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.

New Year's Eve tonight

It’s New Year’s Eve, little sweetheart. You and I never got a chance to have one together but I do remember you calling me each year and especially one year when you were at a party and had gone into another room especially to book a flight to New York and called to tell me you were coming! 

It’s been a few years since I’ve seen your parents because of the pandemic but for several years I’d been with them and I began a tradition of making beef stroganoff each New Year’s Eve - which your dad, in particular, likes - so, that’s what I’m doing tonight. 

Probably be a quiet night, here. But my thoughts, as ever, will be of you and wondering when I will fly to your side. Whenever that may be, I will endeavor to do my best in this coming year. 

With all love forever.
 

New Year's Eve

It’s New Year’s Eve, little sweetheart. 

It was never much of holiday for me. Maybe when I was a little boy or something because we got to stay up until midnight - or least try to, I think I often fell asleep before it got that late. But as an adult it never meant much. 

And you and I never did New Year’s together, somehow. Part of it I think was because I was usually with my mom at Christmas until the year she passed away and then at Christmas that year, although I was with you in California, I had to come back to NYC to start rehearsals for something that week before Jan 1. It wasn’t terrible because you were coming to New York right after to be with me. 

I never had much of holiday on New Year’s Eve but I did spend several of the last few with your mom and dad since I was with them for Christmas and didn’t come back to New York until after Jan 1. A few years ago, I started making beef stroganoff each year on New Year’s Eve. Your dad, especially, liked that - even though he was often on call at the hospital that night - so it’s become a tradition. 

I’m on my own this year but I decided to make it, with chicken, instead. It came it pretty good. And I added what I think might become another tradition. 

Remember I told you about that amazing Portuguese movie I saw earlier this year, “The Strange Case of Angelica”? I decided to watch that. It’s the story of a young woman who tragically passes away. In the middle of the night, her wealthy family sends someone into town to find a photographer to take a last picture of her. He’s kind of unusual, a bit shy and no one quite knows what to make of him. He’s very earnest and sweet and when he looks through the lens, she opens her eyes and smiles at him. Only he can see her as she comes to life. 

And she keeps coming to him after that throughout the movie. Coming to his window one night in a beautiful sequence and taking him flying over the city through the night sky. In the end, (oops - spoiler alert!), after he’s hurt in an accident, she comes to him and takes him away with her. 

It’s incredibly beautiful, shot amazingly, like a series of paintings, almost. And, of course, it touches me because of its profound message of faith. 

A new tradition, right, little sweetheart? You so liked beginning them together with me. So, here’s another new at the beginning of a new year. 

With all my love forever.

2019

2019 has begun, little sweetheart, and I hope to set out on a better year than the one just concluded.

In 28 months we’ve released four length albums, including a double-album. I’ve an eye toward the next one, our 9th, already but I so very much want this to be the year that we publish the first book of memoirs. I mean for the writing of that to be my top goal and priority this year.

I’m still recovering from getting hit by the car eight months ago. I’m still in physical therapy. It’s still hard. But I’ll keep doing the work and hopefully get back to as close I can to before it all happened and move forward with grace and prayerfulness and our plans.

With all my love forever.

Last Day of the Year

Little sweetheart, it’s the very last day of 2018. It’s New Year’s Eve.

I think I’ve never had much use for the holiday. Maybe when I was a little boy, when the excitement of staying up until midnight - and fading, falling asleep and being carried off to bed well before - was a thing. I don’t think you and I ever had an New Year’s Eve together.

What I do remember was talking to you on New Year’s Eve. Talking to you on the phone - me here in NYC, you in SF - and making plans for the New Year. In 2008 it was about me coming there, possibly forever. In 2010, it was you telling me you were at a party with Danya but that you’d just booked a flight here - like excused yourself into the bedroom, gotten on your Air Book and bought a ticket. That you’d be here next week.

It still feels so close to me, my little sweetheart, that feeling that you’re only a plane ride away. Maybe you’re even closer than that, now. Maybe you’re far closer than I can imagine and all I have to is to listen quietly for your presence. All I have to do is as you would have me and sometime, sometime very soon, we’ll be together again and forever.

As this year draws to a close little sweetheart, this year when I got hit by a car and actually died for ten minutes before coming back to life, let it be a thing that I hold dear - you. To remember and honor and be like you. To do our work, speak our truth, say our prayer and finally, when called, fly to you.

With all my love on this last day, which is also the first, the first of the next. And you. You. Forever.

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

Resolutions

It's almost New Years, little sweetheart. I'm writing this sitting by the beautiful Christmas tree near the mantel in your parents's front room where our Christmas stockings, yours and mine, hang next one another.
 
At home over my desk along with lots of pictures of you and several of your little handwritten cards to me framed so I may always have them near, are two little notes to myself. One says "it's good to get things done - remember that." And today has been one of those kind of days.
 
I woke up to California birdsong and dreams of you to guide me on this last day of the year. I made the bed and went down to make coffee and get things started - I wanted to make some nice things for your mom and dad. Last year on New Year's Eve I made beef stroganoff and they really liked it, so I got everything to make it again. New Year's Eve day is actually the sixth day of Christmas also - I forget what that is in the song, maybe swans a swimming? - so, I'd made cookie dough the night before for a whole new batch of Christmas cookies. I got the coffee going and then started baking.
 
First, a graham cracker crust for that cherry cream cheese pie your dad likes and then I started on the cookies. The kitchen smelled really good with the molasses ginger baking away and the fresh coffee. Your mom came down and had a cup and we looked after the kittens and cocker spaniel who were curious about all the activity. Once had all the cookies done and cooling on the counter and the cold pie chilling in the fridge and all the dishes done, I changed into my gear and went for a run.
 
It was kind of a perfect day for running- cool but not cold, a bit overcast and foggy. I was out for about an hour and then had a shower, got the laundry in and started in on the stroganoff. Ilsa, one of the kittens, was terribly interested in that. Especially when I was cutting up the sirloin. It takes quite a while getting everything going in separate pots and pans until it all comes together in one big pot at the end with the noodles. I made a salad and frosted the cookies during a couple points of waiting during the prep and had that BBC Radio 6 show with our friends Low on the whole time - it's sort of been the soundtrack this season.
 
By the time everything was done it was actually just about dinner time. Your mom had an idea to watch an old mini series that she had on DVD - "Rich Man, Poor Man". We put that on after dinner and before dessert and somewhere around episode 3, we started to hear fireworks outside. It was cold and crisp when we went out interesting the garden to look. It reminded me of Guy Fawkes Day in London because it wasn't like just one big "official" display but half a dozen separate ones in different parts of the sky from all over. When we turned to go back inside, we could see the kittens up on their perch by the window looking out at us with great wonder.
 
And that's when I stepped in here to write all this down to you, little sweetheart and to tell you how much I love and miss you and so want to be with you in The Forever. I hope you'll come for me soon, maybe taking me in my sleep, so that I wake in your arms and find everything is finally again the way it should be. I know I must wait patiently until that day. I know I must do my best and listen quietly for your instruction. I know, as that one little note to myself says and as I did today, that "it's good that get things done". And I know, as the other little note says, that I "feel better when I'm a good boy" and to remember that, too.
 
May I do both in this new year to come. May I do the things that you want me to, work harder at becoming the man you were helping me to become, to grow my heart and learn, to honor and to conjure you. And to listen quietly for everything you have to tell me, so that I'm ready to go when you call. Please come for me soon, my love. It's all I want in the whole world- just to be with you. Forever. With all my love...

Full Heart Present

Today I went down to Davis, little sweetheart, to meet up with Noah. We often do this when I’m out in NorCal. He drives over from work in Sacramento and we meet at The Angel, at the little resting place where I know you aren’t exclusively, I know your spirit flies unencumbered by time or space and that you simply alight places, like here, to let me know you’re with and to comfort me. Thank you, sweetheart. I arrived before noon, stopping first as you and I always did when we first pulled up into Davis, before even going to the house, at The Nugget Market. I bought some nice roses for you and then headed over. I was tidying things up there and arranging your flowers when Noah arrived. He likes to come and talk to your brother, my love, just like I do with you and he told me I’m the only other person he knows who will come here and meet him.

We talked for a long while, nearly an hour – about you both, about Noah’s lovely parents and yours, about Noah’s two little boys, and that he and his wife and your brother’s friends Pat & Nicole might all come to New York for a visit this spring. Noah already had the iTunes version of our Christmas record, my sweetheart, but the CDs came out while I’ve been here in California, so I gave him two copies. There’s a gorgeous picture of you on the back (and two more inside) on the roof of our apartment building in NYC during our first snowfall that season just before Christmas. We talked for quite a while, as I say, and finally he had to get back to work. So, I hugged him and he said goodbye and walked back to his car. I watched him drive off. And then, as I stood there alone, slowly sitting down, almost immediately after, to talk to you, my heart became so full and heavy, my little sweetheart. And I cried and cried.

Oh, how I miss you, my darling girl! With all my heart and soul I do. It makes my whole body tremble with sadness and grief and longing. And I get so very sad, so heart-shatteringly sad and terribly terribly lonely. But, ya know, sweetheart – it’s good to cry for you, my love. I’m glad in a way that I feel this, feel you so strongly always. For I know that means that you are with me. Both here and everywhere. I know from this feeling that you are doing your best to break through the invisible barriers that keep me from seeing you where you are, so not-very-far-away, nearly next to me sometimes. I know that you’re doing your best to let me know that. And I know that one day soon we will be together again and forever. I just need to be fully present with an open heart, so open that it can be filled to its very brim with all of you, my angel. My beautiful angel.

Open Letter to My Sweetheart on Jan 8, 2014...

It's January 8th, little sweetheart and I'm sitting on your bed in NorCal. I flew out at Xmas and was supposed to fly back Sunday night but my flight was canceled. Finally, yesterday, I got in touch with the airline and they can get me out via SFO this Friday. I almost never fly from there because it's where you always picked me up and it makes me so sad. But, ya know what, my love? It's time that I try harder. It's time I not be so afraid how much it will hurt to really immerse myself in your memory. It's a new year. My third without you. And I promise, my darling, to work hard, to listen for you and tell our stories. This year. Now. And then I can go. Then I can find release. Then I know I will be able to come to you. Then I imagine you collecting me just as you did at the airport so many times, your blue Prius taking the curve, seeing you through the windshield. Running to you as you smiled your million kilowatt love and waved, pulling to the curb, getting out in your little yoga pants and a cute little t-shirt, your gorgeous red hair piled atop your head, rushing into my arms. Just like I imagine you collecting me soon at Arrivals once I've left this mortal plane and asking me to drive, telling me in a rush, all the things I need to know about The Beautiful New Place, how we can be in anyplace all at the same time and that's why it looks just like arriving in San Francisco. That we will always be together now. That all time is for all time. I can't wait, baby. I can't hardly wait...