the season of aloneness

I have a trove of teenage poems exploring my dire emotional winter landscape...it was a time of intense creativity for me, even as it was despairingly lonesome because of home-life factors and the repetitive failure of my h.s. relationships to make it past Thanksgiving. Anyway, unlike some folks who despise their adolescent written voices, I'm an unabashed fan of my own, even as I acknowledge my naivete and creaky language choices....

the season of aloneness

and you,
shed like crisp autumn leaves--
still fragrant, still reminding;
summer wasn't so long ago...
painless, timeless, hopeless,
a curious reminiscence--
full of romance and
our temporary innocence

lost:
love, leaves, summer, warmth;
memories guarded
like a brilliant fallen leaf
and our friendship preserved.
gingerly possessed
as we drift into winter
the season of aloneness

NBR 11/30/81

Risking my life for the blues

The weather forecast could have gone either way, really. Rain...or snow. (Well, I guess it could have gone three ways, this being Maine...the third option being the dreaded mix.) Lobsta and I perused yesterday's weather websites like trained meteorologists, scrutinized the New England map with swirling green/pink menaces bearing down, looked at the iffy temps, shrugged, and pretty much ignored all of it.

Because it's Buddy Guy and BB King. And Lobsta scored these tickets Friday after weeks of prodding Ticketmaster.com to no avail. You know the drill: tickets not currently available try again closer to the date of show x 100, and then improbably, she snagged floor tickets. GA, scramble for position...our favorite kind. Even better: at the brand-new Boston House of Blues (which used to be the Avalon, scene of one of our great John Mayer Trio escapades).

Let me briefly pause this narrative. The blues did not come to me via my storied musical DNA. I cannot recall any instance where my mother extolled this genre, except when one of her heroes performed blues in a shinier, more glamorous jazz context (cf. "C Jam Blues"). Truth be told, I think the blues were too soaked and earthy for her. Not to mention, the electric guitar was never a clarion call to her musical ears.

I have come to the blues entirely on my own. Clarion call, siren, seducer, compulsion: the myriad tones of a wailing electric guitar are all of these for me, and muse besides. When those tones are slowed, bent, and rhythmically pounded in service to blues music, I am literally physically moved (Lobsta, Marcy, and Gret would correct that to mov-ing. Herewith a quickie public apology for making them endure my dancing, swaying self.)

I feel like I've backed into the blues, though. Accessed them through a nondescript side door that whiteboy rockers opened to me, from Cream to Zep, Hot Tuna to Stevie Ray, and then this whole John Mayer thing. Over the course of 20 shows since 2003, Mayer has spoken to me most clearly in his blues voice of guitar rambles and strokes that lay bare raw emotion. I've come to understand how that voice is something he learned from others, whose output and stories I should know better.

Back in 2005, Lobsta and I were blessed to have attended a John Mayer Trio show in Chicago with an unannounced special guest: Buddy Guy. I knew who Buddy was, but it was in a distant, yes-he's-a-legend way. Seeing Buddy perform snapped me right to attention. "The woman I love, man, you know she's kinda big and fat. And what I like about the woman is kinda...gooood like that." Toss the skilled guitar work in with those lyrics, et voila: sex on a stick! I was galvanized. And grooving in my GA floor space, you bet.

Given the opportunity to see Buddy again--and with BB King added in, a stone legend--I was thrilled. Ergo (back to the narrative), pffffft to the weather, let's get into Daisy (Lobsta's trusty VW Bug) and point her south.

We arrived just 30 minutes before the doors opened. Quite a long line already snaked outside the venue despite the drizzly, freezly rain, and we added ourselves to the end. (This constrasts with various JM Trio outings, when we arrived by noon in order to be as close to first-in-line as possible.) Circumstances hadn't allowed us to get there any earlier, so we were fine with that--just to be in the room and witnessing these players was going to be enough.

Fast-forward to showtime. For reasons I still can't quite get my head around (as they did not involve pushing, elbowing, or even insinuating), Lobsta and I ended up one person away from the stage, immediately to the right of the mic. As close as you can get without touching wood, as I like to say. This was always a good-luck spot for our GA Mayer shows, and Lobsta and I stood there incredulous to have scored it at this more-historic blues moment. Buddy Guy and his band took the stage, and we were looking right in Buddy's eyes, watching his hands work the guitar neck and strings, in his space. Buddy combines leer with lilt, aggression with caress, insouciance with authority. Sometimes he howls, and other times he brings up his fists and oooooweeees with glee. And he's agelessly sexy, something I first witnessed in Chicago, but realized more fully last night.

His set included "Love Her With a Feeling," "Best Damn Fool," "Someone Else is Steppin' In," and "Feels Like Rain" (the latter is a song that Lobsta and I both associate with our mothers' passing, and his emotive performance brought us to to tears). He played "Skin Deep," the thoughtful title track to his newest LP, and there was reverent silence in the capacity-filled House of Blues. But after about an hour of burning up the stage with his tight band, he added one more player: a 9-year-old prodigy named Quinn Sullivan. "Who's Gonna Fill Those Shoes" is the duet they play together, but Buddy backed off many times and let an unassuming, fantastically gifted boy own the spotlight and the crowd. This extended what I've already seen with Mayer and Guy together, and I can assure you it's not about master and student. It's about legacy and camaraderie, and hope besides. I was able to look Quinn in the eyes just as easily as I'd been doing with Buddy, and as I grooved along to his playing, I could see an endearing acknowledgement on Quinn's part that he was having an effect on the crowd. He was authentic, not a show pony.

One last tidbit from the Buddy portion of the show: he noticed me and my ceaseless, blues-fueled dancing. I may not be a looker in traditional ways, but it's fair to say I do have fine rhythm. So I'm proud to report that Buddy sang this bit to me: "I'm the one and only...I'm the one man that you won't forget. I can make a bulldog kiss a pussycat, I'm the best damn fool you ever met." Awww yeah.

When Buddy's set was done, the stage crew effected a rapid and surprising transformation to get ready for BB. I didn't have any foreknowledge of BB's concerts, so I didn't realize there'd be a horn section and a formal feel to the unit. Every player to a man was attired in a bespoke suit or a tux. The atmosphere in the club shifted, and I'm not sure I can explain quite why. Buddy commands a roadhouse, to be sure. For BB, something closer to a concert hall takes shape around his stage. What I did know to expect was the folding chair that his crew member placed exactly in front of me. What a thrill just seeing that!

I wondered whether BB might be diminished these days. I had just seen him on the Grammys, and he hung back a tad that night, letting fellow soloists have more axe time. Well, wonder no more. He was an astonishment from the second he took the stage. Among my surprises were the timbre of his voice--rounded, nuanced, not rattled by age at all--and the tastiness and invention of his playing. (Very Count Basie, that.) And again, the eyes had it--I could see them so well from my vantage point. Not dimmed, his eyes flash when he's passionate (and he delivered a few monologues in addition to his singing). And his eyes frequently warm with sentiment. He has a fatherly bearing, and his joy is evident.

BB's band was smoking. His rhythm section was funked up and supple, and the horn players are locked together. His keyboardist was not as audible from my side of the stage, but he looks to be a contemporary of BB's, and he played some sweet solos. My mom's chief complaint against classic blues might involve a statement like, "It doesn't swing" (she unpacked that one a lot). Well, BB's band swings, syncopates, and jumps. I wish Mom could have heard it (but from much farther away--the volume where I stood would have overwhelmed her).

Another thing that surprised me about BB: his sexiness factor is right up there with Buddy. When he sings about how to love a woman, a lifetime of learning-by-doing is in his voice and on his face. The guitar licks that accompany him are knowing indeed. And the fact that he must sit to play means nothing, nothing at all.

At one point, BB enticed the entire crowd into singing along with him, and the choice of song was stunning...a lullaby. He explained that this song is how he feels about the woman he loves.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,
you make me happy when skies are gray.
You'll never know, dear, how much I love you,
please don't take my sunshine away.

Hearing a full house of jaded concertgoers sing so sweetly, and so surely, was amazing. The fact that this was a set piece, as are many of BB's asides and monologues, does not undercut its power.

BB moved me the most with a Blind Lemon cover, "See That My Grave is Kept Clean". His delivery reminded me of other elders I've known whose relationship with mortality was honest and unsparing. BB brought that home by acknowledging that his children do not like to hear him play this song. It is the distilled essence of blues.

At 11:15, more than three hours after the show started, BB stood up with assistance, and slowly bade the crowd farewell. His band filed off the stage, and the room emptied remarkably rapidly. Lobsta and I stood around for about ten minutes, dazed at the expanse of concrete that had moments ago held scores and scores of people. We felt privileged to have experienced this show at such close range. Gradually, we made our way to Daisy, and commenced a death-defying drive north into a full-on blizzard. The roads were chunky with a layer of ice, then coated with blowy, greasy snow. Eighteen-wheelers and 4WD trucks swept past us at ridiculous high speeds, as Lobsta kept the speed at 40 and gripped the wheel. Getting from Boston back to Portland took us four agonizing hours. We saw multiple accidents and did not see many plows or sanders. Hence, the title of this piece is as true as the music I'm honoring. And it was worth the trip...in every sense.

A blank page of looseleaf

That's what this new blog is...empty and awaiting words. It's taken me hours to align everything the way I want it, and now I find myself without much to say. Oh irony.

So I'll start with a little news report: it's 16 degrees F here. That was kind of abrupt, the shift from gee-a-scarf-might-feel-nice, to o-m-g-my-nostrils-are-stiff-with-frost-helpmehelpme. I'm not exactly ready. I'm also not ready for the Christmas tree-decorating tradition, as our household added two cats last New Year's, neither of whom has ever been in contact with a towering, chewable, ornaments-dangling behemoth. What's more, last year we bought a lovely artificial tree (pre-lit...lordy it's convenient). This will only increase the chewiness factor, as far as Wookiee and Momo are concerned. I suspect the heirloom ornaments will stay boxed this year....

Despite all the above Scroogy-ness, I actually enjoy this season. There's a dreamy quality to December...work stress is temporaily derailed; the nights are darker, velveteen, endless; the cold makes indoors something to treasure--nay, to rush towards; lamps glow with more intense power than usual, staving off the elements. Also, my creativity engine goes into overdrive. Partly that's because I have to deliver multiple handmade Christmas thingies, but mostly it's because winter inspires me to seek color, patterns, textures, and shapes...I guess to make up for the loss of summertime's bounty.

Hence, a new blog. Inspired by tea. Maybe that's a tough metaphor to understand, but for me it resonates mightily. Perhaps with time, it will make more sense to the readership, whomever that turns out to be.

Ah, the wind is roaring outside. The last, brown autumn leaves are getting swirled and swept into the air, glancing against the windows. It was dark at 4:15 pm. It's here.

Home

I'm standing in the living room of my grandparents' house. It's January 1973. I live with them this year...I asked to stay after a blissful summer here in Millinocket, and my mom agreed to let me. In fact, Mom never hesitated, and while that surprised me, it also freed me to feel fully excited about the idea. And then, Nana and Grampy's joy when I told them I wanted to stay almost made me teary-eyed...for the first time, I realized what I bring to them. That they are lonely when I'm not here. That they love me that much.

It's mid-morning, and we're still on Christmas vacation. So I'm enjoying the odd feeling of being in this room on a weekday, instead of being down the street in 3rd grade at Aroostook Avenue School. It's radiant Maine winter, with a newly fallen clean-white snow banked all around the house, and a sky of cloudless blue. The shades are up, and between the lemony sun and the reflecting snow, the room is significantly brighter than I've ever seen it. The beige wallpaper seems faded a little...which it is, truthfully. It's been here since the 1950s; it shares an air of past style with my nana's wardrobe and eyeglass frames. The furniture, too, is upholstered in a textured fabric that you would never see in a contemporary store. I treasure that nostalgia for an era that precedes me. The vivid light makes this room feel safer and more beautiful, honestly, than any place I can ever remember being.

At that moment, a distant, high-pitched whine begins outside. I turn my head towards it: the oilman has come to deliver heating oil, and in the thin winter air the sound of oil being transferred into the pipe at the side of the house is audible. From this moment ever after, I will connect that sound with warmth and hearth. Because this man is bringing us the heat that blessedly ticks out of the baseboards in these freezing months (coldest weather I've ever experienced, New York child that I am). But even more so, the oilman is bringing us something momentous, expensive. Oil costs have been all over the news this year--and yet my grandfather, my stable and loving grampy who patiently tallies finances at his desk, can afford to keep us warm. Just thinking of him triggers the sound of his desk drawer opening...I could sit and watch him at that desk all day. I adore his competent fatherliness. I hail from a single-parent household where, the previous year, I had repeatedly trudged to the unemployment office with my mom to collect checks. So being in this home is a massive gift to me: a sense of protection I did not quite realize I yearned for, until I heard the oilman outside.

Grampy puts on his jacket and hat, and goes out to the oilman. He knows him by first name, of course, in this microscopically small town. Out the side window of the house, I can see the puffs of steam that are emitted by their jovial conversation. They wear hats with flaps over the ears. Grampy hands the oilman a check in payment..glove passes it to glove. This is the year that I have become fascinated with business transactions: the peculiar green designs on checks, the orderly lines of invoices, the magic of carbon paper, the finality of rubber stamps. I play office all the time in my playroom.

Yes, in this house, I have a playroom all to myself. And on this morning, I am still excited to think of the Christmas presents that are stored there. Nana and Grampy seem to have read my mind...or at least they were watching closely while I read the 1972 Sears Wish Book. I got every Barbie gadget I could have wanted, including a few that I'd pined for secretly and never mentioned to them. Who would have ever imagined that I'd own a battery-operated Barbie kitchen, with a tumbling washer and dryer, a sink with a moveable faucet, a fridge and a stove that light up when you open their doors? And a mountain cabin with a bunk bed, so that Barbie and her friends could enjoy the winter, just like I've been doing for the first time in my life?

Still a couple of hours till lunch, I think. I will pull on my snow pants, which make that thick wish-wish noise when I walk stiffly in them. I'll find the scarf and mittens Nana knitted for me, and push my feet into heavily lined Canadian boots. And then, the olive-green parka...this year's fashionable must-have in Millinocket, Maine. I'm not kidding: it's the trendy item of choice at my grammar school. Conveniently, parkas are wicked warm and have massive hoods. Nana comes out from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. She reaches up and adds the finishing touch to my winter wear: tying the scarf around the hood, across my mouth. She tells me to keep warm and stay dry; it's twenty-below this morning. Soon my cheeks will sing in the cold, and I'll squint in the glare as I pull my orange plastic sled up McNamara's Hill. A perfect day for sledding.

I always wondered why I remembered this morning with such astonishing clarity. Now I get it: on that day, I understood that my decision to stay in a small town in Maine had changed my life forever...for the better. I was eight years old, and I needed to be there. And that sheltering place, those loving people have guided me invisibly ever since.