Laurel Massé

It's the little things

My local PBS station shows Downton Abbey in a most helpful way. Every Sunday, the preceding week's episode runs an hour before the current episode, so I get to see each one twice. This really works for me, because I can watch once for the story, and once for the craft of of how the story is presented (acting, direction, set dressing, costuming, and most of all, the writing). I often notice small details I missed in my first enthralled swoon.

The same thing sometimes happens with books. You may know that I reread Little Women every year in Christmastide. I am too embarassed to tell how many repetitions it took before I noticed all the homeopathic remedies the March family used, or that Marmee was "a born singer".

I miss things all the time in scripture, even though I've read the Bible more than once over the years, and in different translations. I have a strong sense of the arc of the stories, but bits I could swear were not there the last time I looked keep appearing, little word-bomb epiphanies.

(Which is why I don't have a Kindle. With that kind of inattention to detail, when would I notice that They have changed what Jane Austen wrote?)

And hearing the story is so necessary to me that I have taken to solitary reading aloud, coming full circle 'round to the kids to whom I used to feel so superior in elementary school because they moved their lips and whispered when they read. Mrs. Peel stares at me. My comeuppance is here.

It's when I hear it "for the first time" that I notice what I missed.

For instance: on at least three occasions. recorded in the gospels, Jesus is goes away from or ahead of the crowds and of most of the disciples, taking with him only Peter, James, and John. They were the witnesses when he raised Jairus' little girl from the dead, they were the witnesses to his mountaintop conversation with Moses and Elijah, and they were with him in the garden at Gethsemane, where they gained their reputations as the sleeping guys, because when he said "stay awake," they fell asleep, and not just once.

Last Sunday's gospel reading we Luke's account of the Transfiguration, that meeting of Jesus, Moses and Elijah. I noticed two things. First, the same guys who were later going to sleep through Jesus' deepest despair almost missed his transfiguration because they were "heavy with sleep". I had not caught that before. Second, there is a pretty big difference in translation between the RSV (Revised Standard Version) which is what I read at home, and the NRSV (New RSV), which is used in The Episcopal Church and others.

Here is the RSV: And as he was praying, the appearance of his countenance was altered, and his raiment became dazzling white. And behold, two men talked with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep, and when they wakened they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him.

Here is what I heard in church: Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him.

Well, then! They got sleepy, and either did or did not fall asleep. I rather think they did. Getting sleepy would not be such a big deal, but falling asleep is worthy of mention. Either way, their heavy-liddedness in the garden was clearly not without precedent. I love Luke for including this detail (even if it didn't happen that way) for what it gives to the story.

Putting belief aside, as a writer I am often taken by the stylistic differences between the four gospels. Matthew is almost professorial, Mark is immediately-suddenly-at-once breathless, Luke inserts little details the way Madeleine L'Engle puts the making of peanut butter sandwiches into her stories of interdimensional travel, and John is swept away by light. In fact, one of the reasons I prefer the RSV at the moment is that these differences seem less smoothed-out in translation.

And translation is always the rub, isn't it? Events translated into memory, memory into words, words into different languages, languages altered by time. Add cultural differences and editorial slant, and wow, it's amazing any two people sitting next to each other on a church pew can agree on anything about scripture. We don't even need non-believers in order to get into arguments and have schisms. I once lived in a small country town that had a First Baptist Church on the main drag, and an Independent Baptist Church up the hill.

It doesn't take a historian to figure out what happened. Some little thing, I'm sure, that hadn't been noticed before.

 

 

 

 

Still Jo's girl

So many years ago that this is almost a story that could start with "once upon a time", my family lived in a very big house, a legacy of the days of grand families and grand architects. The realtor called it a mansion. My family still calls it The Big House.

The first floor was indeed very grand. There was a parlor for company, and a library with built-in shelves. A dining room that overlooked a formal rose garden. A ballroom. The second floor had the good bedrooms, big as New York City studio apartments, with much nicer baths than I have ever had since.

My spirit's home, though, was up one more flight, in the small third floor servants' quarters. There, in a little monk's cell of a room with one window, I had a desk, a chair, a box of onion skin paper, my Sheaffer fountain pen, and a box of ink cartridges. And my companion, Jo March. I wanted to be just like Jo March, and to that end I scribbled page after page of - what? stories, probably, and perhaps some poems. I don't remember, and as my family moved a lot, nothing remains of all that ink except the memory of the texture of the paper, and the sound the pen nib made as I wrote line after line after blotted line. Oh, I wanted to be a writer.

Singing turned out to be easier, and my dear Lord is aware that I rather enjoy the spotlight. But this "words thing" never went away. I care about lyrics, I read aloud to people whenever I can, I do inspirational speaking, Shakespeare's King Lear leaves me sobbing on the floor, for Jo's spell has never worn off. And particularly at this time of year, the connection I feel to this fictitious character and to the extraordinary woman who created - or released - her is especially strong. It has long been my Christmas season practice to read Little Women again. Every year, somehow, it seems a better book.

My pretty little red leather-bound copy is currently in storage with the rest of my things, so I went to the local library. Their copy is for in-library use only - can you imagine? I'd have to wear shoes! But I found another treasure that I could take home: Marmee and Louisa by Eve LaPlante (2012). As far as I know LaPlante is the first author to explore the relationship between Lou and her mother, Abigail. Ever since her death in 1888, conventional wisdom has held that Louisa was her daddy's girl through and through, educated by him, inheritor of his gifts, beneficiary of his attention. That never set quite right with me. If the Alcott family was the model for the March family, why was the father absent for most of the book? Well, as it turns out, Bronson Alcott was also much absent in real life, and he never made a living. His mind on higher things, he seems to have been content to let his wife and daughters do all the work for the lowlier purposes of rent and food. Unlike his wife, Alcott did not particularly believe in the equality of women, and he came late to the abolitionist's cause. It was Abigail (Marmee) who encouraged her daughters to live full, good lives and to work to utilize their gifts, Marmee who wrote volumes of journals. And it was Marmee who worked until her health was ruined, as did Louisa, whose writing supported the family until she died at 56 (her royalties did so thereafter). The relationship between mother and daughter was deep, and necessary for both women. LaPlante's is a beautiful and calmly fierce book, well-researched and well-written, sad in many ways, but ultimately inspiring. Abigail was left out of history; Eve has fixed that.

You can buy the book through LaPlante's website, to which I have inserted a link above. Amazon has it, of course, but if you possibly can, please get it from an independent bookseller.

 

 

 

I sing because

...it is in my DNA. Both my parents had fine voices, and though as a teenager I was embarassed in church because they sang so loudly, theirs were the best voices in every choir they were in.

But the singer line runs primarily through my mom. Her father, Leonard Kranendonk, is the man standing on the right in this photo. From him, my mother and my uncle (on the left) inherited their voices; from my mother, my sister and I inherited ours.

Mom was a coloratura soprano of astonishing range. She now sings tenor with her choir. My Uncle Bob, a true musician-singer, has a rich smokey baritone voice, and my sister's is a contralto as sweetly dark as buckwheat honey. But we did not all become professional vocalists; only my grandfather, my uncle, and I followed that path.

My grandad was for many years the lead baritone of Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians, an internationally-renowned glee club that started in the late 1930s. My uncle also sang with them for a time. You may not have heard of them, but there would be no Glee TV show without them (and possibly no Robert Shaw Chorale, since that's where Shaw got his start). Waring had a weekly radio and then television show, and they are considered, I learned last year, to have been the original Show Choir. English was my grandfather's second language (he emigrated from The Netherlands), but his own perfectionism and Waring's Tone Syllables, a diction technique, resulted in what you will hear on this opening track from his only solo album.

Leonard Kranendonk The Lord is My Light

My grandfather and I did not agree on the role of improvisation, but I think he was proud of me, and I feel him with me every time I sing in church. And because he sang sunrise Easter services on a mountaintop, and blessings at the Thanksgiving table, I reckoned I could, too. Singing anytime, anywhere, without accompaniment was normal.

It's autumn in upstate NY. As winds tug at the leaves of gold and flame, the trees simply let go, and drop them (you want lessons in attachment and non-attachment? Look to the deciduous trees). It's getting colder. Both my grandparents lived into the 21st century, and I lost them only 11 years ago, my grandmother Elsie (who sang alto) in October 2011, my grandfather the following spring. I feel them, and feel the pull of the old songs that are my my most valuable inheritance, and the voices that carried them. All these years later, I'm the one singing loudly in church. But really, whom then shall I fear, when I never sing alone?

 

There's no place like home

Almost everything I own is now stacked in a storage unit in Dutchess County, NY, safely tucked behind a door like these. Mrs. Peel (my feline companion in all adventures) is with me with her necessaries, and I have a few things for the summer, clothes and music and such, as I planned. I also have a lone vacuum cleaner attachment, and a few other things I did not plan on keeping with me all summer, while somewhere in the unit is the tin of Yorkshire Gold loose tea that I wanted, nay, needed! to have with me. Clearly, there was some last-minute frenzied flinging from my hand into any open bin. But, as I am not settling into my own place till September, I will have forgotten all about that tea by the time I see it again. It will then be like unto a gift from the gods.

Even more like such a gift is the help given me by magnificent friends and family who hauled boxes, levitated a piano, and fit everything securely, first into the U-Haul truck, and then into the storage space. Nevertheless, the move was exhausting. Several days passed before I was able to walk upright and speak in complete sentences, although I was inspired to squeak a surprised "eek!" on the first night away from the city. That same inspiration brought Mrs. P-Stands-for-Predator snaking, bloody-minded, out from under the bed. The thing got away, for which we are truly grateful (well, maybe not Mrs. Peel), and sleep since then has been deep and dreamy. I'm feeling better now. We're both exploring the territory. She has a new cat toy, and I've got the Grail: a library card in a new town.

Honey, we're home.

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.

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To Sir, with love

A rose is a rose, even when it's a McCartney rose. It was many years ago today (or some other day) that not-yet-Sir Paul McCartney pulled a perfect rose from a table centerpiece and tossed it into my hands as I was singing Heart's Desire with my Manhattan Transfer colleagues at the Brit Awards. At least, I think the event was the Brits. I was completely focused on Sir P. I confess that I was singing right to (or perhaps even at) him, and he... well, the story is going into my memoir, which I had hoped to write this morning, but it's too darn hot.

On Sir's birthday, June 18th, I am going to be singing a few of his tunes in Beacon, NY. Not too many, though. I don't want to hurt Johnny Mercer or Willie Nelson's feelings. Cole Porter can be pretty touchy, too. With me will be Tex Arnold on the piano, and because we had such a good time in Washington CT last month, my sister Babette will again be joining me in a few songs, along with guitarist (and nephew) Alex Brown.

The Howland Cultural Center is a very interesting venue. Built in the "Norwegian" style in 1872 as a library, and placed on the National Historic Register one hundred years later, it is now a performance space and art gallery. It's geothermally cooled (which cannot be said of my apartment, alas). I hope to see some of you there. If you are planning on coming, please do make your reservation right away, so as to be sure to have a seat.

By the way, the McCartney Rose, shown above, is a hybrid tea rose, introduced in 1995. It is described as a hardy repeating bloomer (like me and my career!) with a strong and intoxicating fragrance. This pleases me. Though a rose by any other name would smell as sweet in Shakespeare's time, most of the cut roses one can buy these days have no perfume at all. One sniffs a bouquet, and there's nothing.

Heavy the heart that, via the nose, encounters the unscented rose.

Deep in the heart of Texas

Do not pass "go". And do not wait. Just trot right over to my friend Paul Overton's blog at Every Day is Awesome. If you tend toward tears when in the presence of beauty and noble actions, have a hanky handy.