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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Swordswoman

                       Rey Alabastro Photography

This is Samantha Catto-Mott, aka Samantha Swords, Champion of Longsword, Harcourt Park International Jousting Tournament, 2013.

If, like me, you looked at this picture and your heart leaped, hail sister! If you are thinking, "oh, playacting", or just wondering what this is all about, let me recommend the documentary Reclaiming the Blade, which is about retrieving the lost traditions of Western martial arts.

I offer my congratulations to Samantha, and a tip of the hat to fight choreographer Normand Beauregard, whose Swashbucking 101 class was a brightness in the gloomy sky of my time in New York city in the 80s. And a deep, deep reverence to legendary sword master Ralph Faulkner, with whom I had a few lessons in the late 1970s in Hollywood, without quite realizing how very lucky I was to do so. "Ah. Left-handed," he said. "That can be an advantage. Take this sword."

So simple even a child

By the time I was standing up in school to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, the straight-arm salute had been dropped, the hand-over-the-heart had been substituted, and the Pledge already included the words "under God" that were added in 1954. As a child, I did not give it much thought. I thought more about horses, and why the teacher was always so mean, and how much time was left before I could go home and read my book.

But I was also thinking about politics - in a little kid sort of way, of course -  and I had ideas. A platform of sorts, or a manifesto, that was something like this:

1. Sometimes it's the grownup who is wrong, and so the child shouldn't always be the one who has to apologize.
2.No hitting. No making fun. No being mean, and no leaving other people out. Some people can catch a ball, some people can spell big words (I got my first concussion in second grade, courtesy of a baseball. Guess which group I was in). But everybody belongs, even when they are different.
3. Share, and be fair. The person who gets to cut the cake into slices chooses last.
4. Stop worrying so much about the Communists. All we have to do is really be what we say we are, the land of the free, the home of the brave, one nation under God, the best country on earth, and then everyone will want to be like us and to be our friends. Even the Communists.

Simple. Now let's have cookies and milk!

It still seems simple, and I don't see much reason to change it. For grownup, read powerful, any kind of powerful. For child, read deprived of power. For Communists, read the name of the current ideological foe, the perceived, or invented, threat, i.e. [your fear inserted here]. The rest is pretty straightforward, I think. But then, I also think Jesus' words are pretty straightforward. Love. Share. Take care of each other. Rejoice when the lost are found.

And, well, hey, kids! Let's try that. Because I don't think we really have, not as a nation, not lately.

There is one more plank in my platform. Parents who promise a pony for good grades should, when excellent report cards are forthcoming, deliver the pony as promised.

I am Laurel Massé, and I approve this message.

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?

 

Greene County ramble

A friend's small house in Greene County, NY has been my temporary home since last Friday afternoon. It has rained here nearly every day. I am surrounded by late-summer lush green foliage, though the Catskill Creek is running very low, and most of the country suffers drought. I read the news about India's massive power failure with sorrow. Eventually, if those who favor decrease in infrastructure spending seize the day, we will probably be experiencing the same sort of thing here. I wonder whether we are mentally equipped to handle it.

I know about the American can-do spirit, and I know most people are generous when there is trouble (yes, even some of those whose wealth affords them the ability to simply go elsewhere). But over time can-do gets diluted by can't-bear-to and don't-care-to. We need look no further than our own New Orleans to see that sometimes people and projects get abandoned.

I lived a year in this same town back in 2000, and in some ways there has been very little change. In a gorgeous part of the state, it was  then lovely, but economically depressed, and it is still lovely and, judging by the number of vacant storefronts and "For Sale" signs, depressed now. We all know that, for most, incomes have not risen. But prices have, by a lot. I remember what I used to pay at the grocery store for the same items I want to buy now. The change is frightening. Of course, that's been going on all along, everywhere I have been, but short-duration stays can capture precise memories. I know where I lived, for instance, when I got my first contact lenses, because we didn't live there long. For the same reason, I know how old I was: ten. Whereas a friend who has always lived in the same town and whose deep roots fill me with longing, often bemoans the lack of sharp markings of time.

Even those who can pinpoint events in the past can't always see the future. I don't know what's going to happen here in Greene County, or in New York State, or in America. But for good things to happen for all, I think we have to junk the idea that one can be utterly self-made and self-sustaining. The idea of "making it" completely on one's own is neither factual enough to be reality nor true enough to be myth. Even when I was driving to and from my acapella dates in the 1990s, I was using roads built by an earlier generation, and performing in spaces constructed by the generation before that. So yeah, I was booking myself, promoting myself, driving myself, and singing all by myself, but it still took a village to get me to the gig. I would like to know that, years down the line, another traveling singer could do what she does and get where she is going because my generation built good roads, strong bridges, a sustainable power grid, a national wireless network. I would like to trust that she could breathe easy because industrial polluting of the air was a thing of the past. That she could eat a dinner of non-toxic food, and drink water that is clean and pure. That, if she suffered from poor health, she could be assured of proper care even through the ups and downs of an artist's income.

I have auto insurance for anything bad that might happen to my trusty Toyota. Tree limbs, trucks, theft, all covered. But currently, I might not be covered if bad things happen to me (unless they happen as a result of being in the car when they happen).

Were I in Israel, though, I would be, because Israel has had universal health care since 1995. I didn't know that till this week, and neither did Mr. Romney, apparently. My Netherlands-born grandfather would have been covered in his homeland starting in 1966 had he not emigrated as a child to the States. Had he been born in Norway, and stayed there, he would have been covered starting in 1912. Many Americans will not be covered for another two years, and then only if the Affordable Care Act is not dismantled.

Since we are wont to assure the world that, in America, "We're #1!", and since Jesus told us repeatedly to take care of even our very "Other" neighbors (Luke 10:29-37), those of us who are waving the American flag in one hand and the Bible in the other have some serious "splennin" to do about why we are not living up to either ideal.

Many sincere folks say "God helps those who help themselves" as they argue for programs cuts that will hurt millions of Americans. They think, when they say it, that they are quoting scripture. But they are not. It's in a fable Aesop wrote, and Benjamin Franklin used it in his Poor Richard's Almanac. It is not in the Bible. In fact, God is pretty much on record in scripture as promising to be with us, helping the helpless, using our hands to do it. So, perhaps our hands need to be more open, and empty, and ready.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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)

 

 

 

 

 

 

La lune

The moon was full a few days ago, and I caught glimpses between buildings as it rose in the sky. It was beautiful, and my heart sang a little song.

But once upon a time, I lived where a winter night's full moon looks like this...

Moonlight in the Adirondacks, by Rockwell Kent

... and shines so loudly that you can hear the light whispering to the snow, and the moon singing her own song.

It is a hard place to live, especially in winter, but you can see why one would try.