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.

 

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. 

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. 

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.

A Visitation

Little sweetheart, we were invited of late to contribute a track and some words to a really wonderful program in Italy - Silent Radio. Its host, Tiberio Faedi, has become a dear friend and advocate of ours - he interviewed me a year or two ago and has devoted a couple of full two hour editions of his show to our most recent albums, In The Hours Left Until Dawn and Memories of the Sky. 

Anyway, the show takes a hiatus from early August until early in the fall and he invites guests as part of each season's finale. We were on with a track from Memories of the Sky, "Hold My Soul", and I said a few words of introduction, largely about you, of course, at the top. Later, a listener in Mexico City wrote to me to say this:

"Ciao Michael, I don’t want to sound weird, but I just wanted to tell you that while you were remembering Summer on silent radio, a hummingbird flew into my office. And the amazing thing is that here in Mexico City it’s the rainy season, so you usually don’t see them at all until September. I find it amazing. Sending hugs, and thank you for your music"

You are my miracle girl, little sweetheart, and always will be. 

On Good Friday

Little sweetheart, it's Good Friday. I think of you so much all of time, of course, but Holy Week is an occasion that helps bring focus to my faith and knowing that you will find me soon and forever. A few years ago I was invited to compose and deliver remarks for a Good Friday service at West End Collegiate in NYC. The church actually recorded the service and those remarks - very much about you - are below. With all my love my forever. 

The Beatles

Watching something tonight, little sweetheart, about The Beatles and remembering that shortly after we first met - during rehearsals for Tir na nOg at The Magic in San Francisco - that I happened to mention that I liked The Beatles. The next day you came to rehearsal with your box set DVD copy of The Beatles Anthology. Most people, including me, had only seen the vastly edited US version of it on TV. It was an incredibly lovely thing to do. 

And a couple weeks later, when you invited everyone to your apartment for a party - your wonderful "Cupcakes & Cocktails" party - you made me feel so at home. I was a little upset with the cast because most of then didn't show up and you had gone to such trouble, but you looked after me. I didn't drink then but you poured me a glass of milk (!) and served me some amazing cupcakes and sat down on the couch with me all night, kind of carving out a little space for you & I. And you put The Beatles on the stereo and kept them on because you knew we both liked them. 

When it was time to leave, because the theatre was putting me up way across town, I was borrowing a car, and I didn't know my way around, you gave me your GPS device. You'd already led me into your underground parking space and now you made sure I got safely home. Once I did arrive back in Bernal Heights, you texted me - one of our first texts -  to say that you'd meant to send me home with more cupcakes and that you'd baked the chocolate ones especially for me. It was our beginning. 

Thinking of all that tonight and saying our prayer. Love you forever.  

Something I Saw Today

Little sweetheart, I saw a lovely piece of writing today. Science-based but also faith-assuring, I think it's for us both: 

"For the rest, Science tell us that nothing ever dies but only changes. That time itself does not pass but curves around us. And that the past and the future are together at our side 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?

Angel Hours

And just as I typed that last post, I look at my phone and it's 4:44 - the repeating of numbers that signifies one's guardian angel. You really do always find me, don't you, my little sweetheart?

As I Dream of You, We Dream Together

Little sweetheart, even before the album took its name, I called this photo of us "Dream Together". It's      been another emotional difficult year, as I write these words on its last day. But my love for and faith in you remains steadfast. Even this very blog has been difficult this year, with technical issues and the resources to maintain. But even if posting here was light, my thoughts fly to you. You're in my work, you're in my heart, you keep me going. You always liked to say, rather than we "met", that you "found" me. Please keep finding me, little sweetheart. With love - your Michael

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!

 

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!

14 Years Ago in Ireland, pt 8

Little sweetheart, on our last day in Ireland, after we said goodbye to our friends in Kilcrohane - already making plans to return for Johnny's birthday the following spring - we stopped by the heritage site (sort of like a national park) down the coast at Gougane Barra. There's a beautiful forest there and a lovely tiny church, where we stepped inside and I took this picture of you. We hadn't made plans to stop for more than an hour or so but you were so taken by the place, little sweetheart, we went into the little hotel nearby and got more info. You very much wanted to come back and spend the night, so we could walk the trails and get to know this lovely spot better. It became another of our plans. We had so many, didn't we, my little sweetheart? 

I believe time is something we don't really know while we're mortal. And that when I pass, I'll find you, of course, and find that we can be in any place, any moment we loved, together and for as long as we like. Is it something like that, little sweetheart? Will you tell me eveything I need to know about The Forever when I get there and run to you? 

With faith and love... your Michael

14 Years Ago in Ireland, pt 5

Little sweetheart, this is one of my favorite pictures of you, not only from our trip, but maybe ever. When we got all the way out to the lighthouse, there was a guardrail and a sign saying "Do Not Cross". True to form, you disregarded it and settled yourself onto these little steps to get a better view of the sweeping vista of the rocky coast and wide expanse of the Atlantic stretching into the horizon. You turned back, beckoning me to join you and I did, right after snapping this shot. I think you know why this image remains so powerful to me, little sweetheart. Even as I write this, a large, poster size print of this photo hangs framed above me here at my desk. Thank you for calling to me, my angel. I know we'll be together again, and forever, soon.