Wednesday Duologues: Ashley Willard

Ashley Willard.  Editor and co-founder of Boston Band Crush, arguably the online lifeline & loveline of the Boston music scene.  And I got to spend the afternoon chatting with her!  But you can eavesdrop.

Prologue:  

me: bah.  i won't bore you with tales of my workday. but i will apologize.
is now good?
Ashley: hi!

sure!

i mean if you can't it's ok

we can do it 'nother time

me: no way, now's great for me!

just let me take a deep drag, i mean sip of coffee.

almost 2 years since i quit smoking, in fact.

okay ready?

Ashley: gun it

me: who are you?

Ashley: where am i?

it's me ashley!

me: ha

hi!

Ashley: hi!

tell me when it starts

haha just kidding

you keep entering text and then deleting it

i see you doing that

me: okay, let me go back a few minutes and say "nnnnnNOW"

i am

i am reading :: quite a bit.

I don't know anyone else besides my father who buys books on vacation like I do.  Of course, I generally go on vacation to visit my father and together we have to patronize all the local bookstores on Whidbey Island and beyond.  Yes, HAVE to.  It's only ethical.

About Mt. Rainier, John Muir is quoted as saying, "Did not mean to climb it, but got excited and soon was on top."  It's like that.  I did not mean to buy 10 books on vacation...though I did pack an empty backpack in my suitcase, just in case.

Here's what I got:

My father once read aloud the first chapter of Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler to me.  We laughed through the whole thing....

In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven't Read, which are frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you...And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too. 

What does this running cost our lives?

Today I found myself skimming the blog entry of a poet.

The problem with skimming poetry...

Well, the problem with skimming poetry is the problem of living as if everything matters so much that nothing matters.  Our precious time (no time no time no time!) matters so much that we spend it flipping through, glancing, checking in.  Life blurs.  We miss it.

I'm doing everything and missing it all.

Maybe you are, too.

The problem with skimming poetry is that you cannot hear the sound of the words in your head, cannot allow images to form, cannot linger long enough for the intricacies of meaning and association to connect and fall into place.

So for you, just one line.  If you like, let time stop, let your shoulders drop, and let yourself follow it wherever it takes you.  You have time.

The old steps live only in me:  my feet and thighs remember them, and my hands feel their splinters.

~ from A Time Past, by Denise Levertov

Another good way to linger is by listening to people play acoustic music in a room with twinkly lights.  I'm looking forward to being a part of that tonight at the Cafe at the Armory in Somerville.  Hope to see you there, and please join us at Highland Kitchen after!

A root-flame in the heart

I just finished re-writing the band bio, in which I use the phrase "brazen innocence" to describe myself.

I'll be honest, I stole that phrase from this week's horoscope.

So today someone asked me whether self-proclaimed innocence can really be innocent.  If you know you are, how can you be?  It's a good question.

One that Annie Dillard answers in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek far better than I:


Innocence sees that this is it, and finds it world enough, and time. Innocence is not the prerogative of infants and puppies, and far less of mountains and fixed stars, which have no prerogatives at all. It is not lost to us; the world is a better place than that. Like any other of the spirit's good gifts, it is there if you want it, free for the asking, as has been stressed by stronger words than mine. It is possible to pursue innocence as hounds pursue hares: single-mindedly, driven by a kind of love, crashing over creeks, keening and lost in fields and forests, circling, vaulting over hedges and hills wide-eyed, giving loud tongue all unawares to the deepest, most incomprehensible longing, a root-flame in the heart, and that warbling chorus resounding back from the mountains, hurling itself from ridge to ridge over the valley, now faint, now clear, ringing the air through which the hounds tear, open-mouthed, the echoes of their own wails dimly knocking in their lungs. 

What I call innocence is the spirit's unself-conscious state at any moment of pure devotion to any object. It is at once a receptiveness and total concentration.

Here's to a gorgeous weekend teeming with innocence.  Don't let it get away from you.

The good things

So I've become a little bit obsessed with the new series of Doctor Who.  I won't go into why it is amazing, I'll just say that you should watch it and point you in that direction.  (It's also airing on BBC America and available on iTunes, but note that though the British-run website has the entire season, the last few episodes haven't aired over here yet.)

The menace that persists over the arc of this season's narrative is a series of cracks in the fabric of the universe.  The cracks are present in every era and locale, and anyone who goes through a crack (you can get sucked in if you go too close and yes I am going to ignore the Freudian implications, thank you) ceases to exist anymore in their rightful universe.  To those remaining, it's as if that person had never been born.  No memory of them remains, though the more sensitive characters experience an inexplicable grief.

Don't you think it would be fantastic if we could attribute all the losses in our lives to something as simple as cracks in the fabric of space and time?!

I mean, okay.  One of the reasons this show resonates for me is that I identify with the character who walks around with significant people missing from her life, trying to get on with whatever task or adventure is at hand, and intermittently finding that she's crying and doesn't know why.

After loss, after time passes, that's what it's like, right?  When you think you're over it.  When you've found a way to conceive of your universe without the one you've lost?  And then one morning you wake from a dream you can't quite remember and find yourself adrift on a wave of grief?

When those waves come for me, I don't feel what I feel because of the loss alone.  I also rail against the reasons for the loss:

Heroin addiction and depression fueled by childhood abuse and terrors, which led to suicide.

Complex and dishonest circumstances that made secrecy the condition of friendship, which inevitably destroyed it.

Ancient insecurities and missing skills from dysfunctional upbringings that eroded trust, without which even an unconditional love could not function.

Distance and misunderstandings exacerbated by jealous, insecure or controlling partners.

Unwillingness or inability to meet the demands of an exceptionally rare kindredness.

Alcoholism.

See? Wouldn't cracks in the universe be awesome?  Wouldn't it be tremendous if being human were so easy, so simple, that the worst thing that could happen to us came from something utterly beyond ourselves?  Something wholly beyond our individual or collective control?  (With the exception of the Doctor, of course.)

We are so frail.  So twisted up in fear.  Missing from my universe are extraordinary relationships with extraordinary human beings.  These are among the best people I have known and I feel that's saying something because I have always sought friends and lovers with humongous hearts, ravenous curiosity,  boundless capacity to experience beauty and joy, true compassion, creative fire, and more than a light dusting of magic.

The best of humanity.  And look at us.

So how?  How can I walk through my universe with all these magnificent, significant people missing, sucked through cracks of our own tragic terrible design, and still claim "this blue heaven?"  How can I in good faith put on bright colors and sing about light in the darkness?

The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things.  The good things don't always soften the bad things; but vice-versa the bad things don't necessarily spoil the good things and make them unimportant.*

We have to work to add to the pile of good things.  That's it.  We have to work to see them, to let them have our full attention even for a moment.  We have to fight for that because our frailty is so great and our power to destroy so very compelling.  I don't deny the darkness.  It is because I am aware of it, because I know how easily and inevitably the pile of bad things grows, that I insist on writing and singing about light.

Pain is easy to portray, but to use your passion and pain to portray the ecstasy and joy and magnificence of our world... that is -- until we evolve to the point that the worst threat we face is a bunch of pesky cracks in the universe -- the very best we can do.*  So we must.  I must.  That's it.

*Quotations from Vincent and the Doctor

You're there

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said.  A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made.  Or a garden planted.  Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.  It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.  The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said.  The lawn cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.

- from Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

Why it took me so long to open this book, I don't know.  I can't remember where (for shame!), but I read recently that we immerse ourselves in the books we do because they have something for us at that moment in our lives.  We may later return to a book that once profoundly affected us and be totally unmoved, left wondering what the big deal was.  Because the power of this book is to shake you from the grip of "A Roman named Status Quo," and because we always seem to be on our way back to that dull mean, I can't imagine a time in any lifetime when this book wouldn't matter.  Still, I'm glad I read it now.  This passage in particular was a well-timed gift:  an affirmation.  Thanks, Ray.

Howl

"He who cannot howl will not find his pack." [sic]  - Charles Simic

"I'm a magic wee-utch!" - Me (age 4)


p.s. And while, no, I'm not saying I'm Wiccan, I would like to thank that sweet bartender with the moon phase tattoos on her arm for pouring and joining me in that free shot last week:  you are an especially decent human being.

The End

So... it's not that I have nothing to say about love, creatively or otherwise.  I just realized I feel shy about posting the things I've been thinking about love, lately.  Protective might be a better word.  For now.

But I hope your Valentine's Day was full of sweetness.  Like waffles with strawberries and whipped cream.

Here is one thing I know for sure about love:  It's what I'm doing here.

I don't know about you, but I pretty often ask myself, What am I doing with my life?  It feels so short and there are so many options that I feel an urgency to always have a good answer to that question.

Well, approximately five years ago, I made a conscious decision to learn how to love.  At the time I think I used the verb "remember" in place of "learn" because I remembered being a really loving little kid, and feeling a kind of overflowing at different points in my life.  I made it my New Years Resolution for that year.  But of course, it's not a static lesson.  Like everything most worth doing, it can never really be done.  So I just keep renewing it every year.

Our new producer Paul Q. Kolderie explained production like this:  You keep asking "How can this be more awesome?" until you can't possibly make it any more awesome and then you know you're done.

I'm pretty sure love never stops getting more awesome.  So, that's what I'm doing with my life.  Learning love.  Everything else is to that end.

No love can survive muteness

I have only ever truly fallen in love through (good) (honest) conversation.


I have only ever become truly heartbroken through its absence.

I think that's probably enough of an introduction to today's group of writings.

The one thing stronger than desire

My absolute favorite of all writers who write about love is Jeanette Winterson.

She writes so truly it's impossible to think she hasn't been in love.  And heartbroken.  And in love.

I think that's the most I can do to sum it up, so I'll just hand you over to these pearls.

The only gold

Today's love entry in preparation for Valentine's Day is going to be FULL of good words on love (and lyrics if you're ambitious enough to look them up), because last night I made VALENTINES!

I have not managed to do this since 2001, so yes it absolutely warrants all caps.

Having succeeded at last, I've decided to share with you a one-time-only very special offer of

The This Blue Singer Valentine-Making Tutorial!

That looks on tempests and is never shaken

If you were around for my Christmas blogging, you already know that I believe in holidays.  Yes, yes, they are - all of them! - blown out of all proportion by commercial greed.  And with the bombardment of commercials, candy, and plastic junk in drug stores, they become the measure by which your life is lonelier or emptier than you wish it was, much the same way that supermodels become the measure by which your body is flawed.  But at the core of any holiday is a motif of the human psyche worth celebrating.

And so, in the spirit of celebrating the epic riff of romantic love, I have decided to share some of my favorite words about love with you over the course of this week leading up to Valentine's Day.  My hope is that revisiting these favorites will inspire me to finish some piece of writing (poem? lyrics? prose essay?) on love to share with you on Sunday.

Introduction, check.  So without further ado...

On family

So we're going back into the studio this spring, and I feel all kinds of ways about that. Excited and nervous - so much more aware of what this process involves... and also more aware of my band - what souls we're working with. And the songs! Well. I won't tell you which 2 or 3 we're recording first yet, because there's still a chance we may change our minds. But anyway. To come to the point.

A Christmas List

1. My new favorite Christmas memory this year so far: singing the 12 Days of Christmas with the Bass Player to warm up as we walked to the Middle East show last Saturday night. "Eleven... uhhhh...." All told, he had a harder time counting backwards than remembering the pipers piping, etc.

Hope

I heard this on the behind-the-scenes appendices from the Lord of the Rings film trilogy and found it really wise and articulate. To paraphrase:

Despair is for those who know for certain what the future will be. No one is in that position.

Some true things I'd like to tell

Dear Diary, I woke up at 6:30 this morning, raised my head to turn off the alarm on my iPhone (a little ethereal piano clip I took from Angelica by Lamb, apparently stolen from Debussy), saw a display of gold and orange streaks across the eastern sky over the tall buildings along the Charles. I thought of getting up. I looked at my phone and a text had come in while I was sleeping - a friend still in college asking me if I was watching the meteor shower. I missed it. I missed it when I was in college, too, even though I always sorta remembered when it was coming. I fell back on the pillow. When I got up an hour later, I did a sun salutation yoga series for the first time. Sunshine was glowing in my windows. It seemed the thing to do.

Loving this new track from Rupa & the April Fishes

when life hands you big mysteries---i have found it's best if i don't complain and don't explain. just open another door in my mind, roll with it, blame it on the moon and carry on.

I was backwards in the rain

It's late. Not as late in Washington state as it is in Boston, but still. Late enough that all the stars and in fact the broad stripe of the Milky Way itself is just visible. The moon is almost full, which is always -- call me superstitious -- a sign of something. Something is going to happen. Something is going to change.

Ahhh Friday

1. My mind is roaming other worlds while I enter data and count women and minorities for a grant report today. Imagining better ways to spend my days, with a little help from:

The Hermitage

(that you sell your one given life to someone else so that the very life force that keens in you, that makes these daisies turn to the sun, is put on pause until some other time in the future, that never quite arrives)

& Fed By Birds

(whose work would you rather read, Colette - swimming, sex and regular blood transfusions from an attractive young donor - or film critic Roger Ebert - rise at 7, oatmeal, treadmill, cold shower).

2. DUDE. Check this out. Yes, those are

Other people's wisdom

Dudes, I stink at keeping up this blog lately.

Sor-ry.

And just now I gotta run out and meet Doc and his beautiful girls.

But at least let me tell you a couple of lines other people have said that have been bouncing around a lot in my head today and making me just wonder at this crazy human life we're trying to survive.

1. Reality is frequently inaccurate. (A wise and good friend shared this one with me. I'm just gonna let it sink in and maybe unpack it a little another day.)

2. We persist in acts because we feel we should not persist in them. (This is from Edgar Allan Poe's The Imp of the Perverse, which you should read and which reminded me of Bjork's gorgeous song, Hyperballad.)