Butterfly / Transformation and Hope / Listening to the music of Ray Downey

Ray Downey lived a full life as a musician here in Bellingham until his death in 2014 and now there is a memorial music library website where his music can be heard.  I found a video showing him playing with Yambique in 2008.  He played with numerous bands throughout his life as well as a symphony orchestra.  He's the one with the pink and pale purple shirt.

The website says, "To request sheet music for an upcoming performance, please contact us

""... And one good thing about our culture, we don't die ..."

Not alone with the sorrow of war / One of multitudes experiencing the pre-dawn darkness / Listening to the first lasting rain in weeks in a time of severe drought and wildfires / August 27, 2021

With gratitude to and for Charlie Watts, the heartbeat of the Rolling Stones (1941-2021) / Love

More of one thing leading to another / "Something nameless which is beyond language because it's instinctive and then you can't do it."

 

Listening further. (from 4:00 to 22:12)

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Transcribed by am from the interview:

"I am someone who doesn't have faith in terms of religious faith but before I woke up out of my coma, I had the most extraordinary experience.  I mean, to make it easier to sort of explain because I can't really explain but I know, absolutely, that at that point I was given a choice, "This way it's going to be very hard.  Are you sure you want to go this way?  Or go this one, it's going to be very easy and it's all going to be fine" and I don't want it to sound like some people might, like, choose not to live and, like, I don't know [am's note:  The interviewer interrupts Clemmie's train of thought here] and it's going to be hard but it's your choice and the amazing thing was that I was given that choice."

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Reminded of this:

Love Itself
The light came through the window Straight from the sun above And so inside my little room There plunged the rays of love In streams of light I clearly saw The dust you seldom see Out of which the nameless makes A name for one like me I'll try to say a little more Love went on and on Until it reached an open door Then love itself, love itself was gone All busy in the sunlight The flecks did float and dance And I was tumbled up with them In formless circumstance I'll try to say a little more Love went on and on Until it reached an open door Then love itself, love itself was gone Then I came back from where I'd been My room, it looked the same But there was nothing left between The nameless and the name All busy in the sunlight The flecks did float and dance And I was tumbled up with them In formless circumstance I'll try to say a little more Oh love went on and on Until it reached an open door Then love itself, love itself was gone Love itself, love itself was gone

-- Leonard Cohen (from "Ten New Songs," released October 9, 2001)

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Then I listened to what the only nephew of one of my oldest friends and the only child of one of my newest friends had to say about what inspired him to become a musician and listened to him play the piece by Bach that made all the difference in his life:

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Then I remembered:

Unbeknownst to me because we had been out of touch since August 2002, my R had a brainstem stroke in September 2007 and was in a coma for two weeks in a VA hospital in Northern California.  When he came out of the coma, he was unable to speak or feed himself or walk.  He was blind in his right eye which looked like a beautiful clear blue sky with a few white clouds.  

Something, inexplicably, prompted me to send a Christmas card to one of his two younger sisters that December.  She replied with a note letting me know about his stroke, saying that she had had no way to get in touch with me, and suggested that I call the VA Hospital because, she wrote, "He would love to hear your voice." My attempts to do that weren't successful.  I decided to write to him.  That was the key.  Although he couldn't speak, he was able to read and to write but with great difficulty.  He wrote down what he wanted to say, and a compassionate nurse wrote down what she thought he was trying to say and had him sign it.  Next to what he wrote he drew a rose.  He could draw better than he could write.  How grateful I am to that nurse who took the time to write that letter for him and mail it to me!

After listening to Clemency Burton-Hill, I am absolutely certain that my R was given a choice to live long enough so that I could be with him in the last days of his life, let him know I love him and say goodbye.  He went back into a coma after I said goodbye and died a week later.

Now I am in tears.  Grateful to my R.  Grateful to Clemmie.  Grateful to be alive.  Taking nothing for granted.  

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Mother and sons in displaced persons camp in Kabul.

Escuche (I listened)

 All over the world

Thanks to Maria Popova

the process of learning Spanish before I die is a joy beyond my wildest dreams / the friendship of George Harrison and Bob Dylan

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"Harrison was a lifelong fan of Bob Dylan's music."

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"Musical legend Bob Dylan joined those who mourned Harrison's passing calling him "a giant, a great, great soul, with all of the humanity, all of the wit and humor, all the wisdom, the spirituality, the common sense of a man and compassion for people.

He inspired love and had the strength of a hundred men," Dylan continued in his statement. "He was like the sun, the flowers and the moon, and we will miss him enormously. The world is a profoundly emptier place without him."

"Rivers and Roads" Revisited / 'til I reach you

A year from now we'll all be gone
All our friends will move away
And they're goin' to better places
But our friends will be gone away

Nothin' is as it has been
And I miss your face like hell
And I guess it's just as well
But I miss your face like hell

Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh
Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh

Been talkin' 'bout the way things change
And my family lives in a different state
If you don't know what to make of this
Then we will not relate
So if you don't know what to make of this
Then we will not relate

Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh
Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh
Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh
Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh

Rivers and roads
Rivers and roads
Rivers till I reach you

Rivers and roads
Oh rivers and roads
Oh rivers till I reach you

Rivers and roads (Ooh)
Rivers and roads
Rivers till I reach you

Rivers and roads (Ooh)
Rivers and roads
Rivers till I reach you

Rivers and roads (Ooh)
Rivers and roads
Rivers till I reach you

Rivers and roads (Ooh)
Rivers and roads
Rivers till I reach you

Rivers and roads (Ooh)
Rivers and roads
Rivers till I reach you

Rivers and roads (Ooh)
Rivers and roads
Rivers till I reach you

Rivers and roads (Ooh)
Rivers and roads
Rivers till I reach you

(Released in April 2011 by The Head and the Heart)

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This song, sacred to me, was brought to my attention indirectly by my only nephew whom I haven't seen since he was 10 years old in 2003.  Due to an apparently irreconcilable family estrangement, it now seems unlikely that I will ever see him again.  This song touches me on so many levels of life experience.  At my age, those of us who are here this year may or may not be here next year, but this song gives me the vision of being able to reach each other again in some mysterious way.  To reach the ancestors.  To reach those still to be born.

Déjà vu / Already seen / The sorrow of war

"To be is to do" / Meditation with beloved rain falling once again / True love

Doo-bee-doo-bee-doo Doo-doo-dee-dah Dah-dah-dah-dah-dah, ya-ya-ya

I find out with a little googling that Frank Sinatra hated this song from 1966 that is loved by so many.  In 1966, I was listening to Bob Dylan and had no inclination to listen to anything that Frank Sinatra sang.  Paradoxically, Bob Dylan was listening to Frank Sinatra and in recent years has recorded three Frank Sinatra cover albums, without ever covering "Strangers in the Night."  The only Frank Sinatra song that Bob Dylan covered that truly spoke to me was this one from 1949, the year I was born.  Could I have heard it on the radio as a baby?

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I remember my early days living in Washington State in the mid-1970s when there was little I yearned for more than to return to Northern California.  There was nothing I liked about Washington State, except the rain.  Since then I have grown to love Washington State, both the cool damp western part of the state and the eastern part of the state, to the east of the Cascade Mountain Range.  Eastern Washington is much much colder in the winter and hotter in the summer.  It's a different landscape, a different world, in all ways.  Although I don't love Washington State in the same way that I love Northern California, Washington State is one of my true loves nonetheless.

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"And it has to do with a tree, a singular one, not like these careening and cascading trees all around me here, but one tree that prised open the shell of me, led me out of the enclosing maze, the impasse of the heart, and showed me, yes, I could breathe again, and find love within me, and find that -- which can touch our hearts -- isn't only a person, it can be -- anything really, a sunlit mountain slope, a tree -- it isn't out there that we find love, though it can be some 'out there' being that slides back the shutters and we find the whole landscape of love is within us ..."

(p. 103, Bouyancy of the Craft, by Morelle Smith, who blogs from Scotland and to whom I am deeply grateful for her novel celebrating the life of Annemarie Schwarzenbach)

The recent smoke is slowly lifting / So happy just to be alive

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PM2.5

x1

PM2.5 concentration in Bellingham air is currently 1 times above WHO exposure recommendation

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This morning the sky had cleared enough for me to have my first glimpse of Orion above the mountain to the east.  I look forward to the turning point every year when Orion appears again. There is still smoke in the sky above 3044-foot Stewart mountain which is about 7 miles east of here, but most of the sky has returned to a reassuring blue.  Our astounding faithful sky is at work, clearing itself of smoke.  I don't take this for granted and feel immense gratitude and love for the endlessness that we look out into, beginning with our sky, which reminds me of :

George Harrison realizing something endless within:

"... Try to realize it's all within yourself, no one else can make you change, and to see you're only very small and life flows on within you and without you ..." 

"... I keep traveling around the bend
There was no beginning, there is no end
It wasn't born and never dies
There are no edges, there is no size
Oh yeah, you just don't win
It's so far out - the way out is in ..."

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"... So happy just to be alive on this new morning ..."  (Bob Dylan)

"... you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone ..."

Sitting inside with the air cleaner on, along with an air conditioner, what came to mind was Joni Mitchell's song that I first heard in April 1970 when I was 20 years old.  Turning to YouTube, I found this cover that I love, posted in the last few days.  

The unhealthy air due to fires is teaching me to appreciate being able to go outside and breathe fresh air -- one of the simple joys of life that is not available for the time being.

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!

PM2.5

x3

PM2.5 concentration in Bellingham air is currently 3 times above WHO exposure recommendation.

This is an improvement from yesterday's 9 times above but fire season is not over and continues to jeopardize the health of countless sentient beings throughout the world.

It is occurring to me that when I left the San Francisco Bay Area late in the summer of 1973, there were days when the air quality was not all that different from what I am experiencing today.  In those days, the source of the pollution was not smoke from fires.  Much of the air pollution from 1974 is gone from the west coast of the United States, but now we are dealing with a form of unhealthy air that is beyond control and is world-wide, affecting environments where other forms of compromised air are minimal or non-existent.

Living in a world where smoke-free air cannot be promised is sobering, to say the least.  So much that can no longer be taken for granted.  

Is it ever a good idea to take something or anything for granted?  

60 years after / 15,000 years later / Time out of mind / Who knows?

Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)

The ice is quickly melting,

A vision for 15,000 years later:

It's been a long hot summer together / The ice is quickly melting / Together seeking a return to balance (perseverance furthers)

 

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Remembering my father and the gift he gave me in 1982 / An unexpected reunion

This early morning I was moved to tears, suddenly aware as I had never been before, of the thoughtfulness of my father in planning a trip to New York City and Washington, D.C., after I graduated from Western Washington University with a degree in English Literature and Studio Art in 1982. 

In 1984, my father had a massive stroke which resulted in a dramatic personality change.  Previous to that he had never shown or expressed how he felt -- a man of few words.  After his stroke, he cried easily and said things that were honest but insensitive and deeply hurtful.  

After my mother died in 1994, my relationship with my father was extraordinarily painful.  Because I  am the oldest of three sisters, it was determined by his siblings that he would come to live here in Bellingham and that I would be the one responsible for looking out for him.  I had no idea how difficult and emotionally painful the next 9 years would be.  My sense of failure as a daughter and human being was devastating.

It is occurring to me now that it was not easy for him either.

In 1982,  I was still suffering from bulimia and in an unhappy marriage, still 2 years away from leaving that marriage and 5 years away from lasting eating disorder recovery, still like my father prior to his stroke -- unable to show or express myself honestly, feeling like a victim, and suffering in a way that was not clearly visible to most people but which was eating me alive from the inside.

Fortunately, I didn't have to experience a stroke to come to a point where I could begin to show and express my true feelings.  1987 was only a bare beginning.  I cried and cried, beginning in 1987.  I was suddenly in touch with anger toward my parents and pushed them away.  They were surprised and hurt.  I didn't care, anymore than a toddler would care.

It has occurred to me that in some odd way, my emotional development had stopped when I became a toddler and dared to say "NO!" and began to be beaten and shamed.  I remember being a toddler.  In order to try to avoid being beaten and shamed, I learned to never say "No" and to try with all my tiny might to please them so that they wouldn't hit or shame me.  Because my attempts were futile, I began to comfort myself with food.  I learned that my tiny self was unacceptable to them and determined that not being myself was the key to survival.

Now I can see that neither of my parents felt safe being who they were, and I can see the pain that caused them throughout their lives.  It occurs to me that this pattern is intergenerational.  I come from people who did not feel safe in the world, even in their own families.  

This morning I am grateful for whatever it was in 1984 that gave me the courage to leave my marriage and whatever it was in 1987 that turned the tide for me so that I became free of bulimia and binging on food for relief of what I now see as intergenerational trauma.  My parents were never free to be themselves in the way I am today.  This has not been an easy road.  I am not completely free but have come a long way.

When I started writing this post, I thought that I had little to say.  Much has been revealed to me this morning.

Becoming my true self is an ongoing process, possibly never-ending.

I do remember the exhilarating feeling I had in New York City in 1982, of getting in touch with what I saw as a mysterious untapped "wild part of me" that would lead to the healing I took birth for, that would eventually lead to renewed contact with my creative spirit. 

The excruciating years between 1994 and 2003 were a replay of my childhood.  I regressed emotionally to that toddler who didn't dare to be herself but this time I wasn't turning to food for relief.  I  experienced all the painful feelings that were unbearable to a tiny child.

Today I am seeing, for the first time, the positive and crucial part my father played in my healing when he gave me the gift of that journey to New York City and Washington, D.C., in 1982, where I was reunited with the wild and free child within me.

¡Musica! / Harp, Flute, Viola / August 8, 2021

 

Rachel Ferris, harp

Mark Teplitsky, flute

Matthew Cohen, viola  

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Program:

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Carl Nielsen - The Fog is Lifting for flute and harp

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Jacques Ibert - Two Interludes for Flute, Viola, and Harp (arr. Andrew Lipke) 

     I. Andante Espressivo 

     II. Allegro vivo 

 

Maurice Ravel - Sonatine for Flute, Viola and Harp (arr. Kanga) 

     I. Modéré 

     II. Mouvement de menuet 

     III. Animé 

 

INTERMISSION

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François Devienne - Duo for Flute and Viola in C minor, Op. 5 

     I. Allegro Molto con Espressione 

     II. Rondo-Majeur 

 

George Gershwin - St. Louis Blues Rhapsody for flute and viola

 

Arnold Bax - Elegiac Trio for flute, viola and harp

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Claude Debussy - Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp 

     I. Pastorale 

     II. Interlude 

     III. Finale 

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The young man playing the viola is the son of a dear friend who is the sister of one of my oldest and dearest friends who played the accordion as a child; the ukulele, the autoharp, and the guitar as a teenager; and later the flute and the piano, and finally the viola de gamba.  She died in 2019.  She was so proud of him from the beginning when he showed early promise as a musician, and all those years ago she sent me a recording of a performance he did for her when he was a little boy learning to play the viola.