Laurel Massé

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?

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down

You know those weeks when everything falls apart? When you seem to be in a cosmic gravity vortex, and one thing after another slips from your fingers, eludes your grasp, and crashes to the floor?

I am having one of those weeks.

Within the past seven days, I had to cancel a concert, I lost my live-in cat care for next week while I'm at Ashokan, and I turned down a future engagement because I was already committed on the date, only to find that the gig I agreed to was moved to a date I can't do, and the one I turned down has already gone to another artist. What else? Let's see. The bluetooth headset for my phone has learned how to shut itself off, and does so blithely, but only on the business calls (and don't tell me it's an inanimate object, because I have news for you: there's no such thing!). A dear friend I'd hoped to see when he came over from England is not coming after all. A play in which I was cast has been postponed. People I urgently need answers from are not responding to my calls, while my mom is annoyed because I don't call her often enough. Little lightnings everywhere.

And tumblings down. None of these things are big. but they are all coming at once. Ouch! It makes me think of the tarot Tower card.

For me, tarot cards are wonderful tools for focused meditation. The cards are works of art that I can lay out on my kitchen table now and then (unlike La Grande Jatte or Michelangelo's Moses), and the archetypal images speak to my dreaming mind.

The card above shows all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and they are hammering on the tower. Blam! Crack! Blow, winds, blow! Kapow! The squiggly symbol on the left side of the tower, just above the falling guy, is my birthsign, Capricorn.

In this simpler card below, the Tower is called La Maison Dieu, the House of God. When things are flowing very smoothly, I feel God's presence, and all places are God's house. Then I stub my toe, sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively, and I am kicked to the curb. I feel as if I am pelted so hard, with so many little (and round!) problems, that they've knocked me right out of the tower. Clunk! and... well, there I was, and here I am.

One other thing I noticed in this particular card: the tower has three windows. Third century martyr, St. Barbara, was told by her father to watch over the building of a bath house as he was traveling. In his plan, there were two windows; in her cosmology there had to be three, for the Holy Trinity. So, she altered the design, and added the third window. When her father returned, he was so outraged that he drew his sword and attempted to kill her on the spot. Last October, I was privileged to be involved in the world premiere of Holy Women, a cantata by composer Robert Sirota and librettist Rev. Victoria Sirota Robert. St. Barbara's aria, gloriously and madly sung by Abby Fischer, still rings in my mind's ear. Rumor has it that there is to be another performance, this time in New York City. I will post the date as soon as I know more.

And in the meantime, mind the gap.

 

JaLaLa tralala

Here I am, arriving at the Kennedy Center for the JaLaLa soundcheck, with our drummer Matt Wilson. It looks like an ECM cover, yes? Except, of course, for the presence of people in the shot.  I doubt the architect's original vision included the trash bin. In case you are curious, it's a cuppa tea I am holding. Not a very good one, alas, but that is one of the sorrows of being on the road. One endures, and carries on, hoping for a better cup tomorrow.

I don't know who the gent in the blue shirt is on the right. Perhaps he is a member of the Jazz Police, defending the nation against extra choruses of unnecessary scatting.

Those of you with sharp eyes (or good spectacles) may have already read the JaLaLa set list from the Kennedy Center performance on our Facebook page. Here are both the May 16 Birdland set list and the May 19 (DC) setlist , for those who - like me - save their squinting for identifying birds on the wing and dollar bills on the sidewalk.

Birdland, Monday May 16, 2011

1. Spring, Spring, Spring (That Old Mercer Magic)

2.It's You (Boswell Sisters)

3. You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby (Mercer)

4. Come to Baby, Do (Doris Day)

5. Moon River / Moon Country (Mercer)

6. solo -  Lauren - Avalon (full band)

7. solo - Laurel - I'm Old-Fashioned (voice and bass)

8. solo - Janis - Begin the Beguine (voice and drums)

9. Crazy People (Boswells again)

10. Unsquare Dance (Brubeck/Kerchner)

11. Killer Queen (do I have to tell you?)

12. Honeymoon Suite - medley

13. It's Sand, Man (Lambert, Hendricks and Ross)

Encore (dedicated to Phoebe Snow) - Dream

 

In Washington, DC, at the Kennedy Center, we had less time, and decided to forego the solo turns. That set was:

And now the truth is out: we admire our brothers and sisters in the accordion community.

The following day, we were back at the Kennedy to teach a jazz vocal master class for ten very talented high school students from four area schools. The singers were delightful, as were their accompanists. I particularly love teaching in the master class format, because magic invariably happens.

And I love magic! Why else would I be a singer?

 

 

 

Enough?

A friend posted a YouTube clip on Facebook, and because the friend is a thoughtful and interesting person in real life - as opposed to Facebook life - I watched the clip. It was about living in a tiny apartment. A very tiny apartment, about 100 square feet. Though the tenant had rid herself of a lot of possessions to live there, the space still seemed stuffed with... well, stuff, which made it seem even smaller. But it was intriguing nonetheless. After I saw that video, I did what we so often do: followed the video breadcrumbs farther and longer than I'd intended. Facebook and YouTube are forms of alien abduction. I watched several more films about small-space living, and continued to think about that after I had put the laptop to bed for the night.

I have moved many times, m-a-a-a-a-a-ny times, and have sampled a lot of different styles of dwellings. They've included a 32-room mansion in Connecticut and a 12x60 1970s mobile home in upstate NY, a duplex apartment in a 1920s Spanish-style building in the Hollywood hills, and an art-deco apartment near Paris's Bois de Boulogne. And a tent, oh boy, I never forget the tent. And there have been so many more that I almost feel a little immoral. Each space has taught me something, usually about light. Some were too bright, some too dark, only two or three just right. Apparently, I am a very Goldilocks of photosensitivity. And to each space, I have brought my most-loved stuff, whether it was a favorite plastic horsie (then) or a wicker chair (now).

I currently live in a studio apartment that, ever since I've watched those videos, seems enormous. It's a little on the dim side on the light scale, and I will have to remember to avoid lower-floor apartments in courtyard buildings in the future, because even on the brightest blue-sky days, the sunlight is all up there and out there but never in here. However, it is bright enough for full-shade plants, and the ones I have are doing well. I have some decent furniture, and artwork and books and objects that I like to look at, and it is a peaceful and spacious living space. But if I had less space, it would be too much stuff, just like in that first video I watched.

Which had me wondering: does one measure the too-muchness of the stuff by the available space, or by the life lived? Does a bigger life need more things, or more room? And if it is more room, does that imply more space, or less stuff?

I once lived with a man who continually insisted there was too much stuff in our home, but he always meant my stuff, and never his own. Eventually I discarded his particular sense of the scale (but not soon enough. I still miss my amber bracelet. Squawk! Flap! Wait..let me smooth my feathers back down.... There. That's better. Sorry.).

How much is too much?

This is - or should be - the great American question, because, as Americans, most of us have a quite a lot, and some very few of us have almost all of that. But perhaps we can't tell what's too much till we know how much is enough.

When I compare what I have with what my neighbors have, I can feel hungry for more. That assumes neighbor means the folks next door, or in the corner office, or perhaps other performers with busier schedules.

What happens when I define neighbor as everybody? As the person down the street whose pension disappeared, and can now buy food or heating fuel, but not both. And the woman who is working in a clandestine sweat shop. Or the kid with Irlen syndrome who, for lack of a diagnosis and a piece of colored plastic film might not learn to read. Those folks living in New Orleans who saw their moment of national attention pass by, and are living in a city still struggling to rebuild. The exhausted teacher whose job is on the line. The exhausted Iraq veteran who can't find a job at all. The banker who is mourning her lost integrity. The lottery winner who is contemplating suicide.

Now it's starting to look like I have a lot. How much do I have? becomes How much do I need?  

 

 

But there is a scarier question, yes? Oh yes.

 

 

 

How much can I give?

 

 

 

Color my world

Snow fell through the night here in New York, and lays "round about, deep and crisp and even" this morning, except where folks have been shoveling. There is no wind; tree branches are limned in white. Cars parked along the street have been half-buried by the combined efforts of the heavens and the plows. The light, in a still-cloudy sky, is a chilly white that reminds me of my first winter in Chicago, and of photographs of Le Corbusier's Maison LaRoche-Jeanneret.

I moved to Chicago in 1981, to escape an increasingly difficult New York life. I'd had two long hospital stays after my car accident in Los Angeles, and was so discouraged by the difficulties of building a post-Manhattan Transfer life there that I had moved back east. The difficulties were not eased, however. As the leaving-the-group legal agreement dragged on, as lawyers batted at each other, I was broke and waitressing in a restaurant that had my records on the jukebox. I did not have the emotional or spiritual wherewithal to handle it. So, when I visited my dad in Chicago, and people were nice to me there, I packed and moved. My first apartment in that city had pretty leaded-glass windows that faced east toward Lake Michigan. I could see a tiny sliver of the lake between buildings, and it was beautiful, constantly changing with the light. If I shortened my gaze and looked down rather than out, I could see the windows of a small flower shop that had a red neon sign: "Flowers".

That winter was so very cold, and lead mullions so far from effective at keeping out the wind, that the water in my toilet bowl grew a glaze of ice. When the super came up to tape plastic sheeting over my windows, the plastic billowed like sails. Snow fell often, turning the world white - except for that red neon sign. "Flowers" would not be daunted, not even when the shop window completely frosted over. I clung to a hope of spring.

Almost a decade later, I had a gig in Paris, and made, with my architect then-husband, a pilgrimage to Le Corbusier's Maison La Roche. I had seen it, and virtually all of Le Corbu's work, in a set of books my ex treasured beyond all his other possessions. The photographs in the books were in black and white, and so that is how I thought of the designs, black and white, mostly white. A pure white, not tinted with anything that would warm it up. And when we came to it and entered, the house looked as I expected. White exterior. White foyer with a black and white tile floor.

Then we climbed a flight of stairs to the second floor, came around a corner to the landing, and were suddenly confronted by a blue wall. It was so unexpected, and such a merry blue, that I started to laugh out loud. As we continued through the house, almost nothing was as I had imagined it would be. In the little kitchen, there was a well-worn comfy chair. In the gallery room there was a pinkish brown sweep of a wall defining a staircase. Everywhere I looked, I saw swashes of color, and the house's merriment continuing to bubble. It is now twenty years later, and I am laughing as I write. Oh, such a blue can never be forgotten!

Still, sometimes I have to remember to remember that, on this cold white day (and any cold white day in my heart), there is, right now, peeking through a keyhole in the clouds, a laughing blue. And under the snow, "Flowers".