Laurel Massé

Love letters and thank-you notes

A singer friend has been making her journey through a major illness that requires her full attention. To heal from the double assault of the disease and the medical response to the disease, she had to step away from her busy and public life for six months. Everything has worked splendidly, and now, almost done with treatments, she'll soon be picking up her juggling pins, and flinging her flaming torches into the air again. It is amazing, and wonderful, and pure gift.

Throughout her ordeal, people she knows and people she has never met have stayed in touch through email and Facebook posts, sending thoughts and wishes, prayers and video clips the way folks used to send chicken soup and homemade jam. I have been happy to witness the public Facebook part of this, because, years ago, such gentle "tapping on the window" helped call me back toward life. Illness and injury are not solely physical events. They have mental dimensions as well. Doubt and dread proliferate as wildly as out-of-control cancer cells. Loneliness crushes one's spirit as effectively as the metal of a car crushes bones. Friends and family may gather close, or they may not; but fear will wrap round you closer than air. So It helps to know that someone somewhere is paying attention.

On the top shelf of my closet rests a small wicker suitcase filled with letters gathered into packets and tied with silk ribbons. I received many of them during the long recovery period following my car accident in 1978, and they helped me recover. In truth, if not for the letters and my puppy Sonya, I would have faded away, so quiet was the phone, so strong the feeling of being left behind by the world I knew. In my rented house in Burbank, California, I was broken and poor and scared, but I could sit at a small table by a sunny window, and read letters from people who loved me. In my hands were pages their hands had written upon, had folded into an envelope and stamped, and sent to me.  My New York friend Linda wrote on creamy paper, my grandma Elsie on white. They both favored fountain pens and blue-black ink. My sister Babette could make me laugh to the point of helplessness (she still can), and the writer Gilean Douglas suggested I might be a writer too, which made me feel very good when I had been told I might not sing again. Though the journals of those years have been lost, these letters are my archives, and when I hold them in my hands again, I am as grateful as I was when I first received them over three decades ago.

So. Thank you, Linda, now living in a small town on a different island. Grandma Elsie, I miss you every day. Thank you, Gilean Douglas, for answering my fan letter, and beginning a conversation. Thank you, Babette, for the sacred sister silliness. You were all my doctors.

Oh yes, and thank you, puppy Sonya, for eating only two or three letters. If, Gentle Reader, you have been thinking of me for years as "that woman who never wrote back", now you know why.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, the places we'll go!

Once I have loaded my steampunk laptop (see previous post) into the gypsy caravan, along with my sister Babette, her dog, my cat, and a teakettle (of course), this is the map we will be consulting:

Map via danmeth.com

We'll be singing all the way.

The red red robin

After endless cold rainy weeks, we have been suddenly catapulted into spring and summerm with sunshine lighting the fuse for an exposion into bloom of every pollen-bearing thing. Last week, while awaiting delivery of a package, I decided to clean the windows in my apartment. In wiping away the layers of soot and golden dust, I made two interesting discoveries. The first: my apartment is not quite as dark as I thought.

The second: there is a robin's nest in the bush just outside my bathroom window, and hunkered down in it, several hatchlings. I had not seen them until I opened the window all the way, as the glass is frosted. They were motionless and quiet until a parent arrived with food - then they stretched their necks like E.T., their gaping mouths outlined in bright yellow, clamoring, "Put food here! Here! HERE!"

Several days of engrossing baby robin watching have ensued, with Mrs. Peel sharing the observation post with me. She is riveted to the scene, and has learned to chatter "ack ack ack" in the ancient cat tradition.

I have been saying my own version of "ack ack ack". And I have been counting. Sometimes it has looked like four babies are occupying the nest, sometimes three. This morning, it is three. But for the first time, I can see clearly that, a day or two ago, it was four. There are three fat chicks in the nest, pushing and nudging each other, stretching tiny feathered wings. There is also one little head hanging over the side of the nest, from a thin limp neck. One of the chicks has died.

So many things can kill babies that it is a wonder any creatures survive. Myriads of survival mechanisms exist. Some species, like horses, bear young that can be up and running away from predators in a matter of a few hours. Others, humans for instance, and wolves, have a longer outside-the-womb helplessness, and mothers, packs, and tribes that assist in the care. Still others have vast numbers of offspring that require virtually no parental care, ensuring that at least some will make it. Years ago, in a time of frustration and despair over a pre-existing flea infestation in a house I had moved into with my animals, I had a dream conversation with the Queen of Fleas. "I need your people to stop biting us, and leave," I told her. "If they don't, I will use strong poisons, and they will die." She turned a cold eye to me, and conveying the attitude of a shrug, said, "What is that to me?"

Four eggs, three living chicks: 75% survival rate so far.  Not bad, I guess. I am reading Ron Powers' splendid book, Mark Twain, a Life, and have learned that Twain saw three of his four children die in his lifetime, which in his era was not uncommon. The losses never left him.

The robins' parents' behaviors don't seem to have changed. They race to and fro, bringing food and removing wastes. The surviving chicks are still quiet till the parents arrive, although this morning I heard the largest chick start to make a tentative version of the adult robin's bossy "cheep!" That one, at least, will probably do well.

I've lived long enough to know that living things die, even sweet, innocent, beloved beings. So I am not devastated as I would have been as a child, and not broken and wailing in pain on the floor, as I was when my dogs Shekinah and Shadow, and my BobbyCat died. But there is a sadness on me nevertheless, and, rising on a breath, a prayer for the little wings that, in life, never got to fly.

Today's lesson: autotuning

Some of you might be wondering exactly what autotuning is, and why some musicians seem adamantly opposed to its ubiquitous presence in the recording industry. Let me give an illustration.

Here is Mishka singing with her natural voice:

 

And here is Mishka, with autotuning.

 

Your questions about why singers who've really learned their craft tend to look upon it with disgust and sadness, ahould now, I think, have been answered.

Here endeth the lesson.

Saying goodbye to Bobby, part 3

I woke early on Friday in a still apartment, made tea, and sat in my wicker chair. And thought, and remembered... 

Bobby suddenly leaping up to race around the house, bouncing off the furniture like a furry pinball.

Bobby face to face with a big rat snake in the yard, both of them stuck in The Gaze, two predators staring at each other over a frog that was holding itself very very small and still.

Bobby claiming the ultimate warm spot in bed by silently threading his way between the two dogs sleeping on either side of me to settle on my chest.

Bobby getting breakfast when he wanted it by waking the dogs in the morning, because once I was up to let them out, he could beam the "food thought" directly into my head.

Bobby watching as I worked to train Shadow to ring a bell hanging from the doorknob by bopping it with his nose when he needed to go out (his original method of asking was to sit in front of the door and stare at it, which, as I was often in another room, did not always catch my attention). Thereafter, when I heard the bell and came to the door and saw Shadow there with Bobby, I praised my dog effusively, and opened the door. But one day, as I was working at the computer in my office, I heard the bell, started to go into the next room to the door, and tripped over Shadow, who was sleeping by the desk. When I stumbled into the next room, Bobby was still up on his hind legs, swatting the bell with his paws.

Bobby training our dear former landlord to offer him treats.

Bobby disemboweling every cat toy I ever bought (unless Shekinah beat him to it).

Bobby nipping at my ankles when I vocalized up into the high notes, and saying "mau!", which is Cat for "That's really very annoying".

Bobby getting old, Bobby getting weak, Bobby losing his balance in every way.

When I arrived at that memory, it was time to go.

I carried the crate to the car, and drove upstate to my sister's house. There, Babette had already started to dig a hole in the corner of a small field. Together, we dug it deeper and wider, and then I emptied the tin of Shadow's ashes into the hole, opened the carrier, and lifted Bobby out to put him down on the ashes of his favorite dog. I had brought some prayers with me, and my sister and I read them. Or she did, mostly. I couldn't. We placed a clean linen cloth over his face, and, kneeling on either side of the hole, started to put the cool, damp earth back. We used our hands. They knew what to do. Side by side, sister hands.

When all the dirt was replaced, we smoothed the surface and moved a couple of slabs of slate on top, to protect the little grave from digging creatures. Babette went indoors to put the kettle on, and, after a little while, I followed her.

I am writing this a week later, on a grey day, waiting for the wind and rain that is predicted to be our NY share of Hurricane Earl. I miss my cat. But in this death my body has played its part by taking him to the vet and bringing him home and watching in the night, by petting him and holding him, by hearing his great silence, by lifting him and setting him down and covering him and smoothing the dirt over his grave with my hands. All that I could do, all that I needed to do, I have done.

I understand something more now about what the body wants, and about the sacredness of flesh.

Bobby stole my heart, and has given it back all the better for wear.

 

How sharper than dear Lassie's tooth

Read this in the Times a few days ago:

Dog bites cost American home insurers 6.4 percent more in 2009 than in the previous year, with the average claim exceeding $24,000 for the third straight year, an industry group said Wednesday. The injuries cost $412 million in 2009, compared with $387.2 million a year earlier, the fifth straight increase, the Insurance Information Institute said. The number of claims increased 4.8 percent to 16,586.

Either dogs are biting more, or people are putting in more insurance claims. Or both. I don't know. But this statistic is not surprising. Decades of living with dogs, and several years as a semi-professional trainer of same, have taught me that the bite bone's connected to the stress bone. I think it is safe to say that our stress levels in this culture have exploded through the roof, if only because of the incredible pace of change (always a producer of stress whether the change is for the better or for the worse). Now add to that the near-unbearable weight of economic distress that has landed millions of folks in the previously-unvisited (by them) territory of the freelance artist, an unstable country in which work evaporates for reasons that have nothing to do with the worker, promised checks don't arrive, and the landlord is banging on the door. That's a lot to manage.

Our dogs are emotional animals. They read body language that we don't even know we are speaking, and they are exquisitely-tuned vibe detectors. They are much better at that than we are, because they pay attention to it, and we rarely do. When our disequilibrium travels through the air and down along the leash, they read it, and absorb it. I think it makes them more likely to bite. Stress certainly is making makes me more likely to bite. 

Of course there have always been biting dogs, and those teeth can inflict catastrophic damage. I am not denying that. It's the uptick in the insurance claims that I have been pondering. This is just my opinion, dear readers. Please know that I am not minimizing the danger. I am just saying that the boat we're all in is leaking.

Catching up

Where I've been: Maine and the Bronx.

Weather: hot, and hotter still.

What I've been doing: helping a friend get her house ready to sell.

What I learned: dust sticks to your skin when you are aglow with heat, and dust is not an effective mosquito repellent (alas).

What I did in my quiet time: too much reading, not enough prayer.

What I read: A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, and The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin, The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber (just finishing that one today, I think). Winners all.

What I prayed for: patience, compassion, and physical endurance for me and for my sister (please do the same, thanks).

What's next: Margaret Whiting's birthday party today, then a merry jaunt on Friday to New Haven for the Cabaret Conference at Yale.

After that: solo CD sessions, writing, and the dog days of August, during which I will be thinking of Shadow, and Shekinah, and Sonya, and Garbo, and Beau, and Spring, and all the way back to Amber, all those pointy noses and sticky-up ears in the front row of my cloud of witnesses. My communion of saints.

Here is a blog they would have liked. Go there, read a bit, and then look below at this stained glass from St. James Evangelical Lutheran Church in Chicago, a place that was a blessed stop along my path. I gazed long and often at this window. Do you see what I see in the center panels?

Pointy nose, and sticky-up ears. Oh yes, and angels too.

Considering lilies

The sky is grey, the air, damp. It is an at-home day. And though I might rather be in someone else's home, an older one perhaps, or grander, or one in the country, I am fairly content to be able to be in my apartment "home" when I was going to be driving today up to Maine, in the rain, and in vain because, as it turns out, my mom is not yet going to her home. Because of the skill of the surgeons and the efficacy of prayer, her back surgery has been a success. But because hospitals are full of sick people, she developed complications that delayed her release to the rehab center. Which delays her getting back home. It's a chain thing. Or a crack-the-whip game, with my sister and me at the end, being flung about, not knowing from day to day where we are going to have to be the next day.

Of course, this is always true. Stability of place and certainty about looming events are all part of the construct we cling to, often to our detriment. The illusion of control and the dream of predictability - how completely alluring and seductive they are, and how we love to fall into their beds! I know I do. I always cry out to know what is going to happen, what is going to happen to me, and what God wants me to do. I want it clear, I want it set, I want it now.

Maybe. And... maybe not, actually. What would I have dared if I had known beforehand what was going to happen? How much would I have shut down for fear of the uncontrollable, and missed because of having set expectations, and lost because of wanting wanting wanting?

I lived with dogs for a long time. You'd think I would have learned about this expectation thing from them. They have hopes, which often aren't realized, and what do they do? They chew a stick, or sigh a sigh, or take a nap. But they don't rail against the elements, or demand to have certainty. They know what we really need to know, which is that now is chock-full of now. Or, to quote Robert De Niro in The Deer Hunter: "Stanley, see this? This is this. This ain't somethin' else. This is this".

As plain as the nose on your face, as my grandma Elsie Kranendonk used to say. But of course I can't actually see the nose on my face unless someone or something is mirroring it back to me. So I need someone to remind me to let go. I need someone to tell me again that I can't, even with the best planning or worrying skills on the planet, add a single hour to [my] span of life, and "if then, you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest?" (Luke 12:25-26). I need to remember to consider the lilies, how they grow. To go see my mom when I can. To learn my lines for the play. To breathe. Pay attention. Chew a stick. Maybe even chase a squirrel (or whatever the spiritual equivalent of that might be. I'm not quite sure). This morning, my spiritual director wrote to me "not knowing/needing God is the safest place to be."  

I am going to rest in that tonight, and listen to the rain, and let it fall, as it will, without my help.

What a tangled Web we weave...

There is a terrific article by Nicholas Carr on the subject of the brain, the Web, and memory in the most recent issue of Wired magazine. In it, he gives very good explanation of the mental process that dog trainers call "latent learning", which is the process of moving information from working memory to long-term memory, a process all too easily interrupted by distractions. He also suggests serious reasons to consider the up- and down-sides of the way the Internet is changing our brains.

He writes: The Internet is an interruption system. It seizes our attention only to scramble it.

Interested? Go read the rest here. Before you get distracted.

What I Did on my Vacation

I was not on vacation. I just wasn't writing. Life simply got a-hold of me, and that is good. Except for this: I am not a multi-tasker, and am hard-pressed to hold attention on several things at once. I have worried a lot about this over the years. What is wrong with my brain? What is wrong with me?

Perhaps nothing is wrong. Perhaps what I have been taught is "letting balls drop" may really be having tried to juggle more than I can mentally handle in the first place. I should have recognized this a long time ago. The clues were always here, especially in my reading patterns. It was never enough to read one "Black Stallion" book. I had to read them all. And then it was not enough to read all the Black Stallion books. I had to read all of Walter Farley's other books, too. The Island Stallion. Sulky Colt. Even The Great Dane, Thor. Intense focus on one thing, sometimes to the seeming exclusion of others. 

When I am performing, that's what I do. When I am teaching, that is what I do. When I was training dogs, that was the world. When I apprenticed to an herbalist, that was the world. And when other things come at me from the side, I have a hard time dealing with them. This could be a mighty mental discipline, a "being here now". It's not, alas. I wish it was. It's just me, being me. People pitch balls to me that I don't even see sometimes. I just hear the big clatter as they hit the floor!

The past month-and-change has graced me with some challenges, and some more challenges to the half-solved challenges, and it has been a rough Lent. But Easter is coming, is already here; light is very near. And so I rejoice, and praise God. And that is something I can do no matter what else is going on.

Because it's not another ball in the air. It is the air itself.