Laurel Massé

Dancing on the Air

It was about ten years ago - possibly eleven - that I answered the phone in my home in the Adirondacks to find Jay Ungar and Molly Mason on the line. They were calling to invite me to do a guest appearance on their live radio show, Dancing on the Air. I said yes, drove south on the appointed date, and met these two musicians who, over the course of the next few years, quietly changed my life. A month or two after that show, they called again, this time asking me to teach that summer at Ashokan Fiddle and Dance, their yearly music camp in the Catskills. Again I said yes, though I had decided that I would be singing a capella the rest of my life, though I had never taught singing before, though I had never been to a sleepaway camp in my childhood. That "yes" proved - and proves again every year - to be one of the wisest decisions I have ever made.

How to describe Ashokan? I could speak of the lovely wooded setting, the lake, the stars at night. I could speak of the caliber of the musicianship of the staff (and the campers). Of the dancing every night to live music. Of the wonderful food prepared with fresh ingredients, the greatest of which is love.

Buit what I describe most often, and always with gratitude, is the mutual appreciation that is in the very air. The competitive model of the world is so often discovered to be not very useful. One sighs, one shrugs, one murmurs that nothing can be done. But at Ashokan something has been done: that model has been tossed aside. Instead, campers are encouraged and inspired by a great teaching staff, and applauded for the courage it takes to learn new skills. That staff, all professional musicians and dance teachers, delight in each other's growth and excellence. This means that is is OK to take up a new instrument, to ask for help in a tricky bit of music, to try a dance step, to look like a fool - because in all these one is supported and cherished. This is where I learned that what I thought, as a teenager, is true: competition is not natural. You have to be taught. What is natural is to gather in community and to delight in each others' accomplishments and triumphs, and to grieve over each others' sorrows (for a fascinating theological/philosophical view of the origins of competition and misdirected desire, I recommend Réné Girard's book, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning). Teaching at Western and Swing Week has become the north star of my year, and my reminder that we are all family, and I am looking forward again to being there this summer (for information on dates and on Western and Swing, Northern, and Southern weeks, click here.

Today, I am taking a car ride, leaving the city and driving north to Albany with accompanist/arranger Tex Arnold to make another guest appearance on Dancing on the Air. It has been a few years since my last time on the stage at the Linda Norris Auditorium, and Tex has never been there. I have picked out the songs I will sing, but I know that there will be some last minute additions, and some spontaneous musical combinations that will reflect Jay and Molly's own eclectic musical tastes and their camaraderie, and their belief in the power of music and in people. I invite you to tune in and join us, no matter where you are.  The show is aired on WAMC at 8 PM (eastern daylight savings time) and can be heard online at www.wamc.org.

the Sounds of Christmas

This weekend's storms have stripped the leaves from the tree outside my window, leaves that had stubbornly remained green weeks after every other leaf in town had turned gold, red, or brown, and then had been equally adamant about resisting gravity. This morning, though, light filters to my windows through a lacy network of bare branches.

I am home sick abed, felled by the Grande Dame of All Colds. Sore-throated, fuzzy-headed, sniffling and coughing, and not at all glamourous, I have not been this ill in a long time. My apartment is a TV-Free zone, so I am alternating drowsing with attempts to read and listen to music. Yesterday was Gaudete Sunday, the third Sunday of Advent. Gaudete means rejoice, and I think I can stop some of my grumbling about premature Christmas music long enough to suggest some of my favorite Christmas rejoicing music to you all. It's not a long list, just my favorites.

The Sounds of Christmas, a long out-of-print Fred Waring recording, is a lovely collage of Christmas music that gives the impression of walking through a town where there are carollers on every corner. The first singing voice you hear on the recording, and the last, is that of my grandfather, Leonard Kranendonk. A more beautiful baritone cannot be imagined. I miss him.

Now is the Caroling Season and Caroling, Caroling, also Fred Waring. These are both available on CD. The singing is gorgeous and joyful, the diction unaffected yet all the words are completely understandable. Choir and other vocal ensemble directors, take note!

On Yoolis Night, by Anonymous4. Medieval carols and motets sung flawlessly, with soprano Ruth Cunningham's pure soaring voice lifting the listener to bliss.

He Is Christmas, Take Six. The perfect balance to the preceding recording, this acapella joy-fest is grounded in the body, and one must dance. Must!

Of course the Manhattan Transfer has done some lovely holiday recordings, too: The Christmas Album and  An Acapella Christmas.

Little Women, the fim soundtrack by Thomas Newman. One of my yearly rituals is the re-reading of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, a book I have been devoted to since I first read it when I was about 7. More than anything, I wanted to grow up to be Jo March. This novel has been adapted for film four times so far, once in 1918 as a silent, once in 1933 (Katherine Hepburn portayed Jo), and again in 1949 (my least favorite. June Allyson as Jo? I think not. Elizabeth Taylor as Amy? The mind reels.) My favorite of all these is director Gillian Armstrong's 1994 version, starring Winona Ryder as Jo and Susan Sarandon as Marmee - you can read more about this on the IMDB site. Thomas Newman's score is evocative and supportive and beautiful. Why is this on my Christmas list? Because the book opens at Christmas time, and as originally planned by Alcott, closes on the following Christmas (what we now know as Little Women was originally two books,Little Women and Good Wives), and so for me it has been part of my Christmas for ... hmmm... a few years.

Though at this moment I feel like I am going to be coughing all the rest of my natural life (you know that feeling!), I think that next year I will be able to add one more Christmas collection to the list: my own, which I am hoping to record in 2008.

But for now, more tea. I continue to wish you all a blessed Advent.

 

What are you reading?

And what is on your bookshelf these days? What's on the bedside table? What book did you grumble about having to put down the last time the phone rang?

J.K. Rowling's bookshelf

I wonder what J.K. Rowling has on her bookshelf. I specifically wonder if she has read anything by British theologian James Alison. JATB, any guesses?

In the meantime... I was not going to succumb, I was going to embrace holy patience and wait till one of my friends had finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but my friends were reading s-l-o-w-l-y, and when I did a recording session on Saturday, the wonderful engineer and I started talking about the HP books, and the next thing I knew, we were in a bookstore. Buying. WIthout regrets, I hasten to add. I read and read and read and read and I cried, too, of course, and I know how it ends, and am satisfied. No, I am not going to tell you why. Yes, you will have to read it for yourselves.

Today has been a day of relentless rain, a perfect day to stay in and read (though I went out and rehearsed). It is now tea-time, and your very own literate singer is in her apartment, having a mug of tea, and thinking about and missing the so-very-real characters in the HP series. Do not worry - I did this at the end of the Lord of the Rings saga, too, and that was worse, because I knew that Tolkien was dead, and there would be no more books from that hand, that heart. This little sniffly episode will pass, is passing, has passed, and here is why: I know that the only thing that prevents us from seeing miracles and magic in our midst every moment of every day is that we do not know how to see. I know that the whole bright world is flaming like shook foil, as Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote. That every bush is afire with God. That the kingdom of heaven is among us. And that we need our eyes opened.

I have read that, when Capt. James Cook sailed his tall ships to the Hawaiian Islands, and anchored there offshore, nobody on the beach could see the boats. Sight happens in the brain, really - information of light and shadow has to be interpreted, and then, and only then, do we actually "see", because we know, from referencing previous patterns, what we are seeing. The islanders had no frame of reference for those ships, their brains had no way to interpret and categorize those shapes, and so discarded the information. No one saw the boats.

Even if this is not what actually happened, not factual, I believe it to be true. We all have moments when, for no apparent reason, a curtain in our mind moves aside, and we see a reality far more intense than that which we usually notice. Frighteningly beautiful. Sacred. Magical. Holy. Enlightened. Imbued. Whatever word you choose. Jesus talks about the eye being the lamp of the body, and that if that eye is clear and healthy (which it often is not) we fill with light, because there is nothing, no film, between us and the light. Which is the state mystics seem to live in, and which scares most of us silly, so we reach for our "real life" shades, and call the intensified living unreal and unrealistic when it is actually the Realest Real. I am reminded of the Three Stooges. Curly starts yelling, "I can't see! I can't see!" Larry asks, "Why not?" Curly replies, still panicked, "My eyes are closed!". Yep, that's us.

I think that books like these - Harry Potter,Narnia, Lord of the Rings, Wrinkle in Time - blow that curtain a little, move it away for a moment,. We love them because they help us to see things rain-washed, startling, and fresh.

LIke they were in that garden we used to play in. Remember?

Thank you, J.K.Rowling

Like many folks, I have been spending the last few days re-reading the sixth Harry Potter book, refreshing my memory in preparation for savoring the seventh and final one. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows goes on sale here in NY in about two hours. Even before I read it, though, I am feeling teary. It will be hard to say goodbye to this series. I cried for a week when I read the last paragraph of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, wept for The Wind in the Willows, too.

I will write more about this in the next few days, about books that have shown me a secret door back into the garden, but for now, my profound gratitude to J.K. Rowling, who said "yes" when Harry Potter presented himself to her to be written. Jo, I am so proud of you. Well done! And thank you!

Back to the city

Fresh from a week at Ashokan that culminated in dancing my fool head off to the Texas Playboys - not a recording! Live! - I sang at the Cathedral yesterday morning one day ahead of a cough and a sore throat. I know what this is. It's the natural result of being overwhelmed by joy. The body says,"Captain, she canna take no more", and the dilithium crystals take a little nap, anad I come down with a little something that is enough to keep me quiet for a day or two.

Ashokan Fiddle and Dance Camp is heaven on earth. I mean something very specific by that, and I have to say it in the language I am comfortable with. It is an experience for me of the kingdom of heaven revealing itself to be right here, right now. Here. Now. Every here. Every now. In every one. That's the real world, and the challenge is to carry it with me, to remember this, and to revel in the accomplishments of my many companions in this life, and to share in their sorrows. And to dance.

I did take a break in my reading; after having devoted two months to the Onegoodbook experiment, I needed to come into something else. So I started Barbara Ehrenreich's Dancing in the Streets, subtitled A History of Collective Joy. But it is really hard to read about dancing when just up the hill you can hear fiddles and a swinging rhythm section calling you to actually dance. So I put it aside till sometime later this summer (after Harry Potter, of course), and am about to re-immerse in scripture. But I am going for the gospels now. The more I read of the Old Testament, the more I long for the good news.

It is going to take me a few days to be posting on a semi-regular schedule. Looking forward...

Here I am... wasn't I?

It's very hot in the city this morning, and has been for a couple of days. I live on the top floor of an older building, right under the roof, where it heats up early and stays hot late. My air conditioner won't be installed till after the weekend. All this to acknowledge that I am not at my best. Now, my grandparents lived on the top floor of a 6-floor walkup in Washington Heights for many years, and they never had air condioning. The hardiness genes must be deteriorating with each succeeding generation. 

Whatever the reason, I had a spiritual meltdown yesterday. On a break from working on a friend's recording project, I heard another recording the engineer has been working on. The track was swinging, one of the singers was terrific - great intonation, hip choices, totally in the groove.. The other was not. This other, albeit a very fine theatrical singer, Did Not Swing. Was not in tune, either. I heard all that, and felt envy - envy that that one singer was getting to record in my genre (mine mine mineminemine waaaaah!) while I cannot afford to, frustration that agencies and labels have not been interested in me since I left the Transfer, exhaustion from having to do everything by myself. I was just a mess inside, and probably at that moment had all the emotional and spiritual maturity of a two-year old. The only credit I can claim is that I did not fling myself to the floor and wail. And that I probably would not have done so even if I had been alone.

The sting is this: I actually don't believe in the competition model of the arts, and I don't accept the limitations of genre, either. In fact, I believe that one must offer real support to one's fellow artists, and honest encouragement when they stretch beyond their perceived limits, and generous, genuine rejoicing when they have opportunities and successes. Let's face it - it is easy to find folks in your field who will whine in harmony with you. It is being honestly celebrated by your peers that is scarce. So my inner behavior was completely contrary to my profound convictions.

I have been wondering all night and this morning about this. How can I seem to have come so far, and then step in my own leavings? Conversion is not a single event. That's what I am forced to remember. It is a daily, hourly, every-minute event. Think it's done? and it ain't, and here's proof: my inner Waaaah! Of course that's found throughout scripture, with St. Peter is the all-purpose example. Lived with the Lord, loved the Lord, and the minute he thought his own skin was at risk, he denied ever having met the man.

In dog training (ride with me on this) I learned that mammals under stress revert to earliest learned behavior. And what is our earliest learned behavior, us humans? Crying to get what we want. And being afraid of being neglected, uncared-for, unloved. And that is the territory I visited yesterday. In the studio, no less, which I must add is like a sanctuary to me. A place of shelter.

Well, waiting in the mailbox for me when I got home was a copy of James Alison's On Being LIked, which has been recommended by a friend with whom I have been musing about the Atonement and substitutionary sacrifice. I opened the book briefly to sniff at it (doesn't everyone?) and "happened" to open it to these sentences:
In other words, we are taught to be loving lookers at what is by the One who is calling into being and loving what is. We are taught to see and delight in what is by the One whose delighting is what gives it, and us, to be.

Oh. Lord, I believe with all my heart... and help me in my unbelief. Lord, be my vision.

I am saving the rest of that book for July because of the ongoing One Good Book Experiment. My final word (at least for now)about my envy fit (see? it's not even green anymore) is the Word that knocked me back into a better balance this morning. It is in John's gospel, chapter 3: Now a discussion arose between some of John's [the Baptist's] disciples...so they went to John and said, ""Rabbi, the man who was with you on the far side of the Jordan, the man to whom you bore witness, is baptising now, and everyone is going to him." [Here is where John could have said "Going to him? But I'm the Bapist. Waaah!"]. He replied, "No one can have anything except what is given to him from heaven.... It is the bridegroom who has the bride; and yet the bridegroom's friend, who stands there and  listens to him, is filled with joy at the bridegroom's voice. This is the joy I feel, and it is complete."

uh oh...

I have this evening finished reading what Christians call the first five books of the Old Testament, and what Jews call the Law, or Torah. Steeped as I am in English murder mysteries and books about dogs, I cannot pretend to much knowledge about how this body of work is read and understood from the Jewish traditions. My own Bible's notes call it "the memorial of the beginnings of God's people". They were bloody beginnings. I find this very difficult reading, and it has been slow going. Slow, and riveting, once I stopped my ears to my imaginings of the struggle of animals in the thousands that were being sacrificed. I am hoping that some of you will join in here, and help me understand what I am reading. Am I wrong to see this as a practice of substitutionary sacrifice? You must not deliver your children to be slaughtered for the god Moloch, for I am your God, but I know you have to kill something because you humans are like that, and it takes blood to get your attention, so sacrifice the firstborn and perfect of your herds and flocks for me instead.

Beyond this, though, lies a story of a people being chosen. Wanted. Desired. It also is a story of screwing up a relationship over and over, of being repeatedly unfaithful and untrustworthy, and being taken back, but with ever more conditions. "OK, but now you have to do this and that". Hence Leviticus and much of Deuteronomy. The Israelites are told over and over that God will take care of them, cherish them, put them above all other peoples if they are faithful to him, and castigate them, punish them, kill a generation of them, and keep some of them forever out of the land flowing with milk and honey if they are not faithful. And they keep wandering off.

While I have been reading this, my church has moved through Easter season, and I am also reading and hearing the New Testament. Christ has died, Christ is risen, and now we are in a waiting time before he sends the Comforter, the Holy Spirit that he promised to us, promised to send to us because he loves us. Loves. Loves. Us. This also is hard reading, because it is initiating a gnawing, a restlessness, a radical discomfort. I am not sleeping very well, actually. How does one respond to this extravagant love? Of course, I don't really mean some abstract theoretical "one". I mean me.

In the most recent edition of her brilliant radio program Speaking of Faith , Krista Tippett interviews 'new monastic"  Shane Claiborne, who quotes the Danish philosopher/theologian Soren Kierkegaard as saying: "The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly."

a very good book?

I don't know about The Bible. Is it THE good book? Is it so good that one would want to - or be able to - read no other book for a set period of time? I wonder.

I have met evangelists of various stamps who read nothing but the Bible. Novels are sinful, science is errant, only the Good Book is a...well, a good book. In a less-than-spiritually-evolved way, I have thought they were idiots. Dear idiots, though - anyone willing to pray that a complete stranger will come to see the light has to be held as dear. But they seemed ill-informed and of course poorly-read.

It is rather too late for me to have read only the Bible in my life. Anyone who has ever helped me move knows that. Household effects, 10 boxes. Books, 50 boxes. And I have a pile of books to get to on my bedside table. And I am living in Manhattan. We have lots of books here in Manhattan. Is it possible, would it be possible for me, compulsively hyper-literate me, to read only the BIble for, say 6 months? No, no, I meant 2 months (I scared myself). Starting after I finish what is on the bedside table and the books I ordered from the library?

There are complications - what about the newspaper? That's OK. It's not a book! And it may be irresponsible to be ignorant of current events. And The New Yorker. That's OK too. Probably. And Country Living's fine, because I only look at the pictures. And what about biblical commentary? And what if I get a cold for which the cure is reading English murder mysteries? Ooh. This is like peeling very fresh hard-boiled eggs. Little tiny pieces of shell that do not want to let go.

It's just an idea. I was reading David Plotz's Slate.com series, "Blogging the Bible" several months ago. Mr. Plotz is reading the Old Testament through for the first time, as an adult, and posting his responses to that book. It's fascinating. This week I am reading Julie Powell's book, Julie & Julia. She had an idea... and rose to the challenge of cooking through every recipe in Julia Childs' masterpiece, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, in one year. She kept a running blog, and since has published a sharp-as-Romano-cheese book of her experience, subtitled "365 days, 524 recipes, 1 tiny apartment kitchen". It, too, is fascinating, though I am not likely to duplicate the feat. My tiny kitchen measures 4' x 5' empty. Add appliances, and I am left with 2' x 5' set up pretty well for a right-handed person. I am left-handed.

What I bring to my reading that David Plotz and Julie Powell did not have is prior experience. I have already read the Bible, even Leviticus (!) a couple of times in a different translations, and from different points of view (Congregationalist, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Catholic, Goddess, panentheist, Joseph Campbell devotée). I have read the writings of many a wild saint, and the more copious writings of many a covertly-wild scholar. So I am not exactly innocent and fresh. But I have lived a span of days since those readings, and the Good Book was never the Only Book. What if I take on the task of reading this work that has influenced our western culture more than any other book AS IF it was the only book in town? Would it expand my understanding of the universe?

OK. Perhaps you have decided "she's mad, I tell you, quite mad", or you are thinking, 'well, you own the books on the bedstand, so you can read them later, after, if you still want to", or "do you really think we want to know this about you, or want to read about it?" or something I have not imagined yet. But as a performer, it is part of my job to presume you are thinking about me. And I am thinking about reading a book.