Fathers

Today is Father’s Day, little sweetheart. My own father has been gone now longer than I had him in my life. And I find my thoughts are both of your own lovely father and regrets that I didn’t get the chance, as you told me and told your mother, too, that you wanted to raise a child yourself with me.

I sent your dad a card last week and a chocolate cake that was meant to arrive on Friday. I called him today to wish him a Happy Father’s Day and we spoke for some time. It’s been ages since I’ve seen him or your mom or really anybody, because of the pandemic and not being able to travel.

He was kind of winding up the call when I finally asked if he got the cake. He hadn’t! I had an alert that it had been delivered so he went looking for it, sharing the adventure with me on FaceTime. The company sends the cakes packed in dry ice so that they keep well and we found that instead of leaving it at the front doorstep or the backdoor table, that they’d tucked it under the edge of a little bush near the front door so that it would be in the shelter of some shade there. Your dad took it inside and reported that it was fine, thank goodness!

And, well, that’s my story - ha! Anyway, thinking of you, my little sweetheart on this day and every day. With all my love forever…

The Reason, My Conscience, You

Little sweetheart, colleagues in France are helping the band up our profile a little bit. A pair of them are also Wikipedia editors/contributors and last night they published a page for the band.

It's here: Bipolar Explorer Wikipedia page. 

I sent it to your dad right away because he loves Wikipedia. Remember how you told me in your first Christmas letter to me that he would be "reading aloud shocking statistics about religion or politics"?

Anyway, it was very nice of our new French friends to get everything together and approved and published on the site and my favorite part is that it includes what I said to Indiemusic about you being the heart and conscience of the band, my work and life. It's this:  

"All of this is entirely for her. I often say that our music, each album, is of, for and about her. It’s my way of telling people about her and talking to her myself. That’s the “for’ and “about” parts of the equation. And Summer remains an integral part of the band - not only as its inspiration but, because I have lots of her isolated vocals from other recording sessions - as her voice, both spoken and singing, graces each record. I’ll write songs and fly in her voice. Summer isn’t the main reason BPX goes on, she’s the only reason. She is the reason. And I think I can trust that I’m doing things for the right reason if I always know the reason for it is her. Not out of any ambition other than to honor and conjure her. She’s my conscience. "

Open Water Ahead

I had a dream this morning, little sweetheart, just before I woke, that your dad and I were on a boat - not the boat he has but another, something more like a motorized raft that was flat and open at the ends so that water could come over and on board. He was driving and we were in open water. I'm not sure who all was on board, maybe everyone, but he was at the wheel and all was so well, even with the water coming on, that I was asleep.

When I woke (on the boat, still in the dream) some of our things - sunglasses, water bottles, my hat, were sliding off the edge. I tried to grab them before they fell out and I caught most of it except my hat which went rushing away behind us.

But your dad told me not to worry, he knew exactly where it was and we would pick it up on our way back. That he knew it would still be there. And we continued on in open water toward the horizon. He knew where we were going and how to return. The sun was setting, so he wanted to reach this spot before we turned around.

I texted your dad this morning and told him all this and he said he wished he could take us back to that spot, thinking, I think, that where the hat was was where you were. But I told him he knew the way. And that I thought he was so determined to carry on because he was going to pick up passengers - you and your brother Jesse on the way.

In The Park

Little sweetheart, I’m trying to get out the house a little bit more. It’s hard sometimes because I miss you so very much and going places on my own feels so lonely, But I try my best to quiet myself and listen for you.

This weekend was the last for the first of the two Shakespeare plays in the park.

The last time I went to one was with you. I remember that I got up early, gave you a little kiss because you were still asleep - what a wonderful thing that was to wake with you at my side! How I long for the day when it may be again! - and went up to the Delacourt to wait on line for tickets. It was for a Greek play, actually - The Bacchae - and I remember you actually weren’t too crazy about it. Ha! I found myself, foolishly, defending it but we talked through things like always and both came to realize that I just wanted you to like it because I wanted to enjoy things together. And I came to realize that just being together - even sitting through something not too great - was in itself a treasure. The content or activity doesn’t matter. It just being with you. Sharing everything - even lame things, ha! - is the beauty part. Everything else is marginalia.

Anyway, I decided to go up and see if I could hear the play. I knew I wouldn’t get in because it’s sold out. It’s kind of a modern dress political staging of Julius Caesar and it’s been getting a lot of attention and protests because it’s taking on the horrible current administration. There were quite a few more police around the periphery than usual. I climbed up to Belvedere Castle which is on a hill behind the stage, Sometimes you can see the plays from there - from behind - but the backdrops were too high and you couldn’t really get a view.

So, I went back around front and listened via the monitors. That’s an interesting way to take in the play, too, not only because you can really concentrate on the language but also because actors make entrances sometimes through the audience, so this spot is like a crossover where they have to come around from an wait. At one point after the assassination scene, Brutus, bloodied up to his elbows came rushing around a corner with a bunch of other actors about to make one of those through-audience-entrances.

It was all pretty interesting and lively. They had to take a couple of protestors away and again, they came right past me. You could hear when they’d disrupted the show - the audience started booing and the stage manager came over the “god mic” telling the actors to hold. I think you would’ve loved this all. In a way, it was better than actually being inside the theater. It was a real backstage kind of experience.

Quite near the end, your dad texted me. It’s Father’s Day, of course, and he as just getting home from a case at the hospital. I’d sent him a chocolate cake and he was just digging into a piece of it. The play was almost over, so I walk away a little distance, put on my headphones and called him to say Happy Father’s Day and tell him all about this.

It all made me feel so close to you, little sweetheart. And that’s the most important thing. Always. I love you so very much and feel you near me tonight. Thank you, my darling. Please take me to you as soon as heaven allows, won;t you? With all my love forever.

Fathers Day (2017)

Thinking of my dad today, little sweetheart, who has now been gone longer than I had him and also thinking of you (always) because you wanted to raise a child with me and make me a daddy myself. I'll never know that now but maybe things will be different when I may finally fly to you. Whatever it may be like in The Forever, as long as I am with you again and always, I know I'll finally feel that I'm where I belong again. With all my love, my darling girl.

Psychic Readng

I’ve had this CD-R for a while, little sweetheart. It’s sorta a long story. Years ago, I think maybe around the time Curt died, Paige (remember Paige?) told me about a psychic she’d gone to after her father died. I can’t remember how she knew about him. She kinda had a connection into that world of people through all that Buddhist and soul-searching spiritual stuff she was always on about. I think someone must’ve told her about this guy. Glenn Dove is his name.

Anyway, she wrote down his number and name for me on post-it. It was the tiniest post-it every. Like 1/4 the size of a normal one. I don’t know why. For the longest time it was stuck to one of those wooden storage boxes of mine in the kitchen. I didn’t really imagine going but I kept it anyway. All this is like about exactly one year before you and I met. A few years later, when my mom died, I did actually think about going, but I couldn’t find the little post-it. Sometime along the way I’d either taken it down or it just got lost or something. It had been a while. I couldn’t find it and Paige and I had had a falling out by then, remember? So, I couldn’t exactly call and ask.

I didn’t think about it for too long anyway. But sometime after your own tragic passing the little post-it just turned up, appeared somehow, I found it. I called the number and it was an answering machine. You were just supposed to leave a message. Later they called me back and made an appointment for me. It was crazy because the appointment was about three months or more later. When the time finally came around, I couldn’t go. Something had come up and I was out west with your folks. It may have been around the time we did the play in Seattle.

Anyway, I had to reschedule for even farther away, but the day finally came and I took the train out there - he’s on Long Island. I remember it was a very rainy day. I had to fill out a little sheet, just a couple of questions, like my birthday. That might’ve been about it. He had that on a clipboard when I went into meet with him. I sat across from him, me on the couch, him in a chair, kinda like therapy, now that I think about it. He sorta sat there doing this thing with the clipboard, like moving his hand around on it, sorta like if you were to imagine how you move a computer-mouse around trying to find the spot on the screen that you want to highlight. Kinda a circular motion as if clearing the page. Ya know what I mean? It’s hard to describe. As he did that, he’d talk to me, telling me who was trying to talk to him and what they had to say. He’d also ask me questions that I think I wasn’t supposed to answer. Like just let them land not help him too much. But right away he said things that had a lot of resonance.

He talked about my dad being there. And he knew that both my mom and dad had “gone over” as he put it. About everyone being worried about me. That I was “taking things”. And I was. I was drinking then and not infrequently taking sleeping pills. I’d wake up sometimes on the floor with things knocked over - a mic stand or that book podium of my grandfather’s - in the studio come morning. Like I just fell off the couch or - who knows? - even tried to stand up and just keeled over.

But without mentioning you specifically, he seemed to have a lot of resonant details. He talked about California. About having a connection there. About someone close to me having “gone over” suddenly, unexpectedly, early. He said it was unusual and sad for someone as young as I to have had so much loss in their life. And, most, incredibly, from the very start of the session he said he was getting something about the person’s head. That they were holding their head with their hands, as if something had been wrong with their head, maybe they had been confused or injured or both. It was so like your accident, my little sweetheart, as if he was talking about that. And he stressed that what that person (you, it would seem) wanted to say was that you were alright now. You were fine. Just very worried about me. And that you wanted me to know - that everyone there trying to talk through him now - that you were alright and only worried about me. That I needed to not take things (like drugs and alcohol) and that I must do my work. He went on about that for some time, too. He didn’t know that I was an artist. He didn’t know if what you and the others were saying was about me and a business of mine or something. Just that I had things I was meant to do, my own work, and that it would be a shame, so sad, if I didn’t do it. That I must. That that was why I was still here.

He told me other things too. The session was mostly him doing this kind of listening and trying to tell me what he was hearing simultaneously but at the end he told me a few more general things. He said something about life and death that I had never heard put quite this way. He said that the people that mean the most to us in this life are always with us through eternity. That life is an illusion like a play. That right now I was onstage playing the role of “Michael” and that when I left the stage - and I mustn’t just walk off or leave before my part was done or jump my cues - that I would find those important people backstage in the dressing room. That we would be, as always, together. Like a troupe, sometimes you would be my lover, sometimes my sister, maybe I would be a girl and you a boy. Like that. But, just as Danya said, that I wouldn’t find you if I took my own life.

At the end of the session, he gave me a CD-R. I think I was meant to bring one on my own. That had been an instruction when Paige first gave me the post-it - that you bring a blank cassette to the session and that they record it for you so you can listen later. By this time, he was using digital instead of analogue, so it was a CD-R.

And that’s why I’m writing all of this today, little sweetheart. I didn’t listen to for the first time until tonight. Almost like the post-it itself, I put it away and wasn’t quite sure where it was. I found it a little while ago and uploaded it into iTunes just to make sure I had it saved in case I misplaced the CD-R again but tonight I actually put the CD-R into my latop and listened. There’s more than just what I remembered. I'm glad I listened. And it brought me close to you. I can’t wait to tell you more about that. But just one thing I didn't remember and only did now hearing the CD-R is that the day I was there was exactly 23 months since your accident. The CD-R didn’t have any labeling until now, when I just wrote that on it. Picture below.

Please be with me today, won’t you little sweetheart? Keep me close and under your guidance. I love thinking about you and talking to you. He said something about that too that I had forgotten! Much more later. Love you forever.

On Fathers Day

It's Fathers Day, little sweetheart, and I'm thinking of my own late father, who passed away young and has been gone now longer than he was present in my life. I'm thinking of my grandfather who I know would (and probably does) adore you. I imagine the two of you kindred spirits being fast friends there in the Forever. I'm thinking of your own father, who I sent a gift and cake and your mom is going to surprise him with later today. And I'm thinking of you, because I know you wanted to raise a child with me, making me a daddy myself. I went to that little church I told you about this morning, little sweetheart, and there was a baptism. Two little baby girls, one who reminded me of you so very much with her fair skin and light hair and angelic features and her beautiful spirit. The tears streamed down my face as I watched. Later, after the service, her family were taking pictures and she got loose and scampered speed-crawling up an aisle. As her mom retrieved her, I told her how beautiful she was, this little bundle. And, just like I said, what a beautiful spirit she had. The mom said she's always like that. She wakes up that way. And as she said it, the babe in arms was looking at me smiling and started puckering at me. "Do you want to give him a kiss?", the mom said. And I leaned over, my cheek tilted toward her sweet little mouth and she kissed me. And I thanked her. And I felt you were, as I often do, with me. Its Fathers Day, little sweetheart and that's what I'm thinking just now. Love you forever.

January

Today is January 19th, my little sweetheart. Over the course of six days in January are two rather bitter anniversaries for me.

On January 13th, 1991 (when I was just kid, I now know), my father passed away suddenly of a heart attack. His wife found him on the sofa. He'd come downstairs early that morning, made coffee and died watching the news without her being there to wake and help him.

And on January 19th, 2007, my friend and theatre mentor, Curt Dempster, passed away. He, too, was found - by the superintendent of his apartment building. It was a secret (not a very well-kept one) for sometime, but I think it's allowable now to say that, sadly, he took his own life.

The loss of these two men - one, something of a father figure and the other, my actual father (who I feel I never really got to know as a man) - are something that I carried with me and that you deeply understood when I first met you.

You did your best to heal me, my little sweetheart. Your extraordinary kindness and hyper-vigilant love wrapped me in a blanket of protection. You, my darling girl, are the very reason for which I was born. I know that. I think I knew that very early in our acquaintance, even before I had fallen so deeply in love with you. Something in you resonated deep inside my being, bypassing my brain and shaking me to my core. My soul recognized you. I think that's why I wept every time we parted, even if only for a fortnight, even if knowing I would soon be with you, even if we'd already booked the next flight, made plans for the next adventure.

There is simply no one like you, my little sweetheart. How could there be?! That is as it should be. You, my gorgeous girl, my True One, my beautiful spirit, are the other half of my soul. How I long to fly to you! And I remember, on these cold and bitter January days, just how close our paths were beginning to draw near one and another. How God was bringing them to cross and converge. You understood loss and love more than anyone I have ever known. And what's more, you had more natural empathy, too.

Your love saved me, my little sweetheart. I knew it from the first. And I, like my father and my friend, will cross into The Forever, too. Soon, I hope, my love. And I will again know your kindness. I will know your touch. I will know our love, which can never perish. And I - we - will be one again.

As you told me, as you comforted me in my dreams with the message that I now wear so proudly tattooed upon my inside forearm to remind me always - Our Oneness Can Never Be Erased.

I love you, Summer. With all my heart and soul I do. Until that Day! Until that day!

With love & faith,

Michael