More on the Roof

 Here's a second one I took of you, little sweetheart! Happy Christmas!

First Snowfall!

Little sweetheart, I woke this morning to a surprise snowfall - our first of the season! It always makes me think of the time you were here just after Rock n Roll closed in Boston and just before Christmas. We went up on the roof and took a few pictures. One of them was our Christmas card for many years! I'll post a few. Love you forever!

 

Also at Christmastime

Here's the video of the Christmas song I wrote for you many years ago - "It's Christmas, Sweetheart". With love & faith... your Michael 

December 24th

Little sweetheart, it's Christmas Eve. I'm so glad I got to spend Christmas with you! I keep many of the customs you taught me and your very first Christmas letter to me - that came with the beautiful blue and grey scarf you made and gave me that year - hangs in a frame here over my desk. This picture was taken of you on our roof on a snowy day just before Christmas that year. Thinking of you tonight and always. Happy Christmas, little sweetheart!

 

First Snow of the Year

Little sweetheart, we took this picture together on the roof just a little bit before Christmas in 2008. You'd just closed the Boston run of Rock n Roll and came here for a week before flying to California to spend the holidays with your folks. A black and white version of this photo was our Christmas card for many years and I still think of it every season. We were sitting here together in the front room on the old plaid couch and noticed that it was snowing, so we bundled up and went to the roof. Merry Christmas, little sweetheart. 

Davis Christmas

I’ve so many memories of being with you in the beautiful house in Davis, little sweetheart, and the haven, the heaven, the sweet little retreat it was for the two of us to kind of get away from everything for a few days every now and then.

I won’t unpack every single one of them here just now but am thinking today of how lovely it was in the days after Christmas when, before we headed back to San Francisco, we first stopped off in Davis for a bit.

As ever, we started off by swinging by the Nugget Market for a few provisions, including all the ingredients I needed to make yet another batch of Christmas cookies. I had my mom’s vintage cookie cutters with me - stainless steel ones from the ’60’s in the shapes of a bell, a star, a snowman, an angel and a Christmas tree - but you encouraged me to use some cutters of your own and you retrieved them from the pantry to show me. I quibbled because they were decidedly non-Christmas shapes but you wanted to “shake things up”. Ha! Who could argue?!

I remember, even though California is not nearly as frosty as New York in December, that the house was a a little chilly when we arrived and that, instead of just cranking up the central air to a higher temp and heating the whole house - since we mostly stayed in the living room, your room and the kitchen - that we’d light the little potbelly stove just this side of the garden doors. It had a pilot light that required getting down flat on the title floor to find and engage its button. It was kind of a two person job - one person had to hold the button down from below and the other watch from the top to see that the flame went on. You took the hard part, the floor job, and we got it up and running after a try or two.

I also remember your “floor work” there because you’d recently gotten a new series of ear piercings, and ever vigilant, made sure to soak them in salt water for 2 minutes, three times a day. You’d lay on your side, little sweetheart, dipping your ear in a little teacup and ask me to time you. I have a picture! I’ve gotta find that!

Anyway, here is it, the third day of Christmas and my thoughts, as ever, are of you. Wonderful you. My treasure. With all my love…  
 

On Christmas...

We've made not one but two Christmas albums over the years, little sweetheart (!) - BPXmas in 2014 and Til Morning Is Nigh in 2018. 

This track, written for you, of course, opens the first of them. 

You are in my heart, my prayers, my every thought. Love you forever. Happy Christmas, little sweetheart! 

 

 

Christmas Day...

It’s Christmas Day, little sweetheart! Happy Christmas! I’m on my own but I’ll always remember our Christmas together with your folks.  

I’d gotten you a couple of things. As always, a little something from our London friend, Joy’s, jewelry shop in Newburgh Street near Oxford Circus. And I’d remembered that you’d said something about wanting a pink angora sweater, so I found a nice one for you from Karen Millen. You’d completely forgotten about it, so you were delightfully surprised.

Your mom made a point to give us a couple of gifts together, and because she knew we liked watching movies and shows together - “watching a story with my partner at the end of the day”, you used to say - she bought us a box set of the first season of Gabriel Bryne’s show “In Treatment”, with the instruction that we were only to watch it together. I loved that.

As everyone opened there presents in the living around the tree, you sat right next to me on the sofa and watched me especially carefully as I began to unwrap another present from your mom and dad. When I slipped the gift paper off, there was a small square box. I opened it to find what at first glance looked like an antique pocket watch but upon closer examination turned out to be a compass. I looked up and your dad said to me, “so you can always find us”. I burst into tears.

I’d lost my mother just a few months before. I’d been in London when I got the news and you and your mom had gotten me back to New York and then on to Detroit, where you met me and stayed at my side for that entire week as we planned the funeral and everything. It was the most extraordinary thing anyone had ever done for me and now this. When I turned the compass over, I saw that that very phrase “so you can always find us” had been engraved by your mom. Later she told me that when she had shown it to you before Christmas you had said to her, quite presciently, “oh, mom, you’re just going to make him cry”. The beautiful compass remains here, little sweetheart, on my mantle with many pictures of you and other treasures.

So many memories, my little sweetheart. I’m so very grateful. And I love you forever.

Christmas Eve tonight...

I’ll always think of you, little sweetheart, when I think of Christmas, even more than any I had as a child or the three quite magical ones I spent in Ireland in the years before I met and was found by you.

You brought me to your parents house that last and only year we were able to have Christmas together, and I remember pulling into the driveway and you cried out because you suddenly remembered that you’d left your gift for me back at your apartment in San Francisco! It would have to wait but it was well worth it - it was a lovely leather jacket that I wore every day pretty much from the day you gave it me until quite recently when I semi-retired it because I’ve nearly, literally, worn it out. (Don’t worry, I had it restored! Just being careful with it, now…).

Christmas Eve was really special at your house. We all went out to a Christmas Eve movie together and when we got home, your mom had new pajamas and slippers for everyone. We all got changed into them and that was our wardrobe for the next 24 hours - or longer, I kept my on for days, I think! And when we had to run out the next day for something we’d forgotten - extra eggnog, I think - your dad, brother and myself just jumped in the car wearing same!

It was a full house, too! Your folks and your brother and friends of his from Portland; friends of yours from San Francisco; as well as, Michelle and her kids. There might’ve been 20 of us! It was a wonderful night that stretched on late, even though Christmas Day was to follow.

It’s very quiet here tonight, little sweetheart. I’m on my own. I’ll make dinner tomorrow, getting the turkey in the oven after morning coffee and will probably watch Midnight Mass from bed in an hour! But as I lay my head down, I’m thinking of you - as ever.

With all my love.

Angel Frequency....

When we were putting together Til Morning, little sweetheart, I very much had something I'd long admired in mind. 

Sometime around 2002 or 2003 I first heard the BBC broadcast of "Nine Lessons and Carols" - an annual Christmas Eve service performed by The Kings College Cambridge Choir. The mixture of spoken word and devotional music - much like Taize and Electric Hymnal - inspired me to want to do something in that vein. 

The spoken word component was helped tremendously by the literal godsend of Sylvia coming into my life, into our life, and as she joined the band with you and I. 

A further thing I admired about 9 Lessons was the tradition of a new work being commissioned each year for inclusion in the service. This often led to a piece being highly modern and I thought we should do something not unlike that. That as we placed older, less well known Christmas songs in new shoegaze-y arrangements, I also compose and record an experimental music piece to be at the album's center. 

And that's what the track "Angel Frequency" is. Below is the video we did for it. 

Happy Christmas, little sweetheart! 

 

 

On Irene's Show

Another of our champions, little sweetheart, the legendary Irene Trudel included a track of ours on her Christmas show on WFMU this week. Another of my favorites from Til Morning, mostly because it features your soaring vocals. It’s "Noel". 

The full show is amazing. It’s up on WFMU’s archive here. And the the track itself on Bandcamp here. 

Happy Christmas, little sweetheart!

Advent

I never knew much about Advent, little sweetheart, until a few years ago, but it’s kind of a wonderful season - these 24 days leading up to Christmas. There was a wonderful program on BBC Radio 4 a few years ago, I taped the broadcast and later burned it to CDR, all about the Advent service they do each year at Salisbury Cathedral. 

The service is called “Darkness to Light” and the choir and vergers move in a procession about the church as they sing and speak the lessons and light the space one candle at a time from a single flame. The program weaves through interviews with the staff while including some of the music both of the service itself and the choir - both children and adults - as they rehearse. It’s really wonderful and I listen to each year at this time. 

Darkness to Light is resonant, too, I think, little sweetheart because it so well describes my own journey and the gift you brought - the light and love you illumined my life with. How grateful I am! Love you forever!  

On Max's show

We’re always excited, little sweetheart, when the great Max Reinhardt - BBC Radio 3/Soho Radio - plays us on his show... and he has again this week! 

As Christmas nears, he featured one of my favorites from our album Til Morning Is Nigh - "Milles Anges Divins". It’s a French carol that Sylvia suggested for the album. I learned and re-arranged it and wrote out all the French in phonetics so I could sing it properly! Ha! I also play melodica on it! 

This particular episode of Max’s show is not available on the MixCloud archive but here’s a link to the track on Bandcamp and below is the video we did for it. 

Love you forever!

Christmas Cards

Little sweetheart, we got the loveliest holiday card in the mail today! It's from our friend, your childhood primary schoolmate, Liz. 

She's an illustrator and in the past she's sent me some lovely drawings - almost like chapters of a graphic novel - of your mutual adventures as children, always with you as the heroine, of course! She loves you! And so do I! 

Here's a picture of the card with her drawing of us and her thoughtful greeting inside. 

Merry Christmas, little sweetheart!   

Don't Open til December 25

It’s Christmas Day, little sweetheart. It’s a bit rainy and unseasonably warm outside. I’m making a little dinner later, I’ll roast a chicken. 

Even though it’s a bit too warm today to be wearing it, I have right here beside me your first Christmas gift to me - the lovely blue and grey scarf you knitted for me, working on it daily, all during the Boston run of Rock n Roll. 

The words you wrote you me that Christmas remain with me always, too - the card itself framed and hanging on the wall in the red table room, a copy or two of it hanging over my desk and magnet-ed to the inside front door, and its last lines tattooed in your handwriting on my right forearm. 

Also, here, below, let me repeat them. I think somehow, little sweetheart, you knew you would need to give me instructions on how to carry on, something to hold to my heart and know that you would always be with me even if we were separated by mortality and the physical world. You gave me that not just with these words below but every day, with the great gift of your love. I’m so forever grateful. 

Merry Christmas, little sweetheart.

My Dearest Michael,
 

I’ve been working on this in the green room and backstage since we came to Boston. I’d drape it around my neck to keep warm while knitting in the dark of the freezing wings. The cast is decisively in favor of the striped color combination.
 

It’s Christmas day, and I’m wearing my pajamas. I’m in my P.J.’s even if you’re reading this when the sun has set. Ryan is making another bourbon and coke even if you’re reading this as the sun rises. My Dad is reading aloud shocking statistics about religion or politics, my Mom is spraying perfume on the dog, and me...? I am missing you. Maybe one day we’ll spend Christmas together.
 

Coy says “You are where you’re meant to be”, and while I like that idea, I know, far too well, what it feels like to be in a world where everything feels wrong – where everything is wrong. You have also been to that place. And as the world spins on its own axis, people are lost in their own needs and trials. We falter blindly, and strive endlessly. But no matter where you are, whether you should be there or not, and no matter who is present... know that you are a treasure in your own right. If the chest is buried, the key is lost, or the map stolen, it doesn’t matter; it doesn’t change the fact that it’s inside you. I just see what’s there. You carry it with you. What’s hidden can always be found.
 

I love you.

 

Your Gingersnap,


Summer


Silent-ish Night

Little sweetheart, it’s Christmas Eve. I have such memories of this night of the year going all the way back to my childhood and forward to those with you and now muddling through on any own. 

I remember a choir concert I was in one year in high school, given at the local college. It was dark early, as it is this time of the season, and as I drove home I found and listened to a show of early music on public radio. I liked it so much I turned it on in my bedroom after I got home. My room was in the basement of the house and somehow it felt very much like I was on my own. Almost grown. 

A year or two later I was singing with another ensemble, one that performed Handel’s Messiah every Christmas Eve in the rotunda at the art museum. There was an incredible snowstorm going outside but our London friend, Kris, drove all the way down to see it and then I went with him after back up the snowy roads to where he was at Uni. 

All through my childhood my grandmother, my mom’s mom, would make these special Christmas Eve sandwiches. She had an old hand crank meat grinder, and she would grind fresh bologna and mix it with herbs and things to make this sandwich spread that she would spoon onto hamburg buns, open-faced, and then toast in the broiler. In later years, my mom found a deli that made something similar, so she didn’t have to go through the entire byzantine process - you couldn’t find fresh bologna in stores anymore, anyway, only the prepackaged luncheon meat slices. 

I haven’t had a culinary tradition like that since my mom passed away, little sweetheart, but tonight I made a Christmas Eve quiche. It was Sylvia’s idea and a good one! I sautéed red bell peppers in olive oil, steamed some broccoli and then added them with sharp cheddar, sour cream, heavy cream, flour and eggs, garnished with lemon pepper, and put it in the oven for a little less than an hour. I think you’d like it! 

My favorite memories of Christmas and Christmas Eve are with you, of course, little sweetheart. Coming home from the movies and settling into the living room around the Christmas tree where your mom has left a package for each of us with new pajamas and slippers. Changing into them and wearing them all through the night and all day on Christmas, itself. If we forgot something at the store, we wouldn’t even change out of them - just throw on a coat and drive over to whatever was open, usually for extra eggnog, right? 

It’s quiet here tonight, little sweetheart. I’m listening to BBC 4’s Christmas Eve broadcast and my thoughts are, as ever, of and with you. With all my love…

Snow Swept

Little sweetheart, thinking today of that late December afternoon years ago when we looked outside to see it snowing lightly, quickly got dressed and headed up to the roof as the snowflakes dusted everything around us, the sun dipping to the horizon as we looked west. Love you forever.

Robins in the Wreaths

Little sweetheart, for years there was this building next to the Sacred Heart rectory on W51st Street that was covered in scaffolding. More than that, it was encased, it seemed - like a wooden box had been built over it hiding whatever renovations were underway from prying eyes. For years, I say. Like at least 5. 

One day late last spring all of that came down and you could start to see the renovated building - a three story brownstone - and even its interior through the windows. It looked amazing. One day I met the owner, Casey, a young woman with a toddler and a dog, outside the building and we hit it off. She’s super nice. Later I met her husband and her eldest boy, I think he’s about six or seven. 

One of the things that I’ve loved about walking past the house is how she’s decorated it festively over every holiday. It was amazing on Halloween with cobwebs and pumpkins and everything. And just now, for Christmas, it looks absolutely beautiful. There are lights - simple, pretty white strands - at night, and by day it’s just awash in pine and red ribbons. There are wreaths and the front stairwell wrapped in thick, beautiful pine branches all the way up. 

I was coming back from my run and there was a robin perched in the midst of it all. He didn’t even flinch when I approached. I think he thought he was a in a forest! And then when he flew up a bit higher, I could see there were yet more birds, a couple more robins and a handful of sparrows, also nesting within. The first robin hadn’t flown higher so much to get away from me than to have a bit of lunch - Casey had weaved holly within the pine branches and our robin was feasting on a couple of little red berries hanging there! 

It was absolutely magical, little sweetheart. I couldn’t wait to get home and tell you! 

With all my love.   

That movie... again?!

Little sweetheart, one of the things I’m doing through this week leading up to Saturday is watching some of our collections of Christmas movies. One of them that always makes me think of you is "Love, Actually". Not because it was one of your favorites but because I had never seen it before you and I met and then that first trip we took to England together I finally saw it on TV. 

Later after we got back and between me joining you in San Francisco or you coming back here to New York, we were on the phone one night. You had called and when I picked up you could hear the tv on in the background. You recognized what was playing instantly. 

"Are you watching that movie... again?!", you asked both incredulous and amused, knowing me so well. Yes, I had to admit, I’d bought it on DVD, even though it was July or something. 

I don’t know what it was that had so captured me, little sweetheart, but I suspect it was simply you. The way you had come into my life and opened my heart - like The Grinch’s growing three sizes that day - I was more vulnerable to the heartfelt, if you know what I mean. 

I know you do. And I’m so very grateful.

Christmas Week

Little sweetheart, it’s Christmas Week - the week leading up to the holidays which this year falls on a Saturday. Christmas Day actually is, like the song says, the first day of Christmas - we’ve been in Advent all this time prior, since December 1- and I like hanging on to and observing these twelve days and nights right up to Epiphany. Often, I make a last batch of Christmas cookies on Epiphany! 

I can’t help but think of you so deeply this week, little sweetheart, and how much you loved Christmas. One of the first things you said to me was how you wanted to spend Christmases together. It’s hard not to mourn our not having had more of them but I think I treasure even these ones alone now all the more because I had even one with you. 

You fill my heart with light, with love, and if I quiet myself, find ways to be kind, to be good, I will find you there, again and again, closer, always, than I can even imagine. 

Merry Christmas, little sweetheart.