Laurel Massé

Mrs. Peel has thoughts on packing

My knapsack on my back

 

 

By sundown this evening, I will have finished packing (as you can see above, some things pack themselves). The U-Haul truck is reserved for Wednesday, and if all goes well, Mrs. Peel and I should be elsewhere and ready to relax by teatime. I have moved a lot of times, packing, unpacking. The first task is collecting boxes. The last time I moved, I got rid of the used ones, because I wouldn't need them again. How endearingly optimistic! Then, all I have to do is fill them, number each box, and keep a list of what is in it. I was well into the high double digits a few days ago when I dissolved in tears over how much stuff was left to pack. Not, mind you, because I was tired of packing, but because I am not exactly travelin' light. 

Shortly after I came back to the city in 2006, a friend asked me for moving tips. I had one: get rid of stuff. I told her that my only regret was that I had brought so much with me that I could have sold or given away before the move. And yet, I do not take my own advice.

Not that I never cull my possessions. I do, often. Something shifts in my mind, and I can sort and discard quickly and efficiently. But if that mental shift doesn't happen, every decision takes a long time. Of course, sometimes I wish later that I had kept something, usually a book. It has been shocking to learn that there are books I used to own that even the much-vaunted New York Public Library apparently doesn't.

When Hurricane Irene was spiralling toward New York City, threatening (according to local media) to roar over the boroughs and destroy us, New Yorkers were encouraged to gather their most important items into "go bags", so as to be ready to evacuate if necessary. I came up with three bags full, to be used depending on whether I was on foot, on public transportation, or in my car.

1. Walking list: Mrs. Peel (cat) in her carrier.

2. Public transportation list: Cat in carrier hanging from one shoulder. Bible, Riverside Shakespeare, current journal in a bag on the other. My little-girl charm bracelet on wrist.

3. Beat-up Toyota list: All of the preceding, plus all my diaries and dream journals, and Greenie, the rescued corn plant.

I actually live on a big hill, so I did not need that bag, but the thought process was interesting. What mattered to me? Mrs. Peel, plus stories. Nothing else.

Even though there has been no yard sale, and I only have time to pack and move, and must sort things out later, it's still basically Mrs. Peel, plus stories. The stories of all my books and bookshelves. The lineage of my piano. The mystery of the painting that has been hanging above it. My wicker chair has a great little tale to tell. Greenie has a ballad. Everything speaks. Once I have settled into a new place this fall, I will be glad to have these familiar things around me in a new setting. As a priest I knew used to say, "Period. Paragraph. Turn the page."

New chapter.

 

 

 

Fresh paint and sunshine

The sky above is grey, the air smells of the rain that fell in the night, and the rain that is coming this afternoon. I am glad to be staying in today.

On this kind of morning I first saw the apartment I have been living in for the past two and a half years. It was dark indoors on that day, too, but I saw the big windows facing west, and the little ones gazing north, and imagined that, on a bright day, light would fill the space. And so, because even mayflies outlive the vacancy phase of a NYC apartment, I signed the lease.

As it turned out, I was wrong in my imaginings. The western windows are completely shadowed by the other side of the building. The northern windows are denied sunlight by the bulk of the building across the street. There is never any natural sunlight in this space. I live in shadow and electric light. Except for her time near Woodstock last summer, the lovely Mrs. Peel has never ever been able to lie on a sunny patch of floor.

I have tried special lightbulbs, vitamin D tablets, abstaining from sugar. I have enlisted the power of positive thinking. I have rearranged the furniture. I have spent hours and hours outside, walking around, gilded with energy, blessed with ideas, energy and ideas that vanish as soon as I turn the key and come into the cave. It has worn me down.

My sister, who once lived in a house surrounded by trees, painted rooms in faintly-tinted whites that so strongly evoked the seashore that I was always surprised by the absence of salty smells. I have thought of trying that, and have collected paint chips. My friends and family know that I inherited from my father a faith in the power of paint and self-medicating with color. Other than my former residence on W. 89th Street, I have never lived in a space I didn't paint and repaint. That apartment was already a perfect color, Benjamin Moore's Beacon Hill Damask, a muted green yellow/yellow green that shifted with light and juxtaposition. Put a green chair by the wall, it was a yellow wall. Put a bouquet of daffodils on the shelf, and presto chango, it was a green wall. Something like this photo, where you can see that the wall shadowed by the desk looks greener.

But after the lease was signed and deposits paid on my current place, and just before I moved in, it was repainted - walls, ceilings, trim, and bits of the floor and bathtub - with beigey-white, high-gloss, oil-based enamel paint. I can't fathom why, unless it's simply that there were a few cans of it rusting away in the basement, left over from other kitchens and baths. Some economy-minded soul might have thought, "it's a small apartment, why buy more?" Every painted surface is shiny. I sleep under a sweaty-looking ceiling. And here's my gumption trap: the only thing that will adhere to hi-gloss is...more hi-gloss, and my respiratory requirements forbid the breathing of oil-based paint fumes. DItto the vapors of products like BIN. You could sand, says the super. How amusing you can be! thinks the singer.

Like every human, I have emotional hills and valleys. Like most artists I know, I live with a high degree of financial uncertainty, and can be hyper-sensitive to my surroundings. Light really helps. My next place will be bright, airy, quiet, safe, and affordable, i.e., everything this place is not. If there can be, nearby, a good bookstore, talkative trees, and a dentist who will barter for singing lessons, so much the better.

Photo by Janet, at Janet's Thread

 

 

Rare bird sighting in Riverdale

                                                                                                        Photo by Chris Cafiero

I am singing a cabaret concert this Saturday, February 18th, at 7:30 PM, at Christ Church Riverdale, located at 5030  Henry Hudson Parkway, Bronx, NY 10471. Tickets are available at the door are $20 for adults, $15 for students and seniors, and light refreshments are included. Parking is usually easy in this neighborhood. For more information, go to concerts@christchurchriverdale.org or call 718‐543‐1011.

Accompanied by Tex Arnold on piano (a very nice Steinway!) and Jon Burr on bass, I shall be a happy songbird indeed.

The "cabaret" designation for this concert brings up something that's been on my mind for a while. I know jazz singers who are quite scornful of cabaret. I know cabaret singers who feel the same about jazz. It's all silly really, as there is - or should be - considerable overlap in the genres. I think the performance styles that have become common in the two forms are the problems. Jazz seems to be all about the sound. Cabaret seems to be all about the sense. Some jazz singers seem to emphasize connection with the other musicians, with little attention left over for the audience. Some cabaret singers ditch musicality, connecting with the audience rather than the musicians.

I think either/or oppositions are largely false and fruitless. Ideally, a singer can pay attention to the musicians while connecting with the audience and singing in tune and in time, with intelligence and emotional honesty. One is always going to be better at one aspect of this than another, but I do believe it all can be learned and improved (if I didn't, there's be no point in teaching).

For presenters, though, the distinction lies in where you place the derrieres of the clientele. Cabaret (or nightclub) seating = on chairs grouped around tables. Concert (or theater) seating = on seats in rows, facing a stage, or at least facing an area. That's the only either/or that really does have to be one or t'other. And it's good news for those who may have been dreading church pews.

You'll hear quite a few tunes from my soon-to-be-released CD, and something a capella, and perhaps we'll all sing to Mrs. Peel, on the occasion of her first birthday, a stirring, purring rendition of That Blasted Song, in Ailurin.

Please note: the concert is in Riverdale, not Rivendell. That booking is still pending.

 

 

 

I love the book of you, the lure of you...

Recently I noticed that the blogs I read most faithfully are the work of writers. Book writers, I mean, not (for the most part) Facebook posters. I don't know how I initially found some of these blogs. I'll start chatting with Mr. Google about something I want to know, and end up learning something utterly else. Perhaps I have been picking up some feline traits from Mrs. Peel. No sooner have I spotted and pounced on a falling leaf, than, hey! there's another one, further away. Pounce! But wait! Something's rustling over there! Pounce!

I'm like that in the library, too. Yes, yes, of course I go in with something specific in mind, some single book. But when I emerge an hour or two later, dazed and blinky-eyed, my arms are full of books, most of which are not at all related to the one I came in to capture. You know. The one I have forgotten about.

When I come back to the apartment, I greet Mrs. Peel, put on the kettle, and start to look at my literary plunder, hoping, hoping. If I am lucky, if I have chosen well, one of the books will be as good a portal as the book in this video. and that will be very, very good indeed.

Because this is what a real book can do.

 

 

(For those whose French is rusty, the subtitles say more or less this:

At the beginning:

Adult: So kids, again with that book?

Child, reading book: You who read these lines will discover the mystery of Georgian legends...

At the end:

Adult: Let's go, kids. Finish playing with the book. Time to eat).

Must-haves

We are born into wanting. The breast, the cuddle, the warm and dry and safe. As we grow up, and older, the wants multiply and become confusing. "Give me what I want!" morphs into "what do I really want? what should I want?  what do I think I can get?"

The answers are elusive; even when captured, they change.

Grow up and old enough, though, and things start to simplify again. Some desires go away because they are no longer possible. I will never write the great American novel before I am twenty, for instance. I will not have the children I dreamed. 

Other wishes withdraw because one has had a taste of them, and it was enough. Working in a stable caring for 22 horses taught me that I didn't really want the 250 horses I wished for as a child. Traveling with a band all the time suggested to me that I might not want to travel with a band all the time.

I'm a Capricorn, and we can be both socially conscious - a fine attribute -  and socially self-conscious, which is not fine at all. Some of us tend to ignore our magnetic-north certainty, and to follow other people's directions instead. I have taken a lot of advice in my career, and striven to do what it seemed other experienced folks felt was the right thing for me to do: go here, do that, climb this mountain, not the other one, sing this genre above all others, all good, sensible things. It is taking me a very long time to recover from all that advice.

I sang my first unaccompanied vocal program in 1993. It was the first time I set foot onstage unplugged and unframed, the second state far more important than the first. Unplugged's easy, at least in my family. Open your mouth, and sing. But unframed? No one else up there shaping the onstage me? No arrangements, no staging? Nothing but made-up songs, some poems, and a story or two? I was advised that it would be too weird. When I was about to record Feather and Bone, I was told I wasn't ready, that I needed to plan out the music more. And, of course, I was foolish to move to the Adirondacks, mad to stay there so long, and first wasting my time by going back to college, and then nuts to leave graduate school. All true. But not the only true, as it turned out, and each of those things worked out beyond my imaginings. Though I will admit that it was a little... hmmm... curious to live in a tent for six months in the Adirondacks; still, even that was a priceless learning experience.

To the extent that I know who I am, I know it because of the stories my experiences have given me. Opposable thumbs are nice, but stories are better. So it should be no surprise that, when wondering what to take should I ever have to evacuate, the answer came quickly. Mrs. Peel, of course, above all else (though she is not a what but a who). And after her, if there's time? My Bible, my Riverside Shakespeare, my tarot deck, and my charm bracelet. What are they? Stories. Collections of stories. Which, among other things, is what we all are.

What do I want? A really good story, someone to share it with (a cat, for instance), and unending curiosity about the next chapter.

(The art above is by Mary Engelbreit, whose paintings and sense of humor have delighted me for years. You can see - and buy - more of her work at www.maryengelbreit.com)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Her gentle hand

Why have I not written? I ran out of steam for a bit, or rather, the steam was otherwise engaged.

A big question came my way, demanding an immediate response. I asked for a little bit of time, then dove deep into silence and dreams, and came back up a few days later with my answer. I breathed it out to the closest of friends, and then gave it to the asker: "Regretfully, no."

It was not well-received. Sharp words flew at me for a couple of days.

Wow.

What a gift!

Gift, because second thoughts that might have arisen were tucked in and laid to rest.

Gift, because I was given the opportunity to decide, several times, how to respond to what was coming at me, and I did not respond in kind. The soft word turneth away wrath, though not as quickly as one might hope. In case you've ever wondered about that.

Still, wow. I was exhausted. But I had the best of care, from my sister, my parents, my dear Mrs. Peel, and my friends, and from trees and birds and the broad rolling river. Even here! In the city!

Not far from where I am living, there is a spectacular old beech tree that has a lot to say about holding firm. Just down the hill, there's a city park that, transected by highways, is incredibly noisy. But I saw a beaver in a bit of wetland there, bold and patient, gnawing on a branch in front of God and everybody. In an old grove in another, quieter park, I saw two Great Horned Owls harassed by a pair of Red-Tailed Hawks. The hawks screeched extravagant flaming insults - better than anything that had come at me! - and flew at the owls, who stayed put, and simply repeated themselves ("Who. Who. Who.") until the hawks flew away.

February has begun gently. These first few days are the season of St. Brigid's Day, Imbolc, Candlemas, a time that probably has other names, too, names I don't know. But it is all about the return of the light, of fertility, of what Hopkins called "the dearest freshness deep down things". Of transformations. Years ago, I recorded a piece I titled Radiant Flame of Gold (on my CD Feather and Bone), invoking the protection of the great Irish Goddess/Saint Brigid. Under her care are poetry, healing, midwifery, metallurgy, and those who practice them; all of these, as Patricia Monaghan has pointed out, involve transformation. Strangely, sometimes one does not realize a transformation has taken place until something tests an old, once-broken place, and finds it fully healed. I have been thinking of Brigid, with gratitude.

And, because I also think of you all with gratitude, here is the CD track (my vocal, with Layne Redmond and Tommy Brunjes on frame drums). May we all be under the shielding of good Brigid.

Radiant Flame of Gold - Laurel Massé

And if any of you know who made the glorious quilt in the photo, please tell me, so I can give all the credit that is so richly due to the maker.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rests between the bright shiny notes

Mrs. Peel and I are sitting side by side, looking out the window. The morning chatter-clatter of starlings on the postage-stamp lawn in front of my apartment has already abated, leaving us to gaze at metal and bricks, the traffic passing by, the boxy building across the street. And at people on the sidewalk with and without strollers (about half and half), and with and without earbuds and iPhones (almost all busily with).

Ever the Capricorn, I recently took the stubbornly contrary action of trading in my somewhat-smart phone for a single-minded dumber one that only knows how to do one thing: phone calls. I did this because I need to hear what the person on the other end of the call is saying more than I need to check my emails all day, or send and receive messages. I had a feeling that the more "gifted" phone I had been using to relieve my stress level was actually adding to it.

A month into this experiment, I can report that I was right. Checking emails pulled my attention repeatedly away from the present place and time. The way that little "ding!" hooked me was disruptive of both conversation and quiet, because I do not multi-task very well. I think I am not alone in this. In fact, I don't know anyone my own age  - i.e. grew up without computers and adopted them later - who truly can multi-task. Rather, we get several balls going in the air, and think we're doing great, but we can drop one or two without noticing. Then we fume over yet another email exchange about all the same things, or a double-booking, or an argument about what was actually said and agreed to.

The iPhone is a glorious invention, and I'm not scorning the idea of ever having one. But right now I need all the quiet I can get. I live in a noisy place, where inner quiet is the only available quiet, and for that, for now, for me, the dumb phone is the smart way to go. If ever I move back to the wilderness, you can bet I will rethink. But in the meantime, I am trying to train myself to take and make my calls, when at home, in the corner of my apartment that is farthest away from where my laptop sits, so I am not browsing the internet while saying "uh-huh, yes, I know" to I don't-know-what because I am browsing the internet. It was easier to train my cat to sit on command, because Mrs. Peel has the feline's gift of focus. She is distracted only by string. But for me, anything and everything can be string. That's my personal string theory, and because of that, because I am a 20th Century human in the 21st century, I must decide, every day, when to boldly go, and, with perhaps more urgency, when to refrain from going. Music is in the rests as much as in the notes.

 

Deep listening

I don’t have internet in my apartment at the moment. Nor do I have any magazine-in-the-mailbox subscriptions.  These two conditions are related, and there are a couple of reasons for them. The first, the “presenting complaint”, in med-speak, is the expense. When I first came back to NY and arranged for Verizon to be my provider, the lovely introductory rate was $17.99 each month. Sign me up!  When that rate expired, the new rate was $10 more per month, and now it's $44.99 per month before taxes. Just for internet.

Magazines are the same. A sweet bargain for the first year or two, to catch you, and then a much higher rate when your subscription renews automatically, as a “convenience” to you. More important, magazines, even the best ones, are either repetitive (sorry, Oprah), or relentless (New Yorker, I’m talking to you).  Or both. Who has the time to read them all? And who, in this apartment, has the time to read them all when there is a cat to admire, Shakespeare on the shelf, music in my head, and friends to talk to? Real life, compassionate, aware, loving, curious friends?

Which brings me to another concern: The Vortex. Our minds are wired to look  at the newest information. This can keep us both alive - Look out! There’s a snake! Move fast! A tree is falling! - and breeding - wow! now THERE”S a man!. This also makes us the perfect targets for Facebook and Twitter addiction, because the feeds keep updating. I find I am reading about someone I barely know doing something I don’t care about (so glad you’re having coffee for your hangover, my fb friend). It’s the latest, so it’s the loudest. Though it is easy to decide to stay away, actually doing that requires overriding millions of years of evolutionary development. But just as I am trying to do that, here comes another update, and it sucks me back in, on the off-chance that I need to know this new bit of information.

The Vortex substitutes the watching of life for living of life. It affected me years ago, through television, and so I got rid of my TV. Since then I have been encouraged (often!) to re-engage the box, and I haven’t yet done so. Perhaps when a cable company allows me to choose and pay for only the stations I want (I want my BBC, period). The result of this mode of living is that I am an alien. Those who watch a lot of telly probably don’t realize that they talk more about that than about anything else. They talk more about the characters on shows than about the people they actually know. I notice it because, when I have to ask who they are talking about, they are astounded by my ignorance.

But I watched a lot of TV in my past. Many friends have been made to endure my recall of theme songs and  jingles from the 60s. In 1978, when I had the car accident that forced me out of the music business for a couple of years, I had extremely good medical care from Dr. Alvin Mulne, and all the superb staff at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Burbank, CA. I also had Jamie Sommers, The Bionic Woman, on daily reruns, and that show played an important part in my healing, too. I had been surprised to find that, thanks to bad management, I was rather spectacularly underinsured, and the daily “meditation” and visualization of her speed and strength and acute hearing was almost the only post-op therapy I had. We really do have the technnology, built-in, in mind and spirit.

Today I am living in a cable-free, magazine-free, internet-free apartment. Some of this may may well change. It's inconvenient. To publish this post, I have to walk down the hill to the library with my laptop on my back, and then walk back up. It's raining. But once I am home again, the mental silence - because I can't check Facebook - is deep and fruitful. The payoff's been really big. Clearer ideas. Sharper awareness when I am out, quieter thoughts when I stay in. Intuition's more insistent. Prolific dreaming. Prayer. I feel more present to Presence.

So far, so good.

 

Cat's eye view

If I was living in a tall building up here in my part of the Bronx (where this photo was taken), and if I had taped my windows, this is exactly what things would have looked like in my apartment last night. Or what they would have looked like if Mrs. Peel would go anywhere the windows, which she has declined to do since yesterday. Too much rain clattering on the glass, too many trees rocking back and forth and flailing their limbs. Decidedly not her cuppa tea.

Photo by Librado Romero/The New York Times

So really, this photo is not much like what we have been experiencing. But isn't it a lovely shot?