a cake always makes me think of you, of course, little sweetheart and as I was I also remembered how much you liked those little vanilla sandwich cookies - I think they call them “cameos”.

Sometimes, little sweetheart, I think there was and is a part of you that was always preparing me for everything I’d have to go through until we got to be in The Forever. Things I need, you showed me, you gave me the tools to do them - how to be good to myself and how to work, the work itself, too. Like a thousand other gifts, this was something you put into my hands when you took me into your life and heart. I’m so grateful for you, little sweetheart. Forever I am.