Little sweetheart, I knew March 8th would be a hard day for me. It always is. I often feel it coming from weeks away. And it was, it was hard. But a couple of things happened, too, that I know you meant for me to take to heart and comfort, with faith. I’ll begin here…
Last week I stumbled across a really inventive video, a cover of The Waterboys’s “The Whole of the Moon”. Mike Scott himself had posted it with his blessing. It had one guy in his studio, a reel to reel tape running to playback, and it appeared as if he was playing all the instruments - bass, guitar, piano, drums, synth - and singing seamlessly. It was impossible to tell how he’d filmed it. It just looked like a band playing live but every member was him. Aside from it being really clever visually, the cover was amazing faithful and reminded me how much I loved the original.
The night before last, I looked up The Waterboys’s video performance from 1985. The song is the second track on their album “This Is The Sea”. I remember first discovering that and them in 1988 when I heard another track from the album - “Trumpets” - on a mixtape someone let me borrow. It was my last year in DC and I went into Kemp Mill Records at Dupont Circle (remember record stores, little sweetheart?) and asked after it. The mixtape wasn’t mine and it didn’t even have any track notes. I’m pretty sure I just sang it to the guy and he recognized it. They weren’t super famous at that time, at all, and even now “Trumpets”, is a pretty deep track. Their next album, “Fisherman’s Blues”, came out that year, and that was their breakthrough in the US. For about decade you could find that album on every CD jukebox in an bar - particularly any Irish one - in New York.
I saw Mike Scott both solo - most memorably at Merkin Concert Hall near Lincoln Center - and with The Waterboys, three nights in a row at The Garage in North London, over the years. I put “Trumpets” on that first Christmas mixtape CD-R I made for you after you were in the play in Boston, remember, little sweetheart?
Anyway, “The Whole of the Moon” has been the song stuck in my head for the last week, little sweetheart. The lyrics, especially, so resonant and making me think of you and how you brought such enormous love and light into my life. There was nothing before you.
I got out my copy of “This Is The Sea” and I watched the original video of “The Whole of The Moon” performance - so transcendent, rising and rising, with the lyrics, the lovely moment when Max Edie begins singing the descant, her childlike voice floating above Mike Scott’s lead vocal (it reminded me of singing with you) - over and over Sunday night, crying and crying with longing for you. Then, just before bed, the first thing happened.
I’d been so worried about something all day, a friend in trouble. I’d been praying for them, adding it to the prayers I say each day for you. I got word just before bed that everything was alright. It made me grateful and it made me know you were near.
I felt so fragile when I awoke to the day. I wrote all morning and into the afternoon, little sweetheart, and then went for a walk. I was so full of sadness, little sweetheart, I had to sit on a bench and just cry and breathe.
Tonight after dinner, I listened and watched “The Whole of The Moon” again and again and finally thought I should turn on something else in the hours before going to bed, in the hours before the actual hour of the terrible events that tore you from me ten years ago (how could it be?) were upon me, upon us.
When this lockdown began almost a year ago, little sweetheart, I bought a subscription to The Criterion Channel. I told your mom about it. It’s kind of wonderful. There are so many films - from art house to classic old Hollywood to premieres, there. I thought I should choose something that wasn’t too heavy and one of the films in my queue was a Preston Sturges comedy from 1942, “The Palm Beach Story”. Film Forum had a retrospective of his films about 15 years ago, little sweetheart, and I remembered liking the ones I saw, quite a lot.
Claudette Colbert starred in this one. A few years ago I saw a photo of her from another film. She was dressed in a harlequin costume and looked uncannily like you. I actually bought a big poster size print of it - a black and white production still - and gave it to your mom at Christmas. She had it framed beautifully and now it hangs in your room at their house.
In the months after your unfathomable loss, your mom discovered the films of Mary Pickford. She also bears any uncanny resemblance to you, little sweetheart. Your mom told me that she’d mentioned it to you once - how not only Mary Pickford but some of the other actresses of the Silent Era seemed to bear a resemblance - and that you said, shrugging, wryly, “they all look like me, mom”.
I watched several of these Mary Pickford films with your mom, little sweetheart, and it was kind of magical how she even seemed to move like you. And that’s what happened last night.
There must’ve been a hundred times through this film where I could swear I was watching you, my love. Her voice, it’s true, is a bit different. She’s kind of doing that “Mid Atlantic” accent - somewhere between British and Standard American - that was so much of its time. But even that reminds me of you, reminds me of one of your characters from your breathtaking performance in “The Blue Room”.
All last night, this wonderful and wonderfully funny film, lightened my heart, little sweetheart and brought you into the room with me, just as you would want to sit with me each night and as you always said “watch a story at the end of the day with my partner.”
Dozens of times I literally said aloud, “oh my god, it’s you, little sweetheart”. Amazingly, even one of the last scenes, as Rudy Vallee sings at her window, chooses a song using the same phrase I would say to you as we fell asleep.
This day, this night that so shakes me with grief and longing, little sweetheart, I could feel you with me, protecting me, reminding me, giving me signs of your eternal presence, as best you could, to strengthen my faith, to know I will return to you.
You will find and keep me. Our Oneness Can Never Be Erased.
With all my love forever.
