Life in Postcards

I wonder if your memories store in post cards too? Let me explain…looking back seems to me there are a handful of key moments when bits of life wisdom have been delivered to me in phrases, usually seared into memory with a postcard like image of the very moment the phrase was spoken. More often than not, I did not fully understand or appreciate the phrase but my gut knew enough to store it. Over time some have fallen away but many, scrapbook like, linger. Here are a few of them…

I was with my mother, seated in her dressing room both of us half dressed, preparing for a wedding. Mine. I asked her what to do when the hurdles came? She got uncustomarily still. Then, even more so. She looked to the floor as if to pull wisdom up through the floor boards. Speaking from the experience of having lived it, she said Well honey, when the hurdles come…keep hurdling. She did just that all her life. I don’t recall one incidence in which she gave up. Until cancer got hold of her and even then, she embraced the adventure of dying with gusto. Not to say she always got what she wanted but she’d fight for it then adjust as needed and plough ever forward. It served her well and when the hurdles come, I hurdle as best I can.

Name dropping but I’m privileged to have called the great Rosemary Clooney a friend. She hosted annual and epic, open house Christmas Eve parties at her Roxbury house. It was a grand tradition to which all in her and her children’s village were welcomed and we all came in droves. By the time I had arrived at that particular holiday season, my life had fallen apart. Divorce, a very young son to create a happy childhood for, finances securely in an ever-flushing toilet. I could go on but you get the picture.

It was Christmas though and by golly I was going to be merry, if for no other reason than for my precious little boy. On went the red lipstick, the holiday garb and a smile. After church we went round the corner to Rosie’s. Her home was customarily filled with multiple generations of merriment, camaraderie, and an endless buffet. I was doing well, or so I thought, until I passed by Rosie who was seated in her well-worn and comfy sitting room chair. She grabbed my hand, looked through me and said, Keep singing baby, the music will never let you down. She lodged those words somewhere in the marrow of my bones…but what did they mean?

Decades now since she issued that directive and over the last few years I’ve begun to understand. First of all, she had a hard life. If you’ve not read it, pick up her autobiography Girl Singer and you’ll see what I mean. Those are words she lived by. Time and again she went back to her singing and it indeed never let her down. Lucky us. So, she was speaking from experience, sharing what had emphatically worked for her. Music has its own infectious momentum. Its physicality of breath alone lifts the spirit. It delivers challenges and in meeting them you experience small victories and wonders which in turn cultivate courage and joy. At this point too I whole heartedly believe that being involved, literally, with harmony…our cells are realigned to a, dare I say THE life giving and beneficent force. It is for instance impossible to scat and be sad. Try it. So..singing, I think, creates new possibilities, new avenues in life. It has for me.

I worked for several summers at Williamstown Theatre Festival. It was a very wonderful place to be. They had a spectacular Apprentice Program for all the theatre disciplines, one of which was stage management. This particular year the production I was involved with was assigned. From the program, an assistant stage manager by the name of Lily.

Lily was older than the rest of the apprentices and a recent immigrant from China starting her life anew in America, building a resume. Her father had been Artistic Director of the Beijing Theatre, her mother the lead actress there. Because the Sino-Soviet relationship had been in full bloom through the late 20^th, early 21^st century the two nations had enjoyed a robust cultural exchange…hence Stanislavski’s method was well entrenched right from the souce in the methodology of her parents’ artistry. In other words, Lily had absorbed into her DNA more about so called modern acting than any of us could ever hope to.

At the onset of China’s Cultural Revolution, her father had been put into a closet in his own theatre for two years in solitary confinement and her mother was sent to suffer hard manual labour in a factory in the hinterlands. (Some years after this I happened to be attending a rehearsal in the Beijing Theatre building and actually saw the closet in which Lily’s father had been imprisoned. It was very small.)

Lily and twelve of her friends managed to escape a similar fate by walking to outer Mongolia and scraping out a living in the high plains there for thirteen years. At the end of the revolution, they walked back. There she had met some kindly American do good-ers who recognized her brilliance, saw to it that she learned English and brought her to America where she had made her way to being with us.

Our play was a distinctly American piece and involved many props all of which fell to Lily to root out. How would anybody of her background know what a pez holder, or Budweiser, or pack of camels were? She fearlessly set out to find them and when she came back with her version of this collection our…have to say it…idiot Stage Manager raked her, publicly, over the coals. We were mortified. Lily took the verbal punches with no reaction whatsoever. We were stunned by her grace. She also in short order correctly sourced all the needed props.

Sitting on the grass together the next day, I asked her how she had managed to meet that awful moment with such poise? She laughed and said, When I was in outer Mongolia in the freezing winters working as a shepherd, I learned that if I stooped very low to the ground and looked up, I could see the stars more clearly.

A dear dancer pal of mine, has achieved eight decades. Movement has always been the central and informative universe of his journey. He has also had, however, a gift for translating his findings into words in much the same way a brilliant scientist every now and then can put enormously complex concepts into laymen’s terms. We were sitting at his kitchen table one morning, I was blathering on about some sourpuss feeling or other, complaining that I couldn’t get ‘unstuck.’ All I could see was the dead end of whatever it was. No light, no air. Change the energy, he suddenly said. Brilliant! He didn’t fall down the rabbit hole with me of trying to solve whatever the dilemma was. He unstuck me, broke the mesmerism of the moment by admonishing me to be something, anything but what I was. I was free to get a glass of water, not mentally repeat the error, take a walk, look at the sky, breathe and above all, be free to shift my perspective. Magic.

I started a not for profit a number of years ago in Colorado. I had two partners, one of whom turned out to be a con artist. Silly me…I had not done my research. I liked her, I believed her. The effort lasted 7 years then folded as a result. Long story not worth telling. Along the way though, as you might imagine, there were some incredibly uncomfortable discussions borne of revelations, ultimately revelations that needed to come to light in board meetings. Heading into the first of these I was in a state of knee knocking overwhelm. I was at a loss of where to begin, of how not to get lost in the awful weeds of it all, how not to get swallowed up in the betrayal. A fellow board member, in whom I had confided, took me aside just before the meeting, and in the hallway outside took my hands and said the perfect words. Keep it simple. It was the ideal directive to stick to the facts, to not get tossed by the roiling emotions of it and oh boy have I used that time and again. In far less stressful situations, I’ll hasten to add…but it has proved a very useful and very quick reset button, a profoundly restorative provision for a rational path forward.

There are more but for today I’ll, well…keep it simple, keep on hurdling and singing and change the energy and look up at the stars.

AFTER THEY ARE GONE

I felt my Mom beside me today. There she was…her presence, love and support right beside me as I walked down the gangway to board my plane. She died 16 years ago and yet there she was. Sudden tears, hot with longing and gratitude, puddled in my eyes. I don’t know what those moments are…visitations? The continuing journey of grief? Both? I’ll try to unpack this to get to the source or cause…here goes….

Last night I got to do a concert in NY with my most favourite musicians in the world. Top drawer and well over a decade’s worth of making music together…not nearly often enough but a privilege for me every time we are together. So, there’s music…the spiritual discipline of it, the beauty, the literal and metaphoric harmony. The physicality, the vibrations. Also, as it was a new show, the pressure and focus of it…the aspiration that it will work, that I won’t fuck up and that the lyrics I inadvertently make up when I do fuck up, make sense. The joyful process and exertion of prepping for a show is also a kind of hurdle. Mom liked to say, “When the hurdles come, keep hurdling.” Words to live by and boy, did she. All to say…for atleast two days leading up to a gig like that I’m living in an altered state…half in the world, half in rehearsal. The sensation is what I imagine it would feel like to be stuffed into a canon. The launch of this new show went well last night I’m thrilled to report and the ensuing wash of relief and gratitude moved me to another kind of altered state…of breathing again. Early out this morning on 4 hours sleep…so exhaustion perhaps lets one’s guard down whilst in that state of re-entering “normal” life.

Walking down the gangway, suspended mid air between last night and the day ahead, I felt her. I felt the seeds of art she had taught me when she would move back the living room furniture, crank up the stereo and we would dance together, spinning in delight, my beautiful Mother and five year old me. When she had set up a rehearsal space for me again in the living room before I was to sing at ten years old at the Tokyo American Club. It mattered. The message from her to me was that I mattered. I felt that all the calls she had made to make it possible for me to have childhood opportunities to perform serially under the auspices of a professional theatrical company, Toho, in Tokyo where I was raised…calls and effort that had created an apprenticeship throughout my childhood that in turn had led to the my being able to hurdle without falling last night. I wanted and want to tell her, to thank her, to let her know that now at 70 I am reaping the benefits of her gifts as a Mother, my mother. Did I conjure her? Was she there hearing me? I pray so.

Two other times of late, I’ve had a moment. She is gone now but years ago my long-term pal Heather and I had for over a decade shared a dream to again live in NY and, eventually, for a few years we did. Sometimes together and then in our own flats. It was heaven. We had big girl playdates galore in the city…taking in plays, exhibits and concerts, walking through the fairyland of snow blizzards down the middle of Fifth Avenue, staying up late, sharing friends and life overlaps. It was rich and meaningful and its own special miracle. As I came out of my NYC hotel last week a blast of air whooshed by me and suddenly it was as if Heather was on my arm again, walking the way we would together. Tangible joy. She had a cluster of very close friends and each has reported over the years similar “Heather moments”. Does she fly by or is it just that our love for her, cut short by an early death ran so deep that it continues to find ways to express itself?

This last…well, you decide. My partner Patrick and I had the distinct privilege of having been introduced to the remarkable Irish scholar, Manchan Magan. He was an angel on the earth who led a unique life… travelled the world as a seeker living variously in Himalayan huts, with cave dwellers in Thailand, with a plethora of native tribes throughout the Americas…always finding connections in language back to his native Gaelic. His ideas were vibrant and overflowing with joy. He recounted tales at some point of being so happy at age three to sit in his familial garden, talking to the grass in kinship…rejoicing that he too was sustained by a harmonious source. Tragically this magical, Gaelic scholar…suffered a horrid and aggressive cancer and died, with so much more to give, at 55. Damn. A few days before he passed, he kindly wrote thanking me for being a “supporter and guardian.” That word “guardian” lingered in my mind and I wondered what it meant? What was the task he had set me to?

Ten days after he died, I bolted awake at 4am with Manchan prominently in mind. “Why?”, I wondered but then his word “Guardian” fueled a desire to pray for him. And so I did, for his continued journey and purpose…along those lines, to the best of my ability. After a while, things calmed and some funny sounding words came to me …Gaelic, I presumed. Feeling I would not remember them come morning, I asked Chat GPT what they or words sounding like them, meant in Gaelic? The response was, “May you be well. Goodbye, little one.” Then the voice continued in English…”Live in the Knowing. I am living in the Knowing.”

Whose to say? All I know is that these moments organically fold into a continuum of memories. If indeed these are visitations, I pray that once I’m on the other side, my soul can visit and impart some comforting presence just as I have been, imagined or otherwise, companioned by people I have known and loved and will always love. Wouldn’t that be fun! Atleast I promise I’ll try.

Virginia Calling

My dog got hit by a car a few years back. She survived, mercifully with only a broken leg to show for the misadventure but it meant that rather than fly home to Colorado from the east coast, we would need to drive. I had the time, it was summer…so, off we set. Our route took us through the stunning, ancient hills of Virginia and West Virginia, land of my matriarchal ancestors. Looking at those vistas, I remember some internal switch being involuntarily flipped that cued a calling to return to those roots. Who knows why? Over the course of my life, I had only been in those parts for a handful of scattered weeks but then again, I had grown up under my Mother’s roof and for as much as her life had evolved beyond West Virginia, there was a part of her that always remained deeply grounded in those sensibilities. She could as easily wear an haute couture, gold lamé gown dripping in jewels as she could smack the shit out of an errant rattler in the backyard with the flat side of a shovel.

Recently, when an offer came in to do a movie in Virginia, I jumped at the chance to return. So here I have been this last summer week, in these unfamiliar, familiar parts. As that flipped switch had harbingered, I have been having some kind of serious series of woo woo moments since arriving. For one thing, the vegetation is much of what Mom had duplicated in my sister’s and my Tokyo childhood gardens …gardenias, camellias, lilacs, azaleas…all of which are in bloom now. Childhood aromas abound. The decor in the house the film company has me staying in, as well as the residence in which we’ve been filming, eerily repeat choices of Mom’s/my guess is my grandmother Mamaw’s, as well. Silver trays, tassels on knobs, worn tapestry carpets, silver candle sticks, sea shell and drift wood collections, wicker backed chairs, etched glass bowls, cut crystal vases, arrangements of dried pussy willow stems and peacock feathers. Shades variously of blue gray, taupes and muted coral on the walls and linen, lots of monogrammed linen. These are each elements of décor I have adopted into my own homes but had heretofore never particularly identified them as hand me down influences from my matriarchs. Then…oddly…there are Asian accents as well. Massive peony patterned porcelain jars. Blue and white rice jars. The Asia connection continues as my driver, in this teeny tiny Virginia hamlet is of all things, Japanese. So random…then again not? The Spirits are working some kind of wicked pull to my past and to my ancestors and I’d be lying to say I am not a little comforted by it all. Speaks somehow to the quantum interconnectedness between past present and future… All as being one.

Inevitably somewhere in the day this reverie gets interrupted by yet another punch from the news. You know, those government, blow up punches. The eradication and/or defunding of the EPA, Department of Education, NIH, PBS, NPR, vaccine and cancer research, USAID, etc… Tragically, the list goes on. My sense of identity as an American, cracks anew. I mean what does it mean to be an American anymore? We certainly do not stand today for any of the values my generation was raised to emulate. The path ahead as citizen again becomes fraught, unstable. Thus frozen but in the newfound comfort of Virginia, I turn willingly, to the past. As if to reassure myself that because I, we, have a past we indeed do have a future.

In an attempt to re-root in the vanishing America I love, I’ve taken to wading through the Constitution and have found solace. It spells out clear directives and duties of each branch of government, displays evolving humanity, compassion, lawful procedure, separation of powers, separation of church and state. Thus re-rooted, when yet another flagrant action of total disregard for our Constitution is perpetrated, it is easier to undo my ingrained trust of government, call out the wrong, reset the trajectory if only mentally and realign with my, with our ancestors’ wisdom. I breathe in the Virginia aromas anew and listen for life cues. Whilst I wait…I imagine I feel or perhaps even feel an embrace from the past encouraging me and all of us onwards.