Laurel Massé

Last night I dreamed of Elvis

I am on a film set, working; there is a catering tent (like Harrod's Food Hall, but smaller) where the tea is plentiful and good. There is also a Cathedral set, and an airstrip. A small turbo-prop lands, a little stairway is wheeled to the door, and out comes Elvis, who sees me, and turns to English actor Bernard Hill. "Look! There's Laurel!", he says, and they smile big bright sunrise smiles, and come down the stairs.

Elvis looks great. He is older, of course, as he should be, and a little stout, but healthy and happy, and full of life and laughter. We've been friends ever since Bernard first introduced us.

Now, my babysitters were Elvis fans. I was a little too young, and then my family moved across the Atlantic to Solihull, England, and it wasn't until the Beatles were on the telly there in 1962 that pop music came into my life. I've dreamed of Paul McCartney many times over the decades since then, but this is Elvis' first appearance. What a great guy he turns out to be!

 

On set with director Cornelia Moore (wearing headset)

And how interesting it is that we are neither in a recording studio, nor on a concert stage, but on a movie set. A concert takes an evening, a recording, a few weeks or maybe months (for most artists), but movies are long projects. They take time, and require a vast number of people to work at a vast number of specialized tasks, some seen, some only felt. But everyone focuses on a common goal, everyone serves a vision.

 

While with the Transfer, I did a lot of TV, but I've only been on one film set as a performer (rather than a visitor), and only for a day. Cornelia Moore, director of Camilla Dickinson (a screen adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's novel, Camilla), called me to be a nightclub singer in a scene, and so off I flew to Spokane, WA, for a day of location shooting. As soon as I arrived on set, I felt that "thing", that magic, in cast and crew. Shared purpose, connection, speaking a common language - it was in the air. And at the end of that one day, when I heard "that's a wrap for Laurel Massé", I was knocked over by a wave of sadness. Time to go? Already? Oh. I wanted to stay, to be part of the story, because of that "thing".

I am a sucker for that thing. It is what I loved about doing King Lear with Project Rushmore Theatre Company. It's what I love about Ashokan, and why I would often rather see a band in rehearsal than in performance. It's the shared purpose, the collaboration; it's a participation in the Beloved Community, and it's the story we tell. 

Here's an image that gives the sense of what I am talking about. It's The Quilting Bee, by Grandma Moses. In this painting, every stitch is a story. Elvis has not yet arrived...

 

And here is a link to an article about Cornelia, in which she talks about her film, her writing, and her godmother.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The moon on the crest

This art, a painting by Rockwell Kent, will look familar to many of you. I used it a year ago in this post, when I was still living in the city, and thought that kind of full moon unlikely to shine on me again.

Silly little mortal!

Last week, deep in the night before my birthday, the moon on the crest of the new fallen snow/gave the lustre of midday to objects below (thank you, Clement Moore). Mrs. Peel, silhouetted by the window, and I, curled under my feather quilt, watched for a while, and breathed blue light. The moon, pregnant round, near-term with hopes and dreams, sang us to sleep. The next day it snowed like white feathers drifting.

How is it that I am back in a place where the moon shines blue, and sings in the coldest nights? And that a year ago I had no idea I would be? or could be?

Gifts beyond measure, grace upon grace, spilled out, overflowing, and every once in a while one actually recognizes them. Was blind, doubtless will be blind again, but for a moment, can see.

 

Circling, circling

No matter how many wings we have, if and when one breaks, we circle.  My own broken wing, my arm in a sling, has reminded me that Advent is neither a journey from here to there, nor a path from this day back to then. It's a spiral, toward the center. Now is then, there is also here. And here is everywhere.

All we, in the darkness, circle what light we can find. That's where we tell stories, and listen to stories, big ones, because each of us needs a bigger story than the story of self.

A lion roars creation into being, a rat looks on a god, a hobbit saves the world, the boy who lived defeats that which could not live. All of these draw from deep myth, and so do many elements of the story of the birth of Christ. As people feel they must remind me, every year. As if myth means untruth.

Any writer, mystic, or mathematician will tell you that what is true sometimes does not fit into what is known to be factual. We must not forget that music was being made long before there was music theory to dictate how one could or could not make it. Languages were spoken long before there were systems of grammar, and I am pretty confident that theos preceded theology. We start so big, and then, in the process of categorizing things, we get small.

I remember being taught, in primary school, that we humans were different and special because we used tools. But as it turns out, so do ravens. Or because we made songs. So do whales. Or have dreams. Ha! Ever had a sleeping, twitching cat on your lap? Or because we just knew stuff. Homo sapiens. Please. We don't even know how to be polite half the time, much less be fully human.

But all is not lost, because we still tell stories. Perhaps someday, if we ever learn to be still and listen, we will hear all the stories around us. Day to day pours forth speech, says the Psalmist, and night to night declares knowledge. Trees might talk to us about community, rocks might teach us to take the long view. Cats have things to say about attention; ravens, about rollicking. Then, maybe, when something impossible and unfactual is nevertheless true, we won't need angels scaring us half to death by shrieking "FEAR NOT!" just to get our attention.

 

SInging as we go

 

Moving Day today, blessed by the help of good friends, seen and unseen. Your prayers for successful loading, driving, and unloading, with merriment throughout, will be greatly appreciated.

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.

 

 

 

My dream house

Here is my dream house. I have dreamed it for decades. Let me know when you have stopped laughing, and then we'll move on.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, houses and properties that had been the great estates of the wealthy were changing hands all over the east coast. Those who had built them had passed on; the heirs did not want them. Older houses are expensive to maintain and heat. Fashions in geographic desirability change. It might be nicer to have a place in Sun Valley. And sometimes there were no heirs at all, which I think may have been the case here.

Developers often bought these properties, and, subdividing the land to surround the main house with split-level ranches and cape cods and the like, would sell the mansion at a rather low price to whomever would take it on.

Enter my parents. My mother, with her eye for beauty, and my father, with his longing for home, saw this place for sale in Ridgefield, Connecticut, and fell in love with it. They did not have all that much money, but, as I said, these so-called "white elephants" were going cheap. The house (on two acres!) cost less than $1000 a room. Quite suddenly, we lived in a 28-room house. Now, my parents did not have the money for the kind of staff the property had once employed, but they had the energy of their youth, and they dug into the task of keeping the place from biodegrading around us.

The Big House dated from 1901, and was built for the Maynards (sisters, we were told, maiden sisters (true? Who knows? Good story? Yes, especially in light of the French novels I once found behind a sliding panel in the library). There were marble fireplaces in every room except the kitchen on the main floor (parlor, library, dining room, mahogany-panelled ballroom). There was a tiny elevator that my sister and I were forbidden to use, and a dumb waiter (also off-limits). Our kitchen had been the butler's pantry - the real kitchen was in the basement, and it was enormous. I dimly remember a multi-burnered stove and a huge coalbin still half-full of coal; get rid of that stuff, I thought, and it would be a perfect box stall for my promised someday-if-your-grades-are-good-enough horse.

Up a gracefully curved staircase from the main hall (or a smaller boxier one off the pantry) were two more full stories of rooms. The second floor held six or seven large bedrooms and - I think - four full baths. The third floor held two more large rooms, another bath or two, a series of much smaller chambers that were once servants' quarters, and the door to the forbidden attic.

Memories drift over me like spring petals falling from apple branches when I think of this house. My mom, leaning up and out over the railing on the second floor to plant the star on our Christmas tree. My sister and I dressed in poufy petticoats, singing together, and dancing with great spinnings and leapings in the enormous ballroom to the original Broadway cast recording of West Side Story. Me, practicing a simplified version of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata on the grand piano in the front hall.

I remember my rooms. Under the portico in the photo above, you can barely discern a balcony and two windows. Those were my bedroom windows, looking out at the elaborate tops of the Corinthian columns, one of which thrummed with the song of honeybees that had hived there. I had my own bathroom with a clawfoot tub. There were birds-of-paradise on the wallpaper. I remember reading in that room on soft summer afternoons. Reading, and dreaming.

I did my Important Writing in a different space, a maid's room up on the third floor, where I had a chair, a little wooden desk, and a window. My dad used to bring office supplies home in his briefcase, and I was entranced by the sound of my Sheaffer cartridge pen gliding across onionskin paper. I wanted to be Jo March.

Zillow.com describes the house as an 8,950 square foot single family home. It also calls this three-story Greek Revival beauty a two-story colonial, so bring grains of salt. Whatever it is called, the sheer size of it explains why we didn't stay. My dad had been transferred to the British division of the company he worked for, and we moved overseas to live in Solihull, England for almost two years. When we came back to Ridgefield, there was an enormous amount of repair needed on the stucco exterior, and the grounds were a mess. Then, in a few months, we were transferred again, to Paris, and while we were there, my parents decided to sell the house. My sister and I never saw its interior again.

My family continued to move frequently as we always had done, and as an adult I have carried on in the same way, racking up 53 moves in my life so far. But in all our relocations, only once did we ever return to a house we still owned, and that was to the Big House, in the summer of 1963, between England and France. In a way, it was our last happy summer as a family, for it was in Paris that my sister and I started to hear our parents arguing in the night.

One or both of these may explain why we all still dream about it. I dream there are secret rooms that I can access by going through the back of the closet, Narnia-style, in the bedroom my beloved grandparents lived in when they visited us. My mother dreams of going into the attic and finding there all the furniture one could ever want for the many rooms we could never afford to fill.

Though the furnace was noisy and made scary clanking noises, the house itself was not haunted. But we are. I am. It truly is my dream house, and I am still there, as surely as if I was upstairs, at my little desk, writing to you on onionskin paper.

Lost in a good book... or two...

I live in an incredibly noisy place. And I have a noisy brain. There is nothing I can do to influence the former, no plea I can make to my neighbors, no legislation I can enact or enforce.  All I can do is be quiet myself, and that sometimes requires assistance. Long hours of sleep can help, though the outside noises make that impossible here. Getting sick can force it. Going away to a calmer environment (if there is time and money for the trip) can give brief relief. But the best way for me, is, and has always been, to read.

My folks taught me to read before kindergarten, and I was fortunate to start my schooling in a district that focused on reading and writing skills. Very fortunate. Because the habit had already taken hold by the time my family moved, in the middle of my second grade year,  to a different state, a different school, a different teacher.

Mrs. Kelly.

The new school put its attention more on arithmetic skills in that grade, and mine were not as advanced as was my reading. WIth a little extra attention, I probably could have caught up. And I did get extra attention. Mrs. Kelly focused on my deficient math skills, bringing her primary teaching tools in to the fray. She lavished ridicule and humiliation on me so effectively that, 40-odd years later, when I was finishing my B.A., I almost blacked out in the class I took to fulfill the mathematics requirement.

But she couldn't similarly cripple my reading, because I already knew how to do it. But she could punish proficiency. In the silent reading period, she snatched the book out of my hands when she discovered me "reading ahead" to the next stories while the other kids were still stuck in the single one she had assigned. "Just who do you think you are?" she demanded. "How dare you read ahead?" The other kids turned to stare while she stalked away, leaving me to sit at my desk, bookless, still, and silent.

I don't know what she thought she was teaching me, but here is what I learned: it was dangerous to not be good at something, and equally dangerous to be very good at something. Unacceptable to fall behind, offensive to leap ahead. Stupid - did I mention she called me "stupid"? -  to be slow, and punishable to be fast. Though she was not the only adult whose bullying I would endure in my life, her "lessons" were long-lasting.

But she never cured me of my addiction to stories, to tales, to dreaming in print. In fact, she probably drove me to take that drug more often. I became one of those girls who "always has her nose in a book".

Now, some of you have been sweetly scraunching at me, wanting to know why I have not written more, or posted more on Facebook, or on my website. Well, I have needed to be Elsewhere. Here is the list of my recent - and exquisite - shelters from the storms.

One of our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde (newest installment of the Thursday Next series, catnip for literature lovers)

Moonwise by Greer Gillman (A Child ballad in prose. No one else writes like Ms. Gilman. I finished it, ensorcelled, and promptly read it again)

Little, Big by John Crowley ("the greatest fantasy ever written by an American"

The Underground Church by Robin Meyers (what might happen if what Jesus said to do, and what he did, was what we do)

The World Without Us by Alan Weisman (how we hurt the earth, and what would happen here if we simply vanished)

Homer's Odyssey by Gwen Cooper (a joyous and true cat story)

My profound thank you to the authors, to public libraries, to independent booksellers and those who sell used books, and to my sister, who loaned me Homer's Odyssey.

Hi. I'm back.

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.