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. 

Tonight, Remembered

Tonight, little sweetheart, was our last night before the tragic and impossible. 

Honestly, we'd had a rough day. We were in a difficult period of rehearsal for "Blackbird" - in hindsight an amazing project because it was a play for just we two - and we were a little stressed, after. But we talked it through, ordered a pizza for dinner (we never did that) from a place, incredibly called "Escape From New York", watched a story and fell asleep together.

We woke up healed, hopeful and headed back to a run-through of all we had of the play off book and blocked - our first full run through - and it was astonishing. We had it. Our director was beside himself with joy. This was going to be the best production in SF in a decade and we had it with two more weeks to polish. We headed off triumphant ... to buy groceries (homebodies, we just wanted to be in our jammies together with a DVD) and have a rare night off at home...

More about tomorrow, tomorrow, but tonight - tonight, we couldn't know anything. 

It's years later  - 15 years - little sweetheart. I'm feeling so much tonight and don't know what to say. I'm working on the book. I'm working on our 13th album.

Love you forever. See there. 

Forever

Thinking of you always, little sweetheart. Between travels and troubled times, I've not kept up this page nearly enough but you are in my every thought and all of my work. The book goes forward, I'm in the thickest parts of our 13th album - the great Max Reinhardt had me on air recent to talk about it - and I love you with all my soul. More imminently. Love you forever. 

Perfect Unison

I’m working on the 13th Bipolar Explorer album just now little sweetheart and as I mix down roughs of new tracks, they always automatically go into a super long play list of BPX Demos. If I listen back, because the new tracks are always at the end, the playlist begins after from the very top. And at the very top is your and my very first demo of “Flag Day”. Of course I’ve heard many many times, as well as the finished version on our album, Of Love and Loss, but what struck me tonight was that at one point as we’re both holding a long note, our voices join each other in a perfect unison vibrato. Both our voices begin that tremolo together at the exact same time. It’s kind of amazing. Love you forever.
 

700 pages

Little sweetheart, I know it's taking forever and that I've terribly remiss in keeping up this page but the book is still coming along. I'm far from done but I'm about to hit page 700 and I think I'm going to print what I have (and still continue, of course) because it seems like an important milestone. It 's coming, baby. And you are always in my every thought and prayers, my heart and soul. Love you forever.

The Work and the Love Goes On!

Little sweetheart, I feel sad and disappointed in myself that I have not been posting here as regularly as I used to do. But don't imagine for a minute that you are not in my every thought because you are! One thing that has happened of late is that I have been made much more progress in writing our book. Every day that I have not posted here I have been telling our story in the Summerlove book as it grows to some great length (it's well over 700 pages at the moment). Our music goes forward, too. I'm working on our 13th album right now. All this to say that there's so much to say! I hope and will endeavor to return to this page more often through the autumn, as I also hope to keep pushing through with the book and our next album. I love you with all my heart and forever.

Be Kind

There's a line from The Newsroom, Will is defending Maggie and he says "if what happened to her happened to you, you'd sit alone in a room and cry forever."

I think I may not be the only one who needs to remember that when finding it impossible to work, overwhelmed, and also feeling guilty about not getting enough done.

We need to remember to be kind - especially to ourselves. 

I know you'd tell me that, wouldn't you, little sweetheart? I suspect you just did - whispering the notion in my ear and making me think of it.

 

Love you forever. 

Another New Year

It’s another New Year, little sweetheart. I miss you more than ever. And I’ll endeavor to do my best, to keep trying, to be better, to honor and remember and find you here and everywhere. To listen - for I know that if I do you will find me. Isn’t that right, little sweetheart?

The Last Day of October

Little sweetheart, surely Christmas was your favorite holiday - you always spent it with your wonderful family and included me once we'd met and it was always glorious and fun. But I think a close second for you as a favorite was Halloween. 

For different reasons, of course, since they are vastly different occasions - just for a start Christmas spreading out over days if not a week and Halloween coning down to single night in October (just two weeks away from your birthday). 

What I think you liked most about Halloween was its theatricality. You weren't much of a horror film buff or anything but you loved the idea of costumes and fancy dress. And candy! Ha! You loved candy! There was something so very childlike - in the most charming way - about your continued love of the holiday. 

I'd kind of lost sight of it until we met. I wasn't much of one for parties or the parade (quite a famous and altogether fabulous one here in New York, downtown in The Village). But in 2008 I happened to be in LA. Old DC friends - they'd actually gone to ACT - had a theatre company there called The Road and they were doing two of my plays - Real Real Gone and Seven Pages Unsigned - in a twin bill. You would've been there too except that you were doing Rock n Roll at ACT and about to transfer the production to Boston's Huntington Theatre (where I would join you just before your birthday). 

You were packing up and flying to Boston just before I was finishing up in LA. My friends lived in Van Nuys so the airport in Burbank was closer and easier to travel to than LAX so that's where I departed from. It was October 31 - Halloween. When I arrived just before my fight, all the attendants were in costume and passing out candy - the atmosphere giddy and light. I couldn't wait to tell you about it and it was then that I truly wondered when on earth did I go off of Halloween? It was delightful! 

I needed you to show me. I needed you for so many things, little sweetheart. You brought such light and joy into my life. It's hard sometimes now to find it but if I think of you as you were and don't fall into despair over your absence, I do. I do find the joy that you shared with me. 

Happy Halloween, little sweetheart!

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...

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.

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.

March 28 - Tenebrae

Another one of the Holy Week services that I find really resonant, little sweetheart, is something called Tenebrae. I’d never attended one or even knew about it until the first one I went to at St. Thomas, in 2012, I think. It’s usually held on either Holy Wednesday or Holy Thursday and is a service of readings and choral pieces.

Not unlike Taize, it’s a candlelight service and as it goes on, one of the candles in the candle stand on the altar is extinguished at the conclusion of each reading until the last, when the church is left in darkness and a very theatrical moment occurs, The Strepitus - which is Latin for “great noise”. The choir bang their hymnals on the railings, the organ plays loud and discordantly, all in a kind of protest at the darkening of the light. Then, one of the ministers or priests comes forward with one last candle, still burning, that had been hidden. And all depart in silence.

West End observed Tenebrae and I went each year. Since the pandemic, like with most of these services now, little sweetheart, I watch the one from Trinity online, as I did tonight. Thinking of you, as always, and saying our prayer.
 

February 14 - Ash Wednesday

Little sweetheart, even before your tragic passing, I could come to think more deeply about faith. I’m sure I’ve told how moved I was going to the sort of High Episcopal services, especially Evensong, at St Paul’s in London and later at St Thomas here in New York. 

I really began to embrace them ever more in the months and years after. I think it was just what I needed but even so, no one ever approached me there and I felt I was more of a solemn, mournful observer than a participant. 

Eventually I discovered a lovely little church - one of the oldest in the city - about 30 blocks north of here: West End Collegiate. I first began attending their Wednesday night Taize service - an hour-long program of prayer and meditation and almost chant-like hymns held in their sanctuary, lit almost entirely be candlelight. Later, I began to go to some of the other services as well. I found it a good way to quiet my mind and to also to think of and speak quietly to you. 

The pandemic sort of ended the tenure of the clergy and parishioners I had gotten to know in the four or five years I attended West End but it instilled in me some practices and observations that I continue to embrace. Holy Week is one of them. And the period leading up to it - Lent - begins today with Ash Wednesday. 

My thoughts, as ever, of you and my heart longs for you. Any occasion, honestly, little sweetheart, that brings me closer to you and undistracted by the mundane struggles of life is a blessing. I hope to keep near you in these weeks ahead and will write more of them. 

With all my love forever… your Michael

New Year's Day 2023

The first day of 2023 is a cold clear one, little sweetheart, and I’m sitting here at my desk with a cup of coffee doing some writing, which I hope will find me making progress toward completion of one of our books by this time next year. Things seem to get a little harder each year, I find I need to rest more often, but I’ll keep going and trying to be as good as you want me to be. It helps to know that you want me to do just that. Happy New Year, little sweetheart. I’ll do my best to make it a good one, I promise. With all my love forever.

"Finding Joy"

I’ve been following an account on Twitter for a while, little sweetheart, by an artist and illustrator named Gary Andrews. He lost his wife to a sudden illness a few years ago and later, when he could bring himself to, he began doing drawings of their life together and his life (and their kids - they had two small children) after. It’s very moving and lovely. 

This year he published a book telling the story - a book of those illustrations telling the story I should say. It’s called “Finding Joy” (Joy is his late wife’s name). I ordered a copy and it arrived a few days ago. I have it out here but I kind of can’t bring myself to read and look at it. But I know you’d tell me to, so I will and I’ll come back and tell you more about it then. 

Meanwhile, remember - I love you!!

Forever!

I'm still here, little sweetheart, with lots of news, thinking of and praying for you constantly - everyday! 

Our book - oh, dear lord, what a tome! -continues but I can't in good conscience not post here, as well, even lightly. So, consider this the return! 

Honestly, little sweetheart, it's hard to write a book. It's so different from writing plays and because its subject is so massive, it took years just to find my way (which I did!) and years more to press on. We'll get there! I promised you and I will fulfill that promise. 

Much more news, as I say, including what seems like such long form progress on our story, further BPX adventures and just muddling through my life - with faith! 

Love you forever!

Briefly Noted...

Little sweetheart, I'm working to finish our memoir, thinking of you every day. My posts here may well trail off for a little while but you are always on my mind, in my prayers, in my heart. So many things to tell you. More anon. With love forever. 

In Between Days

These days ahead, little sweetheart, while not quite as dark as those of March, also have a kind of bitter memory to them. They are the days between my returning to New York after your tragic passing and my return to San Francisco for your memorial - held, incredibly on my birthday.

There was a something about flying back to New York that held a kind of magical hope that I would find you here. Joan Didion speaks of how she kept her husband’s clothes after his own tragic passing, very consciously thinking that he would need them when he came back. This place, of course, our little apartment here, is very much filled with your things to this day and pictures of you on every wall and surface surround me. But even then, I felt somehow I would find you here when I got back. I’d been gone two months and the landlord had to get into the apartment to fix a couple of things. They’d been waiting until I got home. They were very kind and empathetic, knowing of your loss, so they didn’t bother me for a few days but they did finally have to repair a radiator that had been leaking - my neighbor had let them in weeks before so they could shut it off - and all the stove/ovens in the building had been replace except for mine while I’d been gone. They went from gas to electric, I think because there’d been some problems with the gas lines - remember when you were here and you thought you noticed a funny smell, like gas escaping? Remember, I called them and they were quite unusually prompt, arriving within the hour.

I was here alone for that first week and then Sean and Meg asked if I’d like to come out Rye Brook and stay with them and their two little girls (they’re both very big girls, high school and college, now). It was enormously helpful, actually, little sweetheart to be with them. They knew you, of course, and were unfailingly kind. You and I were supposed to have visited them on Cape Cod that summer. It was nice to be around their family, having dinner and playing with the dog, going for walks, hearing about the girls’s day at school and staying up talking with Sean and Meg. I told Sean at one point that I didn’t know how I was going to do this (like keep going on) and he said, very kindly “you’re doing it”. It was way too soon to start working on the album you and he and I had begun, again, but the thought did occur that I would do. I wrote my speech for you for your memorial and spent my days out there with our lovely friends until it was time to fly back to SFO.

I rented a car and got lost trying to get in from the airport. I’d only ever traveled to and from SFO with you and I wound up way over on the other side of town, near the stadium just as a Giants game was getting out. I was, literally, lost without you.

These days, these three weeks in April always give me such pause, little sweetheart. I know they will again this year. In a way, they fold somewhat neatly into Holy Week, which begins on Sunday. My thoughts, as ever, of you. With all my love.

The Day After The Day After St Patrick's Day

Little sweetheart, for all the bitter anniversaries that March brings of loss, another far more joyous one remains and I hope to hold it close to my heart today and all in all the days of my life yet to come. 

March 19th - the day after the day after St Patrick's Day - was one that you and I used to cite as our anniversary as a couple. We'd met, of course, months earlier and had been getting to know and deeply care for one another from almost that very first moment. But this night proved a special one for us and later we'd think of it in that way - as our Anniversary, writ large.. 

So, Happy March 19th, my darling girl, my True Love, my soulmate, my gingersnap, my little sweetheart. With all my love forever.