The Blizzard

I woke in Nashville this morning at 6:00am, hit snooze once, untangled my bare legs from the down and the cotton, turned the bedside radio on to NPR, stumbled down the hall to the kitchen to the coffeepot to hit "on", having prepared it last night, shoved my sleeping body into the shower, and, coffee made and in hand, triple checked that everything was off and opened the door to the 35 degree chill, and the peach sun streaks over East Nashville, the bat-eared building rising from the end of my street across the river like a beacon.

And the light burned inside, shining down through the snowfall
God it was cold and the temperature droppin',
Went in for coffee and shivered as I drank it,
Warm in my hands in the steam as it rose.

Luggage had been carefully packed last night and placed next to the door. I am nothing if I'm not organized. As my life has turned into a revolving series of the transfer of garments from bag to laundry to bag to laundry, I now keep lists. I am obsessed with luggage. I am obsessed with having the One Perfect Thing to make the tour more pleasant, whether its my well-worn Patagonia 'down sweater' jacket with the silver tape holding the down in the little hole I made when I tugged it on a nail last year, or the lavender travel candle that goes with me everywhere, or the Right Book, or the Right Boots. I forget things that make me happy from one tour to the next (hell, I just plain forget things, but I remember the oddest things: I cannot for the life of me recall where I was 2 weeks ago but I can tell you the name of most DJ's in this country that play folk music, their station, the call numbers and sometimes even the name of their show and what time it airs on what day. I can remember my first phone number when I was 7 years old. I can say the States in alphabetical order. But I can't remember what day of the week it is).

I think I got sidetracked on the forgetting and the remembering part.

I'm a private sort of person but a blizzard is a blizzard,
And somehow I found myself saying you'd left me,
Tellin' him everything I wanted to say to you.

I make lists. I organize. I plan in advance. Because I know its in my nature to be scattered, to lose myself and then wish I'd had better boundaries. And so, like a soldier, I strategize and defend myself against myself. And then I leave it all to chance and hope the journey is at least interesting.

But this is not about me. This is about the weather.

And the snow fell

and the night passed

And I talked to the stranger

while the blizzard blew.

It was sunny this morning in Nashville and then I arrived in a whiteout in Grand Rapids, Michigan to play a benefit concert for my friend Ralston with Kenny White and Judy Collins. We played in a chapel, on a stage that was a 3/4 thrust stage, which meant you had to twirl constantly to see each part of the audience and while you were talking to one side, the other had a great view of your ass. The snow raged all day and all night. But the chapel was stuffed full with people. They were there to support Ralston and to hear Judy. Kenny and I were like the rosette icing petals, a nice surprise but really, you want the cake. It was a gorgeous night inside and out.

The sky trembled with frost and inside Judy Collins sat at the piano and sang "The Blizzard", one of my favorite songs of hers, a long tale of a long night stuck in Colorado during a storm. As she sang I looked at my friend Ralston, going through his personal blizzard, and had that kind of moment where you see someone for the first time although you've known them for a few years. Without hair, tired and thin, Ralston is one of the most beautiful people I have the privilege to call friend. I was content there in the sanctuary to listen. A shiver went up my arm, there, Judy at the piano, echoing the night in her song. Then she went into "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" and I watched this woman on the aisle, 5th row from the back, slowly wipe tears away that dripped off her nose, down her cheek, joyous in her heartache, and I'm pretty sure she was remembering her own youth. And at the end of the night, Judy invited Ralston, Kenny and me onstage to join her to sing "Amazing Grace". She took my arm, pulling me close, I held her hand, Ralston on the other side and Kenny there too and we sang. At first I admit to a bit of nerves: how do you sing that song with that voice? I chose a lower harmony to let her voice soar. Then after a few verses, she told a story that made me want to open my throat to the heavens, and so we all did, and I went high and then low and Judy sang loud and I heard Kenny going for the high harmonies and we stood in the center under the purple and pink veils of silk that hung from the ceiling and I pitched my voice through the ceiling out to the darkening skies to the snow-filled night, wind-whipped and brittle, and felt that Grace that the song celebrates.

When the world leaves you shivering
And the blizzard blows,
When the snow flies and the night falls
there's a light in the window and a place called home
At the end of the storm.

In a snowstorm, an audience filled the room. I wish you all had been there to see it.

(lyrics from "The Blizzard" by Judy Collins)

Everyone's gotta have an opinion

Climb on a back that's strong....

I was thinking about what made me pick the guitar up this morning, while the wind whipped through my trees and crashed the chime bells together like ship rope and metal clanging in a harbor. Sitting here in the warmth with a slight creeping chill around my ankles from the cracks and creaks in this old house, warm coffee, a day to write and recover from a cold, send things out, wait for things to come, pack to go, unpack to stay, breathe and sit still...

I picked the guitar up finally for good at age 26 in the bedroom of my Morton Street apartment in the West Village of NYC. I should say that first. But I'd tried earlier.

In a house on a hill in my last year of college that I shared with a few really good friends that have stuck, some people I liked but never got to know and a few total strangers, we'd stay up with our stereos blasting, finishing our Theses, making sardonic jokes peppered with latin phrases like Rite and Summa, coming up with post-modern catch phrases for having sex, the inside clique of smarter-than-thous. Someone brought me "Steady On", vinyl, Shawn Colvin's debut. I remember taking Billie Holiday off my turntable for the first time in months (I was writing my thesis on her) and turning the lights off and listening. I was deeply in love with someone at the time who was completely unattainable and completely unavailable (at the time--he became available soon, but that is not part of this story. Its the longing that's important. The impossibility of the dream). He was hovering in my world like a teasing raincloud and I ached for That Which I Could Not Have and to distract from the constant tug and pull of my heart, I strung all-nighters together like a debutante's add-a-pearl necklace, living on Jolt Cola and coffee and bourbon and wine and whatever Mark down the hall was brewing. I was writing. Truth be told, I didn't even know what I was writing. I was writing around the heart of it. I was spiraling my own intelligence--trying to locate it like a miner, using Billie Holiday as my flashlight. I felt alternately puffed up with my own bravado and crushed by insecurity. And then there was the boy, in the corners, watching, hovering, not landing, going home to the girlfriend, but still flying around my skies.

It was the perfect moment to discover Shawn Colvin. She writes the way I think. Around things. Not bluntly. Not so flourid that I can't find it. But skirting the edge of the emotion so that when she lands, it shoots me directly in the right vein. I wore out the grooves in a month. At the time, I was a singer. I could play piano. I knew music - I saw the world through music. But I could not write a song.

In a few months, I'd graduate with honors and a few latin words next to my name in the program, with my proud family there. With the boy there, still wading in the shallow water, hanging around, curious. I'd choose to go study Shakespeare that summer in the Catskill woods, dive into the deep of the language, immerse myself in something I wasn't sure I was good at but I needed to try. A few months later the girlfriend was gone, and returning from the dark forest, I put my own life on hold to go live with the boy and test those waters. [Note: Not to sound defensive here, but putting my own life "on hold" was easy to do at that time. I had no idea where I wanted to journey next and sitting in someone else's dream was a way of taking a breath for 6 months. A time out. Sometimes lack of direction is a good thing]. I'd watch him play guitar, steal a few chords here and there, find my fingers on the frets in patterns like constellations. I bought a guitar that year. A Seagull. For $300.

In a year I'd have moved out, moved to Manhattan to be an actress (or so I thought). I wasn't sure where I was going but I was sure that if I stayed there holding his hand and his dream I'd never find mine so I lept off the highest dive I could find and landed on concrete, hard, with a subway token in hand and the sound of taxis honking and recycling trucks backing up at 3am. In a few years I let go completely of his hand, right thing to do, wrong way to do it, but regret is easy in hindsight. Not only did I "get a song out of it", I had landed on the back of his dream, that dangled behind him. I landed so hard, I tore off the tails of his coat, took his dream, while he went another way, found a wife, found a life, found another career. I bought "Fat City" and learned a few songs, found my way to a gig then a record then a signing then a tour then a career and now, years later, I'm here, in Nashville, listening again to "Shotgun Down The Avalanche" and remembering the day that I could strum that rhythm with ease, after 10,000 hours of practice.

A few nights ago after a show, someone offered their opinion. It happens. They thought my silly song, the easy stuff, Defined Me and wondered why I didn't play more of that. My 'joie de vivre' they called it. Why write the dark songs when I smile so easily. I didn't feel offended by the question, because we all want what we want. I can't give him the easy laugh all the time. We all want what we can't have. I countered that my dark songs have a crack of hope at the end, that I look at what is my truth. I'm not speaking for him, unless he hears it in between the lines. I think back to Shawn Colvin, who I have sung backup for by now, who I have shared the stage with, who I sat backtage with watching silly videos on Youtube. I wanted to say to her the fan thing, the "you are the reason I bought my first guitar" thing, but I held back, kept that my secret. But her music this morning, I'm hearing that thing I'm reaching for. The aching longing, the sadness, with the glimmer of sky at the end. So things seep in and pour out and its shocking to me that its been 20 years since that day Kennan gave me the record.

So I'm just gonna sit here for a while and let the record play and try to recall what it felt like in my fingers to hear this music without having any idea how to form the chords. The itch of the need. The wanting what you cannot have. Now I am older and I know that sometimes what you want that seems out of reach finds its way to you. In its own time.

Cure for what ails you

There's little that a 13 mile bike ride along a river won't cure. That, and "Shoot Out The Lights" at top volume. Just saying...

Skybursting

There are some nights that are harder than others. Some nights when silence is best. Or loud music. Or an entire bottle of wine. Or a good friend, some popcorn and "Dr. Zhivago". And then tonight, I was doing what I should ease myself off of--the bad habit of re-reading emails. And I had written one and included this poem, which I sent to someone else. Funny how we write to others things that we are really writing to ourselves...

Landscape

Mary Oliver

Isnt it plain the sheets of moss, except that
they have no tongues, could lecture
all day if they wanted about

spiritual patience? Isn't it clear
the black oaks along the path are standing
as though they were the most fragile of flowers?

Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
ever close, I am as good as dead.

Every morning, so far, I'm alive. And now
the crows break off from the rest of the darkness
and burst up into the sky--as though

all night they had thought of what they would like
their lives to be, and imagined
their strong, thick wings