January 20th

Little sweetheart, today is the Inauguration. 

I can’t tell you how relieved everyone is here. Sylvia texted from France even before I was awake and I’ve been texting with your folks since I’ve been up shortly thereafter. We’re all watching the ceremonies, the “virtual parade”, the signing of executive orders, the swearing in of staff, the evening’s concert, as the page finally turns on these awful four years. 

We’ve so much work to do, little sweetheart, and the pandemic is really perhaps at its most deadly just now. But vaccination has begun (including your dad!) and even as we brace ourselves, still hunkered down in early winter, we can feel some glimmer of hope. 

I’ll be saying quiet prayers in just an hour or two as I lay down at the end of the night. Please be near me, won’t you? 

With all my love forever.
 

New Schedule

 Little sweetheart, all through these difficult months of the pandemic I’ve fallen into bad sleep habits. Waking far too late in the day and feeling rough.

Just now, I feel a change. I’m up earlier, at our usual time - remember, we always liked getting up around ten? I know that’s the right path and that you’re taking me there. The album is nearly done. I’m turning full attention to the book. You’re helping me through every step every day.

God, how I love you! Thank you, my little sweetheart. Forward!  

Finding Goodness

Little sweetheart, a couple of awful events have transpired over the last couple of days here across the country, which was already in the midst of a global pandemic. The murder of a black man by police officers in Minnesota, the most shocking of them, protestors, including myself, have taken to the streets, as I know you yourself would be moved to do.

And it’s made me remember, as ever, your beautiful, thoughtful, parents, who  - half our age at the time, your mother not even yet 20 - took the streets themselves after hearing of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The news reaching them on campus at UCLA, your mom and dad immediately decided to hitchhike to Memphis, where Dr King had been murdered, and then on to Atlanta where his funeral was held. I think they twenty bucks between them, but they just set off east because they were compelled to do so.

Whenever I think of you, little sweetheart, the first thing that always comes to mind is your enduring goodness. And when I think of your lovely parents, I understand in part, how they helped instill and foster that very goodness in you.

I love you so very much and you, as ever, in my every thought.

Through The Darkness

It’s something of a dark day today, little sweetheart. Between today and the 19th next week are the days when both my father and our friend Curt died.

Their anniversaries come around each year so close to one another and I’m reminded how I’ve read that, even this personal history notwithstanding, these late weeks of January post-holidays are the darkest and most dispiriting for many many people. Somehow, they weigh on us more and it’s harder to find and embrace the light, the hope and faith that we need to sustain us and keep us going.

So, my little sweetheart, mindful of that I ask… please be near me, won’t you? I so need your presence and guidance. Help me keep my head up and do our work with vigor and love. As you ever do.

So grateful, always…

Jesse

Today, little sweetheart, is the sad anniversary of your beloved big brother Jesse's tragic passing.

It happened just a little over a year before I met you and was still so hard to comprehend - you loved and missed him so very much. And although I was not lucky enough to have met dear Jesse, I have dreamt of him many times, doubtless because he remains so very near us, even now, nearer than we can imagine - just as you feel so near yourself - and because you and your mom and dad and his dear friend and ours, Noah, have all told me so many wonderful stories of him. You never stopped telling me, little sweetheart, about Jesse. Just as you told me so many stories of your childhood, of your mom and dad and how very much you loved all of them.

Even before I dreamt of Jesse, I felt I somehow knew him. And I have dreamt of him, many times. Often, you are there, too. I'm always so grateful when you visit me in dreams, my little sweetheart.

One of the dreams that comes most to mind today is one where I was in the Richland Road kitchen. Your mom and dad were there and Jesse too, who was kind of holding court. He was charming and hilarious and we all were enthralled. Then, you yourself, little sweetheart, came through the swinging door from the dining room, as if you had simply come downstairs from your room. I ran to you and gathered you in my arms weeping with joy. I wouldn’t let go. Jesse lightly teased me until he understood and then he and your mom explained that everything was okay. We were all together now forever and nothing could take us away from each other again. It was okay to let go, really. The room was full of love and I felt like I wanted to be there forever. And I was.

I think this is something like what simply is but I just can’t yet quite see. I believe. I believe that you and your brother are so very near but just out of sight of mortal eyes. And that you are eternal and always - that we all are - and that I will find that, find you, on that day when I finally join you.

I love you with all my heart and soul. Forever. 

Two

That same day, little sweetheart, on our hike to the lighthouse, we came across a stone circle. They’re really rather holy places. We stepped within and stood inside it and held each other close.

Once we got all the way out to the lighthouse itself, you stepped over the landing and sat on a big rock there looking out at the surf and sky that stretched as far as one could see. You called me to you and gathered me in your arms. And you took these two pictures, little sweetheart, with our heads close to one another.

I’m posting them both because even though taken just moments apart, they show how in just an instant your spirit could overwhelm me with gratitude and love.

Find me again, won’t you? And keep me with you forever.

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.

The Love That Remains

I saw this quote the other day, little sweetheart, explaining the meaning of a Portuguese word that we don't really have in English. Because we don't have one word in our own language that fits quite as well, it takes a couple sentences to try to capture its meaning. I find it very beautiful and appropriate but I also like to focus attention more on the last sentence - that part about what "remains". I don't like to think of you or us as being "lost". I sure do ache for you. But I pray so very much for strengthened faith that you are only a little ways away - a heartbeat apart - and that I will be with you soon and forever. With all my love.

Please Be Near Me (and you are!)

Little sweetheart, I'm feeling you near - thank god (literally)! - today. I woke to 11:11. Then I saw this photo (below) of you and I and your parents from seven years ago today. And then I saw this wonderful quote from Rumi:

"One day your heart will take you to your Lover. One day your soul will carry you to the Beloved. Don’t get lost in your pain, know that one day your pain will become your cure".

This is so close to the prayer I say every night and day, my darling, to be returned to your side. Please do take me to you as soon as heaven will allow. With all my love forever. 

Ominous

Little sweetheart, I just came back from a run and I have the strangest feeling of foreboding. There’s something very strange in the air. A dark energy that is ominous and even feels a little sinister. Like violence is imminent or something horrible. You’ve taught me to pay attention to these signs and so I am, my love. I hope everything will be alright. Saying quiet prayers and calling on you. With all my love forever.

Dream Boat

I always preface these things, little sweetheart, by saying that I’m not too good at remembering my dreams, and generally I’m not, but I do know that my dream activity has been on an uptick of late, somehow.

The ones I remember are almost always ones that I wake from, even if I only awaken briefly and then go back to sleep. That usually happens in the last hours before I get up in the morning. I’ve had one or two almost each morning this week that I remember or partly remember. And the nature of them, at least in the way that I recall them, tends to jump-cut. That is, it’ll begin in one location or circumstance and then, without transition, suddenly be elsewhere, sometimes seemingly without regard to what was happening just before.

Perhaps that’s only in memory. Perhaps on waking I simply can’t recall the middle bits that link them. I’m not sure.

The two most distinctive parts I recall are that I/we were shooting a film on my iPhone. I was trying to get all the coverage from the location we were in at the time - the lobby and elevator of a building - so that we would have continuity with all those shots from each character’s POV before we moved on. I was even thinking ahead as to what the natural light through the windows should look like and if there were any shots we should get now for scenes later in the film that should have this look so that they match. I was a little worried that my phone was full, that there might not be enough memory on it and that I needed to get my new upgraded one soon.

So, it was exciting but there was some anxiety around it. The next thing I remember - and this is the most wonderful part - is that I was with you. We were no longer at the first location. We were alone, together, and in a big, nice, old apartment kind of at dusk. It was a bit dark, that point in the day when you haven’t yet turned the lights on. I remember that from being with you in your apartment in SF. Light would be streaming in through the afternoon and I wouldn’t notice that the sun had begun to set. You’d come home from the gym or something and I’d be there on the bed writing and you’d say “What are you doing in the dark? Turn on some lights in here” and you’d snap them on.

This was like that only we never turned them on. I’m a little sad and frustrated that I can’t remember too many details of what we said or were busy doing but I’m enormously grateful for the feeling it gave me.

I know you were really there because I had this sense of well-being, one that I had every morning when I woke even if we were 3000 miles apart, because I knew you were in my life. I knew you were probably asleep - might’ve even left me a message or a text, I should look at my phone and see! - and that we’d talk in a few hours, that we had plans, that I knew exactly how many days or hours it would be until you were next in my arms.

In the dream last night, I had that feeling. And I haven’t had that feeling in years. But I knew it immediately and can still touch its lingering presence. Your lingering presence. The relief, the sense of home that you bring to me just by being near.

That more than anything is what I remember and what characterized this part of the dream - in a darkened apartment between night and day, together, feeling safe and home and free and loved. And you were making sure that I had everything that I needed the way only you ever and always did. You had to go somewhere but you were making sure I had everything I need - keys, directions, where to find anything I might want or need in the cupboards and closets while you were away. And most importantly that you would be back. Or that I could come meet you. For the first time in the longest time, in the dream, I felt sure of that, you made me feel that certainty, that safety, that all-is-well. That was the best part. By far. By far.

There’s more tho’. Before you left, I know that we kissed. That was wonderful. Then, I walked around in the apartment a little. It was a charming old place, full of character. One thing about it that I remember I really liked was that it had a second entrance - a back door that led out to a wooden staircase a couple flights up. I loved that. It reminded me of the place in Bernal Heights where you and I were first alone together, that funny little apartment I had the first two months I was there.

The dream felt like I had been given my life back. I went down the back stairs, I think because I was planning on driving to meet you, and I noticed your car was gone. I remember thinking, of course your car was gone, you’d taken it yourself - you had to be somewhere. I’d just take the bus or a trolley or something. I wasn’t quite sure where we were. In San Francisco? It was dark. It wasn’t New York. Just then, two women came through. One or maybe both of them was European. Either Scandinavian or maybe German. She was a artist and she was with her friend. They were a bit lost. I was feeling happy and safe and friendly and I spoke cheerfully to them. She said she liked being here this time of year. I think by then I recognized that we must be in California. I told her it was even better in the fall. In the autumn.

I don’t remember much after that. I think I woke up for a moment. Good thing, too, because that’s how I usually am able to remember dreams - if I wake even for a moment right after. There was one more dream that I remember just a little that followed.

Again, I was somewhere I didn’t quite know. A house. Your mom was there, tho’, and I think it may have been a house of theirs. This dream had more of a lingering sadness about it because it was closer to what life is like now. In this dream, you weren’t there and I knew that you had already passed. Many dreams, sadly, are like this. That’s why the other dream is so magical and special and important - you were there and I could feel your presence in the familiar way you touch my soul.

In this sadder dream, I was walking around the house and there were little things, some things of yours around. I decided I wanted to give you something - an funny old little lamp that I got when I was 16 on a trip to Europe with my high school choir. My grandfather had it for a long time. I just got it back a year or so ago. Right now, it sits on the nightstand near a couple pictures of you. It’s funny that it should be so close to where I lay sleeping and somehow find its way into my dreams. It’s a little ship. I think I got it in The Netherlands. The light is behind the sails. It’s a small light, like the size and wattage of one you’d find in an old refrigerator. I placed it carefully on a white shelf for you.

It’s waiting there in the dream for you. A ship that is also a light. Waiting for you to snap it on  - “Michael, it’s so dark in here - why don’t you turn on some lights?” - and illuminate the room. A ship, maybe to take me to you.

I see now how the dreams are connected.

Thank you, my angel. Thank you for finding me. Take me to you just as soon as heaven will allow, won’t you? With all my love forever.

My Guiding Star

Little sweetheart, there's birdsong outside my window this morning. It's too hot in here but too cold outside to turn the heat off, so I opened the windows in front and back and put in the screens. Little birds are singing sweetly outside.

Last night, I remembered a text you sent me once just before I was about to fly to California and be with you (I'd hoped, forever). I found it on my phone and wrote it down. You guide me still, don't you, my angel, even now, when I most need it. Of course, of course.

Here it is:

Don't feel lonely.

I'm right here.

Don't cry.

Nothing is wasted.

Pack the good memories

And leave the rest.

Travel light.

It suits you.

You are not damaged.

I can tell 

by the way you love me.

We're all of us 

covered in scars and it doesn't stop us from living.

There's nothing wrong with you.

Like everyone, 

You need to be loved.

And you are. 

 

Thank you, my darling sweetheart. As ever, let me do just as you say. Little sweetheart knows best. Little sweetheart knows best...

Dream Together - today

Little sweetheart, the new album, our sixth, Dream Together, was released today - New Year's Day 2017. It's on iTunes and Amazon and CD Baby and pretty much everywhere. And it so very much, as ever, is of, for and about you.

Below is a little something USC filmmaker and writer Alexandra Dennis-Renner wrote about the new album on her blog this morning. I read it to your mom as we were listening in the front room this morning, by the beautiful Christmas tree we decorated together, as she put the new charms I gave her on your (now hers) silver bracelet and we both cried.

Love you forever, my darling. Please help and guide me this you and take to you as soon as heaven will allow.

"I think with unanimous consensus, 2016 was trying. However, frustration, loss of confidence, and despair are not organic. They're born of hope. As much as we liked to paint the overarching climate of the year since passed with the theme of despondency and resignation, for all of us, in one way or another, 2016 was a beacon of hope. It alluded to prospect. There was expectation for change. We faced wins and we survived losses. Sometimes it felt like the universe was abandoning us, but here most of us are...on our feet and moving forward. I think there's no better way to forge ahead than with a new record from my friends Bipolar Explorer. Every song on Dream Together is a reminder that the end of one thing is not necessarily the beginning of something new--not a hard reset--but the continuation of what was through the lens of what could be. What will be. And proof that there is always love, hope, and strength in that journey. Happy New Year, everyone. You made it to the next chapter. There's something here for you and you are loved..." 

Alexandra Dennis-Renner
January 1, 2017
Los Angeles, CA

Quietly (and not so quietly, too) ...

Remember, little sweetheart, how I was telling you the other day about the little notes I leave for myself? Sometimes they suggest a subject for further examination and writing. And other times they are a little instruction or reminder. Here’s one of the former. I mean to write about it at great length.
The introduction, the back story to it, is that I made an appointment with a new dentist. There are so many things that I have neglected in the horrible void of your physical absence, my little sweetheart. I haven’t entirely neglected my teeth. Don’t worry! But I hadn’t been to a dentist in quite some time. I found out that my health plan allowed me to - thank you Obamacare (seriously) !

So, I did my research and selected my provider with my usual narrow prerequisites - a new Jewish (preferably female) doctor on the Upper West Side. She did the initial check up, X-rays and examination, then had me come back to see her colleague.

And that’s what the note is about.

Her hygienist is a woman named Tatiana. She’s tall and gentle and has a vaguely east European accent. As she worked on me, I noticed that she spoke very softly to herself in a way that seemed to mirror her gentle actions. Although I couldn’t exactly make out the words, it seemed she was telling herself to remain mindful and gentle and cautious.

It was very lovely and quite resonant. And what I wrote later (when I was flossing at home - she told me I was doing it too roughly, “glide,” she said, “softly, never in an X, always in a C”!) was this:

“On we inveterate self-whisperers”.

I mean to write more on this because it is something I do constantly - I whisper and talk quietly (and sometimes quite emphatically) to myself and to you and to God. It’s a kind of prayer, certainly, but it’s more (Can anything really be “more” than a prayer? I guess I don’t mean “greater than”. I just mean “in addition to”, I think…) than that.

It’s the ongoing conversation even if I have trouble making out the words on the other end, on your end. And it’s about Faith. Knowing that you hear me. And quieting myself to listen for your answers. Awaiting instruction. With all my love forever…

Love

Little sweetheart, since the rather shocking and dispiriting election results last week, people have been leaving post-its - those little sticky notes - of love and solidarity on the walls of the Union Square subway station along the tunnel between the N/R and 4/5/6 train platforms. There are thousands of them there now. I went yesterday and left one for you, my darling. And then I shot this little video. So many people were stopping to do the same and as I stood there a group of tiny schoolchildren under the watchful care of their teacher, sang. It is very much as you taught me, little sweetheart - Love conquers all. Love you forever.

On My Best Days...

Every morning I wake up longing for you. Aching for you. I say our prayer and I caress your things on the pillow next to me- your pillow, your side of the bed undisturbedly made up just the way you like because maybe somehow all magic you will return. Every morning it’s terribly hard to face another day. Sometimes attempts to rise are more successful than others. Some days I can’t move from bed at all, I have to cry myself back to sleep and try again in a few hours. Other days I make myself go on. But all days are hard. And what I wanted to say is that on the best of them - and I need to remember this - I strive to honor and conjure and listen for you. On my best days I get things done. I tell your story which is also my own. It is ours. I find some well of strength and I try to find you. For that is all I want. That is all I ask prayerfully of God - just to let me be with you again and forever.

Dream Travels

Little sweetheart, you were in my dreams last night! I don't remember all of it but we were together and performing with the band. It was a new work and you were singing. It had a kind of Christmas feeling to it and was not unlike this idea - incorporating spoken word and visual arts - of an installation piece like we have for Of Love and Loss and Dream Together.

I remember parts of the dream only sketchily. You and I walking around together in a house or a something like a venue and outside around it, too. And you (and me also) feeling a bit nervous and concentrated. Very much in it together. What a wonderful electric feeling! Entirely connected and shared.

I remember a little bit about performing. You in front to the side of me on mic, singing and speaking. Me alongside on guitar and also singing and leading the band. The flash of lights and film projection. The air thick and trembling with amplified sound, sonics. The intimate setting. A seated audience on folding chairs. I wish I could remember the piece itself! But being with you there is an enormous blessing just on its own. I'm so grateful.

The part I remember most and best - as so often happens - is what we were doing in the dream just before I woke...

We'd finished playing but were still standing in front of everyone, sort of answering and asking questions in a kind of dialogue with those gathered. There was a back and forth between me and someone seated there about some element of the piece. About how we experienced it performing. And - this is the part that is so vivid - you suddenly piped up, still on mic, your voice filling the room to say "it felt the same way tonight as when we were in St. Louis".

I loved that and am still thinking about it this morning. Wherever we were, seemingly we were on tour, because we'd been to St. Louis to do it too. We were traveling. Together. I love that.

And I love you, my little sweetheart. With all my heart and soul I do. Forever.

A Prayer

May I with every day left to me wake with the thought of how best to honor you, my little sweetheart. May I with every day left to me, at day's end, think of all I did to honor you and, if yet another day is to come, how I may better honor you. May this be my way, until that day, my little sweetheart, that I may ascend and join you forever in The Forever. May it be so. With all my love, all my heart and soul. May I honor you.

A Meditation and Sonic Prayer

Little sweetheart, today is the day we release the new album. It's called Electric Hymnal. You're on it, of course, both singing and in spoken word and we've been describing it as "a meditation and sonic prayer" for you. Which it most definitely is. Love you forever.

I Hear You...

Just back from a run. It's grey and a bit wet here today but far more fair than the forecast, which was quite dire, threatening heavy rain, thunderstorms and high winds. It didn't look all that bad from my window, so after coffee, I suited up and headed out. I'm not crazy about running on the weekends because everyone and their dog (literally) is usually out too but the grey skies and aforementioned promise of a tempest found the river path fairly unpopulated. It started to clear as I neared the end, coming back through the park toward the Boat Basin and you could see more folks had ventured out. As I came to a stairway leading back toward the pier, a woman with two small children was in front of me, holding the girl's hand, with her little boy dawdling a bit behind. They were taking up the entire width, so I backed off just as the little guy tumbled. The mom was scolding him lightly, as his bottle of blue Gatorade rolled further down the steps. "That wouldn't have happened," she said "if you'd listened to me. I told you to stop pouting." I stepped around them and retrieved the little guy's Gatorade, handing it back to him, his eyes wide and still teary, as the mom thanked me. "Here ya go, champ", I said. "Hang in there. It only hurts a little while". I have no idea where that came from. Ever hopeful, eh? On second thought, I know exactly where it came from. Thank you, little sweetheart.