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.

The 19th

Although the 18th is such a tragically sad day to remember each year, little sweetheart, I must remind myself that the 19th is actually a glorious one because it is the day that we recognized as our anniversary. Although we'd first met in December the year before and had our first kiss a week or so earlier that March, the 19th was the night you drove me home - or rather I drove your car, as you directed me to, with you next to me in the passenger seat - parked on a hill outside the place I was staying in Bernal Heights and made your move. "Oh!" - I finally got it and asked if maybe you'd like to come in and have a cup of tea. You did, of course, and there's far more to tell but it was very much our first night. Let's make sure we remember this glorious day forever. With all my love... 

Ask Me Why

I love you, cause you tell me things I want to know

And it's true that it really only goes to show

That I know that I,

Should never, never, never be blue

Now you're mine, my happiness still makes me cry

And in time, you'll understand the reason why

If I cry, it's not because I'm sad

But you're the only love that I've ever had

I can't believe it's happened to me

I can't conceive of any more misery

Ask me why, I'll say I love you

And I'm always thinking of you

 

LOVE YOU FOREVER!!!!

 

 

February 14th. Again.

It's Valentines Day, little sweetheart. I sent you and your mom flowers like I do every year. I wrote this morning - I'm at a part in the book where you and I just went to Shakespeare in the Park one warm August night. I went for a run. 

A week or so ago, I thought to buy a couple of CDs of DCfC. They were, of course, one of the most important bands to us and we discovered them together. I remember all that music and had it in mp3's on my old laptop. It's been impossible for me to listen to them for years, little sweetheart, because I just start weeping, longing for you. Ben Gibbard wrote the theme song to a new show that's on Apple TV - "Shrinking" - and the first time I heard his voice I started crying. That was just three weeks ago, so I should've known.  

Anyway, I put on one of the albums, Plans, tonight. And it sure hasn't changed. I cried and cried and I've barely pulled myself together enough to write this to you, now. 

I remember that you had such a sense of your own mortality having grown up with Type 1 diabetes. And that even after your surgeries, just months before we met and fell in love, that you still thought you would pass before me. I remember you telling me once - in your famous blue Prius, en route to Andronico's on a grocery run - that you wanted me to speak at your funeral and to listen to our music and remember you. I started crying when you said that and between sobs. whimpered "but I don't want you to die before me". You reached for my hand and quieted me down until you could pull into the parking lot and hold me. 

As for what you asked - I did, of course and incredibly, manage to speak at your memorial but the second thing is still very hard, little sweetheart. And it's tricky - some of the lyrics are almost prescient. That's probably why you loved them. 

My heart is full tonight, little sweetheart. Breaking but also grateful. God, how I love you. 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.  

Good Things

Little sweetheart, we're going through a pretty rough time just now in the mortal sphere. But I'm trying my best to keep positive. I'm working on our book and our music, of course, and today I went for a run. 

I try to run most week days but it's been bitterly cold and windy here. I think I only got out Monday and Friday last week. But I went today and two blessings struck me: 

I saw and heard and tree full of sparrows - perhaps 40 of them - all in song. And, two - hours later, my thighs ached in just the right way. It made me feel strong. 

I love you. 

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?

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!

The Inner Sunset

Little sweetheart, most of the time when we were in your apartment in San Francisco were either alighting in your kitchen at the little breakfast nook or in your room with its crimson curtains and duvet cover. There was an entire living room, of course, but those two were our preferred spots to linger. Sometimes, though the light pouring through the windows in that room drew us to sofa - or like this - to the dining table, where you'd crawl into my lap and take me in your arms. I can still remember exactly how that felt. Thank you for finding me, my love.

Saved, healed, changed

Little sweetheart, this was taken right after the DCfC show you took me to in Sacramento on my birthday weekend. We'd just arrived back home to Davis and you took this picture of us in the kitchen. This photo is another of my favorites of us because I can not only see but actually feel how happy I am. How happy you made me. Our friend Neal told me that after I met you I had changed so much that even my face looked different. That's how much you saved and healed me. Love you forever.

On This Day

Little sweetheart, today is my birthday. My favorite birthday ever was spent with you, of course. We had a few days away from everyone and everything and retreated to the beautiful house in Davis to spend it together. You had tickets for us to see DCfC in Sacramento and on the day itself you made some ridiculously complicated and absolutely delicious chocolate cupcakes for us. Here you are providing the final touch, drizzling white chocolate sauce over each of them - and they're all HUGE, like each cakes in their own right! I think about how happy I was that day, that weekend, those years, and my heart surges with love. 

On my birthday I always also remember now the words I wrote and said for you on that day three years later. A recording of it is here. 

Thank you, my angel. Love you forever.

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.

In The Hours...

I don’t want to go too heavily within these pages in talking about the band - even though, as I’ve told others so many times the entire project is of, for and about you. But exactly because it is so very much about you, I just want to say that In The Hours Left Until Dawn has somehow really seemed to have struck a chord with people and, especially, remarkably, in a spiritual sense.

A lot of reviews and broadcasters have focused on that. Montreal’s Jefffey Davison (CKUT) among them who said that all of our work has had a spiritual component but perhaps never more so than this album. Another, Portland’s Uncertain Reverie, has described it as “Beautiful, shimmering, hypnotic, dreamlike; always a sense of passage through unnameable dimensions; the haunt is palpable but as an enveloping wonder and at times I felt I was listening to stained glass…" .

An interview I did with Fringes of Sound editor Lars Haur a few weeks ago was broadcast on April 25 and I got to talk a lot about not only how much the project is devoted to you, little sweetheart, but how you yourself are the very soul of it. I love that people understand that. I think you may remember that I told you our friend Neal Huff did a podcast with me on the anniversary of the release of Of Love and Loss and one of the things that he remarked on was how extraordinary he thought it was that this project continued to bring you to others, for people to be touched, as so many of us have been so deeply, by your beautiful spirit.

That’s entirely why this project goes on, little sweetheart.

I had stepped away from this blog briefly last year and honestly I am rather daunted still by trying to complete the first book of memoirs for you. But I will continue to return here, just to tell you little things about daily life, my memories of us together, my enduring love and admiration for you, and my faith that we will one day be together again in The Forever. 

With all my love…

 

The Great Vigil

Little sweetheart, it’s Holy Saturday. The services are really quite special and I’ve only ever actually been to just one - the one at St Thomas years ago. West End didn’t have a Holy Saturday service. I’m not sure why. I think it’s almost exclusively Episcopalian. I may be wrong. 

It’s a midnight service and takes the form of what is called The Great Vigil. It’s the hours after Good Friday leading through the long night into Easter morning and the resurrection. At St Thomas there was quite a literal split between the two. The service begins mournfully and somber, much like the Holy Thursday and Friday services, around 11pm, and at midnight, full light returned in what was almost like the Easter Sunday service itself. 

Trinity Church’s service is a bit different and I think I might actually prefer it. It really is like Matins - early morning pre-dawn prayers -  beginning in darkness and progressing into the light, quite literally as a special candle, the Paschal Candle is lit from a bowl of fire. Liturgy is read, baptisms are performed and the entire service has a kind of ancient early church feel to it, evoking the four primal elements - fire, air, water, and earth - of the cosmos. It’s intensely moving, little sweetheart, for a variety of reasons, I think. 

When I was going to West End, I often found myself very moved by baptisms. I think so much of you when I see children now, little sweetheart, both because of your inherent goodness and because of your desire to raise a child with me. Easter Sunday is wonderful, too, with its bright colors and triumphant music, its flowers (I always make a flower donation in your name) and its declaration of faith, that death is not our end. But this journey through the night from darkness into light is one that resonates so deeply with me, little sweetheart, as I make my own long journey through the rest of my life as best I can until I may finally be reunited with you. 

How I love you! Forever!   

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.

The Winter Solstice

 

Tonight is the Winter Solstice, little sweetheart - the longest night of the year. It’s been a thing with me for a while, I guess. As you’ll remember - because you were in one of the casts! - my play, Seven Pages Unsigned, is set on the night of the Winter Solstice. 

When I was a good deal younger than I am now, little sweetheart, I think I used to enjoy the night - not just this night, but night itself - much more than I do now. I even rather liked cloudy, sunless days. But I’ve found that I’ve grown much more photosensitive. I really need and long for the light. 

That’s both a literal statement of fact and simultaneously the more poetic one - I miss and long for the light that is you. The light you brought into my life. 

Anyway, the thing about the Winter Solstice is that every day now until the Summer one (quite appropriately), the days will grow longer, the light come earlier and stay later. Something to look forward to, yes, little sweetheart? 

With all my love…

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!  

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. 

May 7

You taught me to remember, little sweetheart, that today is the anniversary of the surgeries that saved and changed your life. I marked the date on my calendar and am remembering how grateful I am for you always. You, who saved and changed my life, from the first, when I met you, when you found me just seven months later. 

With all my love forever.