HH

Today is Herbert Howells's birthday. Somewhere back in about 1967, I acquired an Argo recording of the composer's music, and that was the beginning of everything. I wore record player grooves deep into the disc, particularly the Collegium Regale "Te Deum." (You can listen to the exact recording, complete with old-fashioned scratches, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScGeISIp4Fg.

Why does this piece, and all of HH's music, resonate? First of all, it is astonishingly beautiful. It is bittersweet, hard to sing, break-your-heart-even-more-than-it-already-is stunning. At eleven or twelve, I'd sit in my room, playing it (and recordings of Anglican chant) over and over until I memorized it. I played it in my Smith College room when my roommate wasn't around. I played it in my hippie décor Upper West Side New York apartment when those roommates weren't around. I play it still, as I did this morning in HH's honor. Part of the bittersweetness that left me in tears (by "Oh Lord, in Thee have I trusted, let me never be confounded") was, of course, the realization that as a woman I was unlikely ever to sing the piece. Although I don't remember whether I ever have sung the "Te Deum," I did on several occasions sing some of his other works at Royal Holloway and elsewhere, and it is profoundly satisfying that these opportunities are now more available to girls and women, particularly in the UK. And I eventually wrote two published articles about the composer.

I had this insight this morning that this piece of music has been, in effect, my touchstone for beauty. And by being that, it has been the touchstone for my whole life. Everything I genuinely love resonates at approximately the same beauty wavelength as this piece, and frankly, anything not on that wavelength, I find extremely challenging to walk through. (Most of my life has not, in fact, been remotely easy. Our contemporary social and economic "reality" was apparently not set in motion by a composer of HH's talents!) At this precarious and frankly frightening moment in history, it is sometimes hard to make a case for beauty: creating it, experiencing it, enjoying it, sharing it, appreciating it, whether in "manmade" or natural form. How can beauty possibly matter when our human rights are under threat, when our environment is eroding, when other people are being unspeakably cruel to fellow humans? 

Yet in recent days, I've come to understand that the beauty of my personal touchstone is my life. It is who I am. My "resistance" can only come in the form of fully embracing what I find beautiful, and creating even more beauty (written, musical or artistic). Life's trials may have made a post-Christian feminist of me, but the thread of HH's music remains my lifeline, my touchstone, and my joy. I don't know if he would be appalled, amused, or honored by that last sentence, but it matters not: I'm out in the sun now, and have the freedom to say it. 

Happy Birthday, Herbert Howells. 

My rabbit warren

Me being me, it would normally be my impulse, after several ultra-serious blog posts, to write rather lightheartedly today, just to be "nice" and not scare any readers off. Well, this doesn't seem to be that moment in history, does it? A small group of readers seems to stick with me no matter what, and I embrace all of you with warmth and appreciation. After three years, it still takes every ounce of courage to push "publish," but you help me to follow through.

So over the weekend, I was reeling from yet another slight, one of those subtle ones that I seem to specialize in that might have another explanation but which (after dozens and dozens over the years) hurts like crazy. I was trying to share a small success with an institution that I assumed would be interested, and it appears that they are not. This ties into a much longer story, of course; my life is a rabbit warren of longer stories that I have kept underground because I didn't want to get anyone in trouble, to make other people look bad. I was more willing to make myself look ridiculous and flighty, to burrow down and race in circles in the dark underground, than to speak openly and clearly out in the light. That impulse still hangs on for dear life, although the examples of dozens of brave women in the news are inspiring me to look at myself through a different lens.

Because of course, earlier in life, slights, rejections, condescension, erasure of any kind triggered enormous shame in me. Of course they rejected me, I was pathetic. I wasn't beautiful. I must not be qualified or interesting or worthy. With my skill set, I didn't deserve even to be visible or to take up room on the planet. The joy of 62, as I have noted in recent months, is waking up and almost overnight realizing how utterly absurd this is. I am beautiful, essentially good, outrageously intelligent and creative and musical and filled with every possible sort of inspiration. I am wise, observant, prophetic. I can walk into a room and almost immediately sense what is happening at a deep level and articulate that.

I finally realize that more than anything, it is that latter quality that has probably terrified some of the people and institutions I have interacted with over time. If they had reasons not to be "seen through," they knew instinctively to protect themselves from me because I literally saw them so clearly. Making me feel small worked -- until now. Making women generally feel small worked -- until now. As so many of us are turning ourselves inside out, bringing the content of those underground mole holes and rabbit warrens to the surface, the instinct to silence us may well grow even more. I cannot speak for others, but I know that I choose to persist, one step at a time, one day at a time. I am working on a self-portrait because it is the best way I can think of to say, "I choose now to be visible." To switch momentarily away from my usual water metaphors, I have crossed the threshold onto the topsoil. I am standing on Mother Earth, not burrowing through her, and I am beginning to feel the warmth of the sun directly on my face. 

Ruins

I know I rarely post on weekends, but the "spirit is moving me." 

Back when I was in my teens, I took a long daily school bus ride from Schenectady to the schools I attended (St. Agnes, 7th through 10th grade, and Albany Academy for Girls, 11th and 12th grades.) The bus wended its way around the two cities, but the longest stretch was down the Albany-Schenectady Road (Rt. 5). Even back then, and this is the late 1960's and early 1970's, this was an early version of what is now called a "strip." What undoubtedly at some point had been farmland (and before that, forest) was now block after block of gas stations, dry cleaners, clothing stores, insurance agencies, hair dressers, carwashes, etc., all the way from one city to the other. And this is before the era of endless fast food restaurants, although some early ones probably had cropped up by the seventies. Even in their own time, these unremarkable stores, all surrounded by paved parking lots, were, to me, an eyesore. I've never found any aspect of American suburbs to be beautiful, and the commercial strips are the worst, spreading, as they do, to any available vacant patch of land. Because I never understood the profit incentive, the urge to spread more and more retail establishments on people's path seems bizarre. Recent forays down Rt. 5 have felt particularly post-apocalyptic to me. Some of the original stores remain, with hopelessly outdated original signage, cheek-by-jowl with many more modern fast food places. My 20's era elementary school is still there, but boarded up and abandoned. One reason (of many) that I couldn't stay any longer in that area of the world is that it already feels to me like ruins. 

Watching the aerial coverage of this hurricane was heartbreaking because it shows a slice of land that was similarly covered by sprawling development, literally in ruins. Mile after mile of homes, trailers, shops, malls, schools, restaurants, entirely flattened. These people are living a potential future for any or all of us; with no electricity, there can be no banking, pumping of gas, communications, food storage, control of waste, you name it. What will personal property lines mean when the landscape has re-formed, when you cannot even see the ground, and trees have been uprooted? What will it matter that you are on important, life-saving medications if pharmacies are closed? What will it matter that you have a job if it isn't there any more? It is almost too much to take in, yet I think we must start to recognize that it is a current and growing reality. I utterly feel for everyone down there and for the shocking U-turn their lives have made, but even more so for the health of the natural environment as tons and tons of unleashed toxic materials make their way into the oceans, rivers, and topsoil. In our exuberance, in our push to own and profit and "grow," we certainly didn't think ahead.

What is so out of kilter hasn't been the urge to create and innovate. Many of the fruits of this creativity have been extraordinary. But it is the fact that this impulse didn't recognize the necessity of working with nature, with purveyors of beauty, with women's priorities -- that is why we are at such a momentous impasse. Once again, I've heard people talk about restoring power, re-building, getting things back to the way they were, and yet I just don't think this is really the life lesson of this experience. The way things have been has not been sustainable. That is the whole point. 

Collage

To refer back to my last post, I have not started a sculpture, but I have started to work on a collage -- a self-portrait collage. No, this is not a creative visualization collage with pictures of beautiful homes and beaches and the ideal boyfriend. And it's not going to be surrealist. My whole life has been surreal, so I can't go there. No, this will be relatively realistic. I'm going to try to do what I have done more successfully in oil painting and drawing, which will be to create three dimensions through shading. My skin will be made up of little snippets of color magazine photographs shaded to look from a distance like paint. The background will feature images that have some reference to my life so far. I even found a photograph of Manhattan from the air, and was able to cut out my old neighborhood on the Upper West Side. What's great about collage is the serendipity of finding images and textures that you don't expect and couldn't ever have planned ahead for. I don't know if this will all "work" but all I can do is try. I was pleased with the preliminary sketch that I did. I am pleased that I can still do art.

Yesterday was a powerful day all around. The devastation of the hurricane, the drop on Wall Street. The western shores of Lake Superior were pummeled with wind and ocean-sized waves. It was not a good day to be a manmade structure on the water's edge. I may have been up the hill, but I could feel the battering within me. 

I think I have said this before, so forgive any repetition. I don't like hearing references to "Mother Nature's Wrath." I cannot speak for Mother Nature. She may well be angry. (I've just started Rebecca Traister's Good and Mad and it's helping me put my own anger into a larger historical context.) But our human understanding is so limited, and this terminology can play too easily into an "us against nature" or a "she is ruining all our plans" mind frame. She isn't. We are part of nature. Earth is part of us. We are all one. Yes, she is scrambling desperately to restore the kind of balance that makes our life on this planet possible. We can work with her, be part of her, and help her restore that balance respectfully, or not. 

The Statue that is Me

Yet again, a woman risks all to come forward to articulate her truth, and yet again, the world rolls on as if nothing had happened. If this hadn't been my whole life story, I might be able to just roll on, myself, but it has been my life story, just in different arenas. Am I angry? Of course. But that's the point, I've been tired and angry and depressed and frustrated and confused by it all for a lifetime. Most of this has been in reference to people outside myself, people who have chosen (or have no choice but) to be cruel or violent or dismissive or fear-filled. I've tried to understand, to facilitate, to provide a positive model, to take the high road, to make sense of things, to study the history, you name it. I've stayed on the margins of life because I couldn't bear the heartless energy of our institutions, yet I still lent it all validity by agreeing that it was "reality" and giving it much of my focus. So much of my life energy has gone to the statue that is them, and so little to the statue that is me.

As I try to understand a world beyond dualities, I guess today all I can do is try to get beyond "versus." "And" is the word of the day. Yes, I acknowledge that there appear to be two very different perspectives on the world, that they both exist and are at odds. Today, rather than focus on the statue that is them or fight that statue, I acknowledge that their statue exists, but commit to the statue that is "me." I'm removing the veiling that has covered this statuesque creation, and the tape over my mouth. I am knitting the pieces back together, and forming or re-forming the beautiful, powerful body of this work of art. I commit to creating beauty, harmony, and a sense of peace around me. It's not about ignoring that other, already-crumbling statue. It is about knowing with certainty that it is crumbling because of its very nature, and that the best thing to do now is focus on the positive qualities that have some chance of helping earth and its people to survive into the future.

Knitting

The other day, I bought some yarn and have started knitting a scarf. I am your basic knit-and-purl knitter, slow and steady. If I have to do any major counting or figuring out of designs, "fuggettaboutit." So far, I've only gotten about five inches into the project, as I am only knitting when the nightly news is on TV. I cannot bear to watch it, so if I focus on the stitches, I can at least keep track audibly of what is going on in this absolutely crazy world.

"Knitting" can be added to my growing list of metaphors, a good one for now. I have sloughed off so much, and what hasn't been shed has been blown rather to bits from outside. Here I am, by the shores of Lake Superior, trying to knit remaining strands back together. It is involving a lot of decisions and energetic matches and mismatches, things that I thought would work out but are not, people who I thought I would immediately connect with but haven't. The lake remains a beloved constant. I am here, now. But is it "home"? "We shall see," as my mother used to say. A lot of until-now-not-fully-understood aspects of the topic of "home" are coming into focus, for future blogs. Plus, there's the old problem here that there isn't a C of E cathedral on the horizon. I still have to rely on photographs of Gloucester, Wells, Lincoln, Salisbury, Ely, etc. online. 

A violent near-tornadic wind hit last night, and I was further chilled to the core to read a public quote by Dr. Blasey Ford's father. It sounded so cold, so familiar, so arm's length, the words I felt being "we know who she is, but we no longer embrace her." I doubt that she reads my blog, but wherever she is, I hope she knows that many of us embrace her. 

I have seen a lot of women knitting recently (at the bus station, in church, etc.) or walking out of craft stores with bags of wool. A whole lot of knitting going on. A whole lot of women knitting their shattered lives back together. 

Floodgates, Two

I had no idea, when I wrote Thursday's blog "Floodgates" early in the morning, that the word would take on even more resonance as the day wore on. The few days since then have shaken the country, as traumas have been remembered, shame has surfaced or re-surfaced, and hard conversations could no longer be put off. It is like hands across a million mouths and forearms across a million windpipes, whether real or metaphorical, are being peeled off. The assumption of silence, long teetering on the edge, may finally be a thing of the past. 

How much of our construct has been based on the silence of women, children, so-called minorities (no one should be called "minor"), and Mother Earth ("Heck, let's extract every last natural resource from her body. She isn't saying anything.") What happens to all our institutions when the silent begin to open their mouths?

I listened to Dr. Ford's opening statement, then I turned the TV off. I personally could not bear to hear her questioned or challenged. She spoke her truth, and did the best she could, courageously. In the wake of everything I have been trying to make sense of in my own life, that was all I could take in, on Thursday anyway.

This is a most extraordinary time.