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.

 

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. 

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. 

On This Day and Every Day

 Thinking of you on this day and every day, my little sweetheart. With all my love 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.  

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!

 

Maybe a surprise...

Little sweetheart, this may come as a bit of a surprise (or maybe not) but I got ordained today! It was actually Sylvia who suggested it. She'd read about a non-denominational diocese called The Universal Life Church that has a very simple procedure and is often used by lay people so they can become officiants for things like weddings. When I thought about it, I realized that a couple of people we know from theatre - your friend Coy and a director friend of mine, Bob Moss - had done it themselves. I think my friend Caroline Swift (also from the theatre) had done so too. Anyway, yeah... yiu can call me Father Michael, if you're so inclined, little sweetheart!

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.

March 30 - The Great Vigil

Saturday night of Holy Week concludes with another service I never knew of until a little over a decade ago, little sweetheart, called The Great Vigil.

After Tenebrae and Good Friday, the sanctuary of the church is left in darkness. On Holy Saturday, sometime between dusk that night and dawn on Easter Sunday, the tradition was to light a bonfire, an Easter Fire, outside the church, from which a single candle, the Pashcal Candle is lit and then brought into the sanctuary to light the rest of the candles in the church.  

It’s observed a bit differently from church to church but both the one I first saw at St Thomas and the subsequent ones at Trinity have been in two parts - starting very solemn still in semi-darkness for the first hour around 11pm and then literally brightening as the Paschal candle is brought in, the lights returned - and at Trinity - everyone ringing bells. It signifies Resurrection and the arrival of Easter (when before sunrise) sometime just after midnight.

Somehow, little sweetheart, going through the darkest parts of Holy Week seem to be the most resonant to me. I think it may be a place for my grief to be grounded, a quietness found and a resolve to keep the faith that you are forever and we will be together again, that you will, as always, find me.

With all my love, your Michael.

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.

February 14 - Ash Wednesday

Little sweetheart, even before your tragic passing, I could come to think more deeply about faith. I’m sure I’ve told how moved I was going to the sort of High Episcopal services, especially Evensong, at St Paul’s in London and later at St Thomas here in New York. 

I really began to embrace them ever more in the months and years after. I think it was just what I needed but even so, no one ever approached me there and I felt I was more of a solemn, mournful observer than a participant. 

Eventually I discovered a lovely little church - one of the oldest in the city - about 30 blocks north of here: West End Collegiate. I first began attending their Wednesday night Taize service - an hour-long program of prayer and meditation and almost chant-like hymns held in their sanctuary, lit almost entirely be candlelight. Later, I began to go to some of the other services as well. I found it a good way to quiet my mind and to also to think of and speak quietly to you. 

The pandemic sort of ended the tenure of the clergy and parishioners I had gotten to know in the four or five years I attended West End but it instilled in me some practices and observations that I continue to embrace. Holy Week is one of them. And the period leading up to it - Lent - begins today with Ash Wednesday. 

My thoughts, as ever, of you and my heart longs for you. Any occasion, honestly, little sweetheart, that brings me closer to you and undistracted by the mundane struggles of life is a blessing. I hope to keep near you in these weeks ahead and will write more of them. 

With all my love forever… your Michael

"Table of Silence"

Little sweetheart, it’s been so hot today, I couldn’t bring myself to go out. I’ve been very light with using a/c this year but a couple of times when it’s been this hot, I’ve finally given over.

I really wanted to get out for a walk at some point, though, so I waiting until dusk and then headed west and north. It was dark by the time I was heading home and I decided to walk through Lincoln Center, where I saw the most amazing event unfolding. I asked one of the security guards what was happening and he said that it was a rehearsal for a performance that was going to be staged here on Monday, which is 9/11.

It is almost impossible to describe little sweetheart but I’ll try. All around the fountain were two or three circles of white-robed dancers - there must’ve been over a hundred of them - in simple uniform motion. Farther removed at the border of the plaza were two guys with huge kettle drums like they have in an orchestra playing in a steady almost mournful rhythm. And at another remove were a trumpeter, a saxophonist, a violinist and three women with megaphones. Much of the performance was in silence but parts of it were punctuated with sound including these musicians and the dancers themselves who sometimes take up a wordless chant. 

There was a moment where they seemed to pause for a break, for some words from the director while staying in formation and I found a woman with a headset I took to be a stage manager.  I asked her about the performance and she told me that it was a piece called “Table of Silence” that had been created in 2011 to observe 9/11 and that they would be performing it right here at 8am on Monday. That it was free to attend and would also be live streamed. I’m definitely going to watch that, little sweetheart and will leave a link to it right here.

It was absolutely mesmerizing and terribly moving. And although it’s meant to be performed in the early light of morning there was something incredibly special about seeing in at night. I’m so glad I happened by it! And to top it off, as I walked home I could see that they had lit the twin beams downtown, as they do every year around 9/11 to commemorate and remember where the towers once stood.

Thinking of you, as ever. With all my love. 

Two Cardinals!

I think I’ve told you before, little sweetheart, how wonderful it is to spot a cardinal here in New York. I’d never seen one in the city until a couple of years ago during the pandemic when it seemed that the pause on human bustle led to an abundant return of nature.

There are a couple of places where I’ve seen cardinals in the city. High up in Riverside Park, almost to Grant’s Tomb, there’s a wooded section called “The Wild”. I went up there a year or two ago in the height of August to record cicadas and I saw at least half a dozen cardinals as I made my way quite up through the winding paths. Sometimes in between buildings just west of Lincoln Center, where there’s something of plethora of trees, I’ll see one alight.

They’re incredibly songful! They have the most unique calls, probably at least half a dozen different ones. It’s hard to believe it’s all coming from the same bird!

Anyway, today I saw both a male and a female cardinal. And in a place I’ve never spotted one before - over near the dog run in Riverside Park. I saw the bright red male bird first and then right afterward, his more muted-colored mate. They sort of went back and forth between trees, alighting a bit higher each time they took wing and then came in for another landing.

The legend of cardinals is, of course, that when you see one, it means that someone who you love dearly and has passed has come to visit you for a while. I also quietly stop whatever it is I’m doing and just watch and listen to them. And think of you, of course.

With all my love…

The First Butterfly of Spring

Little sweetheart, even though we’re had a relatively mild winter, it sure has been reluctant to make way for spring! It’s finally beginning to warm up into the high 50’s and 60’s a feel a bit more like what we imagine late May and June to be - just, ya know, a bit more seasonable.

Very much like the route I use running along the Hudson and then up into Riverside Park, I also take a similar path when going for a long walk and in the midst of either/both is the long pedestrian path they call the Serpentine. Around 93rd Street is a beautiful little fenced-in garden that volunteers attend to.

That spot is almost invariably where the first signs of spring are visible, I think. The foliage begins to emerge, blooms and blossoms appearing and finally, like today, the first butterfly of the season! It was a monarch and absolutely glorious.

We’ve been worried about monarchs - you mom and I talked about this last year - they’re in danger of going extinct. In fact, your mom planted some milkweed (which monarchs feed on) to do her part. It’s so lovely seeing this beautiful sign of spring’s arrival, little sweetheart. And unfailing I think of you. 

With all of my love...
 

A Love Letter of Faith

Little sweetheart, I wanted to tell you that yesterday the great BBC 3 and Soho Radio broadcaster, Max Reinhardt had us on his show. We spoke for an hour, much about you, of course and he had some very kind and thoughtful words about both the new album and our entire body of work together.

He called us “holy sonic icons”, little sweetheart, and I think that’s going be hard to top, don’t you?!

One of the things he said that really struck me was that the music has always seemed to him like sacred music and that that had so very much to do with you. 

That is so very much what I’ve often hoped others would take from this, little sweetheart, because writing, composing, playing, recording, our music has always been to me a form of prayer - for and to you. A love letter of faith.

Listen, little sweetheart - you’re on the radio! With all my love…

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…