Strange Days in the Hyacinth House

One of my earliest memories is of me standing alone at the end of the driveway with a snake slithering between my feet. I stood frozen and screaming. I remember my Mom running with her arms outstretched to pick me up. I love to garden however my fear of wild things is always a concern. I do love hyacinths and roses more than the fear so they are in my front garden. It is landscaped and easy to care for. My backyard is half landscaped and that section is well tended. Each summer I plant scarlet begonias, verbena and whatever else strikes my fancy at the garden center. The other half of the yard is filled with trees, weeds, wild strawberries and flowers, poison ivy, peace frogs and wild things. In the back I know not to touch the earth. Along one side of my property from front to back and continuing into gardens unknown is an ancient stone row. Stone rows are notorious for harboring snakes, chipmunks and mice. Each Spring I find myself waiting for the sun. I then spend days weeding, mulching, planting and pruning. Twice in the past, my tranquil gardening frenzy ended abruptly with a solid key of E shriek and my runnin’ blue when a snake that silently entered unannounced, lifted it's head and scared the stuffing out of me. Gardening was then over for the season.

Around the deck in the backgarden are Bose speakers that can probably entertain my whole block if desired. Last week before going out to garden I noticed a bootleg Doors CD in my son’s room and thought it would be great to get my gardening Mojo going. Turned up loud enough for me to hear throughout the yard, the cd began with Hello, I Love You into Light My Fire into People Are Strange which is when I began my work on the well. It becomes a muck pond from the leftover winter snow, spring rain, leaves and acorns. I was knee deep in the big muddy, climbing on rocks in a position I can only be in because of years of practicing Yoga. My hands, covered in bright yellow gloves were filled with leaves, when a little wild thing, possibly a lizard, jumped out of my hand. The surprise of the jumpy thing in my hand jarred me out of earth mother mode and brought my attention to the music that had changed to the Live version of Roadhouse Blues. This version I had never heard before. It included an additional Morrison rant and by now he was screaming the F word, moaning and asking for participation from some girl in the audience. I became aware in a flash that my neighbors’ twins were now outside on the swing set with their Grandma watching them. I adore the Doors but right then was not feeling the love, and was trying to get off the rock pile surrounding the well without slipping in, as fast as I could. I made it inside to lower the music just as Morrison was ……finishing. I fumbled for a different cd and put on Cold Roses, thinking Ryan Adams would be more apropos. Anyway, I finished cleaning up the well and just in time. Today my husband found a snake coiled up in the very clean dry shallow well. He took a rake and moved him far across the yard to the stone row. I’m not sure I find comfort in that but I’m sure I won’t be gardening anytime soon. I have to wonder if the Crawlin King Snake King himself wasn’t looking down on me and having a good laugh. Maybe by Indian Summer I’ll look for my gardening gloves again….and I'll experiment to see what happens if I listen to Monsters of Folk.

Little Tiny and the Great Spirit

Recently a friend asked me, through email, if I had a dream job what would it be? My response was, ‘don’t make me WRITE it.’ I’m not sure if it was understood but my answer of course was, ‘writer’. A simple but complex six-letter word. After all, I can dream can’t I?

Later that night I was in front of my mirror when I remembered that question. I’d never been asked that before and I was simply thinking how it was kind and thoughtful to be asked. My sometimes-dangerous mind became dangerous and automatically answered without thinking, screening or filtering from me, ‘mother’. Another simple but complex six-letter word that knocked me off balance. I laughed silently knowing the answer was from my heart this time, not my mind. I felt awkward about having a realization that at once created happiness and resignation regarding my own dream.

A few feet away from where I was in front of the mirror, in a box in my closet, is an old Thumbelina doll. She arrived brand new one Christmas morning, a gift from Santa. She was my favorite doll ever. Once I held her I never put her down. I would watch TV, play and jump on the bed with that doll wiggling on my left shoulder. I broke the original dial that made her move like a baby, from overuse and was devastated. My Mom, in her infinite wisdom, sent her to a doll hospital to be repaired. I vividly remember the moment in the kitchen when my Dad opened the box the hospital had addressed to me, with my repaired Thumbelina. They had changed the dial to a pull chord however I knew she was mine. By then she and I had the same wild looking hair. I knew my baby when I saw her.

I didn’t know though that she may have helped create me……I thought I could play piano, I thought I could be a music therapist, I thought I would teach preschool music, I thought I could be blah, blah, blah. God and Thumbelina thought I would be a mother. Who could undermine such a power couple?

“I am what I am and I’ve yet to figure out what I can be”

Willy Porter- Angry Words

I am pleased to have remembered someone posted this from our Summer Concert Series in 2008! It was easily 95 degrees that night but Willie was way cool, performed solo and I was only $5 off with the merch money. Before you think anything bad of me try handling merch in the dark ;)

Growing Season

On Willy Porter’s website I noticed that he landed #20 on Al Kooper’s cream of the ’09 musical crop back in January in Kooper’s review for the Boston Herald. In 1970 something, Al Kooper was the cream of the crop for me and still his writing and music resonate greatly with me. Last February, I attended BB King’s for the legendary Kooper’s Birthday Celebration. It was a great mix of solo Al and special guests including Kristina Train, Rich Pagano, Jack Petruzelli and Jimmy Vivino. The only downside of the evening was not having enough money to get my car out of the parking garage after the show and walking back to 42^nd Street hoping my partner was still around to pay my ticket. While I’m walking on memory lane, outside the Commonwealth Hotel in Boston after a Fab Faux show at Berklee College of Music two years ago, Jimmy V introduced me to Al and his lovely wife Susan who were picking him up at the hotel. Meeting Al was one of my favorite moments and I treasure it. Last week’s favorite moment arrived a little after seven Friday night at the Rubin Museum in Manhattan. My friends and I were running late for the show because of the traffic on the GW bridge, didn’t have tickets and I was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to find parking. However, we made it with minutes to spare, a parking garage magically appeared around the corner and tickets were still available. At seven I was sitting with my friends in the Rubin Museum of Art’s cherry wood lined theatre, fully clothed, for my first experience of Naked Soul. For the uninitiated, the acoustics in this very special space are phenomenal and the music is unplugged and acoustic. After the stressful trip into the city at that moment for me to be unplugged I would have needed a martini however Willie Porter, accompanied by Mona Tavakoli of Raining Jane and Natalia Zuckerman were amazing and the music worked it’s magick. I’ve heard Willy a handful of times, my partner and I even booked him to play for our town’s Summer Concert Series in 2008, but this show held a different meaning. The intimate setting and the delicate juxtaposition of the artwork and music offered another dimension of the soul of the music. The first time I heard Willy Porter was the opposite end of the spectrum. In 1999 he was opening for David Bromberg at Town Hall. It was the first appearance by Bromberg in eons as he had stopped touring to become a builder of violins. The crowd was rowdy from the beginning and when Porter took the stage they gave him such a hard time, as only a crowd suffering from Bromberg withdrawal can. I was astounded that a roomful of people could be that rude (drunk) but they heckled him relentlessly as if they were uptown at Showtime at the Apollo. Toward the end of his set, without missing a beat, he created a song on the spot using all the words the crowd had heckled him with. The crowd went crazy and what I experienced then was the power of a man and his guitar. Willy Porter was and is brilliant. The setting at the Rubin Museum of Art allowed him to sparkle and shine. My favorite Friday night moment flowed into an hour and a half of moments that were cream of the crop for the season for me……a really beautiful spring growing season.

A Merchant in the Nutmeg Grove

Maybe I love children’s verse and rhymes because I taught preschool music for twenty years or maybe I taught preschool music for twenty years because I love children’s rhymes and verse. Looking back I think it’s the second half of the previous definite maybe that’s true. My dad and I had very heated arguments when I lived home because I would take his poetry book, The Oxford Book of English Verse, and not return it to his bedside table. Even if I had been out with friends and stumbled home after midnight I needed to read some ancient English verse or from Alice in Wonderland or the Arabian Nights before sleep. Archaic language and poetry were mind expanding even if I was reading through remnants of the nights purple haze. Last week I heard on wfuv radio that Natalie Merchant had taken children’s verse and put it to song. The next day I was the happy listener to her beautiful renditions of classic poetry. I am so pleased that from happy one can get happier because her songs have created happier in me. For now I will just mention “The King of China’s Daughter”. I love the orchestration, the imagery, the idea of being in a fragrant nutmeg grove. I love how the words tell their story of love with admiration and spirit awakening stories in me beyond knowing. It is just that effect in humanity that makes poetry invaluable. Thank you Natalie Merchant for reaching around the world and bringing timelessness and beauty into mine. And thank you Daddy for last spring when I found the Oxford Book of English verse in an old box of books, you remembered and gave it me. It’s been on my bedside since…

The King Of China's Daughter

The King Of China's Daughter,

She never would love me,

Though I hung my cap and bells upon,

Her nutmeg tree.

For oranges and lemons,

The stars in bright blue air

(I stole them long ago, my dear)

Were dangling there.

The Moon did give me silver pence,

The Sun did give me gold,

And both together softly blew

And made my porridge cold;

But the King of China's daughter

So beautiful to see

With her face like yellow water,left

Her nutmeg tree.

Her little rope skipping

She kissed and gave it me -

Made of painted notes of singing-birds

Among the fields of tee.

I skipped across the sea;

But neither sun nor moon, my dear,

Has yet caught me

Music Herstory

The band has approved the Early Elton show poster and we are less than two months from the show. I was trying to think of a way to advertise it and my own story replayed through my head once again. This time though I recognized another spiral of the universe and somehow the composition of the spiral touches upon insight, piano lessons, friends, dreams of music that began at 12 and continue now, amazing to me still. So, the story is this. I took piano lessons from age 9 -11. I loved it in the beginning and then after a while did not want to practice. I gave my Mom a hard time about it until she finally relented at the end of 5^th grade just in time to leave my scales and arpeggios behind for summer vacation. A year later Elton Johns’ album with ‘Your Song’ hit the airwaves and I bought the songbook for the album. At home I began to work on ‘Your Song’ and ‘Burn Down the Mission’. My friend Michele also played piano and would come by to help figure out chords or to practice at my house. Without saying a word about it to me, my Mom arranged for piano lessons. I remember that argument vividly, not because I lost but because it was my first fight with any adult that a compromise was involved. I was really annoyed but she told me I had to take the lessons for six months and then if I still didn’t like it, I could quit. Well, I didn’t quit until I had completed my Music Therapy degree about 12 years later. Give or take a year……..

Fast forward to last summer when I helped out at the Early Elton Show at the Bitter End. Rich Pagano, John Conte and Jeff Kazee form the trio that represents and pays tribute to Elton’s first American tour with Nigel Olsson and Dee Murray. The night was way cool, the room filled with the magic of songs that were true to the early Elton catalogue. These were songs that I had dreamed upon and although I didn’t know it at the time became the catalyst for my own spiral into whom I am today. The relevance and importance of the music is shared by many including Conte, Kazee and Pagano who in their own acknowledgement of the power of this music are creating a spark of their own. They researched the first American Elton John tour and the show is a reflection of the far-reaching influence and love of the music played with integrity. Recently, during the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame Inductions, Little Steven referred to the nineteen sixties and seventies as a Renaissance period that he believes will only grow in importance. He was insightful and eloquent as only a Soprano can be. The collaboration between Bernie Taupin and Elton John created a signature song form with the piano taking center stage. What they wrote was unique at the time and today resonates still. Enough of my music history, I mean herstory. You know I’ll be there and if I could get Mitch to come up from Lynchburg, Virginia she will be too ;)

Passover the cheesecake........

Here I am back in the kitchen. I had sworn off cooking, particularly baking, a couple of days ago in anger. The week before I had made a pumpkin pie, rice pudding and a Guinness Cake, which is similar to a spice cake, in honor of St. Patrick’s Day. All were made from scratch. Well I did buy the can of Guinness that was needed. Sacred ingredients notwithstanding, the pudding, pie and cake were made from scratch over the course of the week. A couple days later I noticed the pie plate in the sink and washed it. A little while later I experienced a sinking feeling when I noticed a small piece of pie in the trash. The following week I saw crumbled remnants of the Guinness Cake being disposed of in a similar fashion. The where abouts of the rice pudding are still to be determined although I believe it was all eaten. In my anger I decided not to bake anything for the next year. In reading this you may be concluding that the desserts were bad. That’s not the case. My family is just spoiled. They just don’t care for left overs so they devour what they will fresh from the oven and then pretend there isn’t any food in the house. Anyway, it all made me really angry. I read recently that anger is addictive and I believe that’s true. I’ve seen that in my own extended family. It’s usually those that respond first and the loudest to any inconvenience so I decided quietly and with some thought to not feel hurt. I thought I’d change my own behavior and stop baking, for a year or more. It worked for a couple of days and then tonight my youngest child suggested I make a cheesecake for dessert for tomorrows Passover dinner. He made the suggestion just as I was creating a shopping list for tomorrow, needing brisket and turkey and more. I began to rant. I began to rave. Then I began to check out the Philly cream cheese package recipe and add the ingredients to my list. Four packs of cream cheese, coconut macaroons for the crust, oranges and strawberries for the sauce, etc. etc. As I write this, the cake is in the oven. It was the youngest child in the house that asked the four questions.

1. Why are you so angry Mom?

2. Why don’t you just live in the moment?

3. Who is coming for dinner tomorrow?

4. Can you make this cheesecake for Passover?

I never made a cheese cake before but it looks like a happy thing. The edge is slightly cracked and it’s a beautiful creamy color with flecks of orange rind throughout. Tomorrow it will be adorned with a strawberry orange sauce that I will spike with Grand Marnier, to make it an even happier thing. Is it Serendipitous that during my own Holy season of Lent cooking dinner for Passover would remind me of the power of love?