• HOME
  • new album
  • PRESS
  • SHOWS & NEWS
  • BUY MUSIC & BOOKS
  • LYRICS
    • Cinematic Way - Lyrics
    • I Left The City Burning - Lyrics
    • Sadder Music - Lyrics
    • Bare Bones - Lyrics
    • Bitter is the new sweet - Lyrics
    • If Love Is A Religion - Lyrics
    • Soft Like Snow - Lyrics
    • Lost & Found on the Road to Nowhere - Lyrics
  • NEWSLETTER
  • BLOG
  • VIDEOS
  • PHOTO GALLERY
  • WORKSHOPS
  • CONTACT
  Orit Shimoni

Light in the Darkness - Hannukah 2020

12/11/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture

A new friend of mine, here in Winnipeg asked me, “what do you do for Hannukah” – It was a text message on my phone and I knew there was no way I could answer it by text, because it’s not a short answer. It never is with me.
I mean, the basics? I could find some local store where I could get a menorah (technically, it’s called a Hannukiah), and some candles for it, I could light them, I could fry up some latkes, eat a doughnut, - that pretty much covers the traditions unless you have a dreidel and someone to spin it with, but that’s more of a kid thing (though I’m sure it’d make a good drinking game if you were into that).
I own a Hannukiah but it is in Berlin, where I lit the candles last year. I was supposed to be there now, on tour. My friend, whose home it got left at, sent me a photo of it, and that made me smile.
I like light. I like candles. I like fried food. So…why don’t I do it? Or why DO I do it sometimes? Why am I always so conflicted about it? To be clear, if I was hanging out with other Jewish people, then of course, I’d be celebrating it, but that’s true for any holiday being celebrated by any people I’d be hanging out with. So the question is more, if I’m alone, or not around other Jewish people, do I bother?
When I lived in Montreal, I had friends over. I made latkes for everyone. I lit the candles. I never knew if to sing the blessings or not. I wanted to celebrate with friends, but it felt performative. Educational. It made me uneasy. But not doing it felt unhospitable. I mean, I have this culture with delicious traditions and beautiful music to share with people. This year of course, that’s not even an option.
Travelling around solo for a decade in communities that are predominantly not celebrating the holidays of my upbringing has meant I often just skip right over them. If there isn’t anyone to celebrate with, what’s the point?
I’ll confess there’s a modicum of loneliness that comes with skipping over holidays. Missing my family. And one of the things that’s always missing is kids. They bring out the glow of every holiday. I miss being a school-teacher for that, seeing the kiddos’ excitement.
But Hannukah in particular gets me going on one particular tenet. An important tenet. We are supposed to, according to tradition, put the candles near a window, so that the outside world can see the lights.
Sounds beautiful, right? Sharing light with the world?
Except – it’s also saying, “Jews live here.” – and in the various places I’ve lived, I’ve never known if it’s a good idea. The views on this are as diverse as the people celebrating the holiday. For some it’s a way of displaying pride in the survival against all odds. “I’ll put this in the window because there were times this would have gotten us deported and killed.” I have thought this, and done this. Celebrating the holiday in Germany meant the world to me. Celebrating the relative safety of my times. Being grateful for that. But obviously, there has been a definite darkening of “my times” and my safety gauge about these matters is not what it was six or seven years ago. For some it’s just a cultural pride in general – displaying diversity, displaying existence in a mosaic of other cultures, through the window for all to see. That’s fair enough, but I’m not proud of my culture per se. I enjoy many aspects of it, but pride is not the right word for me. It’s just another culture among many other beautiful cultures. It’s got beautiful traditions and a complicated history filled with trauma. In fact, the majority of the Jewish holidays commemorate some historical event where someone in charge wanted to violently get rid of Jews, but somehow we survived and still exist today. Amen. Personally, I find it an exhausting motif, even though it is historically accurate, it just doesn’t feel like much of a survival given the ongoing hatred everywhere. It’s been steadily increasing in terrifying ways, through the rise of conspiracy theories that employ old antisemitic tropes. It’s devastating to see that, and see how fast it’s growing globally. Nazis marching around North America - synagogue shootings, Jewish businesses desecrated... How safe am I or my loved ones, really, to display our Jewishness, these days?
Maybe all times are dark and we shine our little light as hard as we can all year round, and that’s what I do metaphorically, so maybe I celebrate Hanukkah every day of every year because I am here, surviving. I’m surviving as a person, I’m surviving as a Jew. So far so good. Terrifying experience, but here I am. Could be better, could be worse.
Maybe I think there’s no point in putting the candles by the window if people don’t know the meaning, the story that’s being celebrated (a tiny rebellion that had no chance of winning against oppression but somehow was successful – and according to the religious, that’s thanks to God’s miracles)…
I don’t know. Maybe the fact that nobody knows anyway means all they would “see” is just some ornate candelabra. Maybe I should stop thinking so much and just do it because it is just an addition of light in the world.
I have no great conclusion here. But I do know this: Diversity should be celebrated, cultures should thrive in the beauty of their traditions, and lights should be illuminated, especially in times of darkness.
And I know this too, late last night, I made myself a few latkes. Out of one potato. Party of one. I couldn’t help it. My soul still wants to celebrate and commemorate, even when my mind is in a constant state of question. And latkes are a lot of work, so – maybe it’s just nice to enjoy the deliciousness of it, which I really have no drive to cook up the rest of the year. Yes, they came out perfect. I make a mean latke!
So from my soul to yours, Happy Hannukah. We have work to do, individually and collectively, to make this world brighter. Let’s do it.
Picture
0 Comments

How to Stay on the Road When the Road is Closed

9/10/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
I have been at the Airbnb for eight days.
I have it until the end of October.
It's lovely, and there's a balcony, so I can take in the coming of autumn and all of its splendour in comfort. And I can work on my book and paint.
I've made one seriously delicious giant pot of soup so far, some smoothies, some toast, and many cups of coffee and tea.
Apparently Neil Young lived in this building in his 20s, but they probably tell you that about every building in Winnipeg.
And though I've taken a break from the news, from doom-scrolling, somehow the challenges of human diversity still seep in, in the form of overhearing neighbours. So far, one was howling about heartbreak all through the night, moaning and singing about it extremely loudly and out of tune. And I overheard the couple below, day-drinking, pontificating loudly, and I grimaced when I overheard their racism. And yesterday the alleged meth-heads on the first floor pulled the fire alarm as a joke, so the tenants all gathered outside until we were allowed to come back in, but no harm done. The new caretaker who introduced himself is into astral travel and crystal healing and likes to tell you about it in the stairwell.
And a lovely young woman just moved in next door and is studying narrative therapy (a subject I am fond of, for obvious reasons) and she is a delight of conversation. We sat on the balcony and chatted for four hours after the fire alarm. It was a welcome break from the not-sure-I-want-to-engage-with-folks, and the nothing-but-me-ness of my interior walls.
Yesterday, before the fire-alarm, I did something I haven't done since I was twenty-four years old. I looked at an empty apartment. There was a vacancy in this same building. I remembered the joy I felt in Montreal, the last time I had done that, the joy in the prospect of filling it with my own things, extensions and expressions of myself, books, more instruments, decorations.
But this time, I did not feel joy. None. Just grief and trepidation. Even if I kept it to a bare minimum, I realised I would need, if not a bed, then a blanket, if not a couch, then a cushion, and a pillow, a plate, cutlery, a broom and cleaning rags, an internet provider, and each thing I thought about felt like a shackle fastening around me, and I panicked.
I don't think I can do this. I am not wired to live that way after a decade of road, and as much as I tried to embrace it in my mind as a new beginning, to think about it as the sensible, reasonable thing to do, to even call myself childish and ridiculous, every cell in my body screamed, "no."
There may be no touring any time soon, but that doesn't mean I have to give up my road-life. And if it means airbnb hopping for a while, even in the same city, to give me that variety and newness of environment and encounter that my soul has gotten so used to, if I am foolishly trying to trick myself into feeling like I am still nomadic, then I will be that fool.
Everything may be different, cut off, scary and surreal, but I can still follow the truth of my heart.

And, dammit, I will.
0 Comments

Still Beautiful

8/20/2020

1 Comment

 
      I bought a mug, a ceramic one, at a small, sunny farmer’s market I wandered my way into.  It’s not that there weren’t plenty of beautiful mugs to choose from where I was staying.  It was that I’d stayed in places where none of the mugs suited me, and I had long-thought about finding one to have as my own and travel with. But of course travelling with a ceramic mug in my suitcase as I clunked it along over long, cobblestone streets and up flights of stairs seemed ridiculous, so I never did get one.  But now I was going to be here for a while.  For the first time in eleven years, I was going to be somewhere for a while.

It was the perfect Orit mug.  Large, robust, but light in weight, earthy and pleasant on the lips, round and shapely for my hand to wrap around and bring closer to me.   The woman I bought it from and I chatted before I selected it from among the others, which were all similar in style, but varied in hue and height, roundness and thickness of body and handle. I asked about her practice as a ceramicist.  And I told her a little of my musical life before everything got stopped.  I told her I hadn’t had a mug of my own in eleven years.   She recommended I perform at the market, and we exchanged contact information.  I sent her a link to my music, and a photo of myself drinking from the mug, the next day.   She replied with great warmth.

And from that day on, I didn’t have to make a choice between all the mugs in the cabinet.  I knew which one was mine. It had a ceremonial solemnity to it.  As if I was silently chanting, “this is my mug,” each morning that I reached for it and filled it with thick, strong coffee, carried it with me from room to room as I flitted between creative tasks, sipped from it as I floated between reflective tasks.  It was my mug.  I had a mug.

In time, though, and not too long, at that, I began noticing that I wanted variety again, and on certain mornings, I would choose a mug not my own, but not without something I can only describe as moral hesitation.   It felt disloyal on some vague and admittedly slightly crazy level.  I mean, it is an inanimate object I was worried I was betraying.  But I also knew that I knew what I wanted each day, and that the morning ‘choosing of the mug’ was part of my nomadic life ritual that used to connect me to myself:   My hand hovering over the choices was like a divining rod, as if I was trying to feel some sacred energy, let pure intuition guide my choice, while my mind offered cerebral justifications.  

There were considerations of feel, touch, mood, colour, style, and sometimes message, if there happened to be writing on it, or a particular image. Sometimes the mugs evoked memories of other mugs from previous life chapters.   It was rarely an immediate choice, or if it was, it was a slow enjoyment of the intentionality of the choice, and the lingering over them was like a meditation on my inner state. 

Now that I had my own mug but still chose another on some days, there was a whole new layer of unfamiliar meaning. Like I was choosing between two philosophies.   Still, there was something in the self-given permission to choose authentically each day, something in the self-forgiveness and the wondering if forgiveness was an appropriate concept here, an acceptance maybe, of my fickleness, or maybe a consideration of celebration of my love for more than one mug.   There was also humour in the ridiculousness of seeing myself put this much thought into the meaning of choosing a drinking vessel.   All I can say is that that mug meant something.  It meant a bunch of things.  It meant choice, ownership, ritual, aesthetic, loyalty, identity.  And the new mug – it meant all those things, but added a new meaning I hadn’t known for so long:  I am staying. There is consistency.  There is stability.

A couple of days ago, the kid who lives where I’ve been staying knocked it over with her elbow while I was standing beside her.  We were cooking supper together, an activity we’ve taken to doing together, which seems to delight us both.  She loves using her creativity by suggesting ingredients. I love seeing her excited creativity, and I love showing her the tips and techniques I’ve learned from my mother and grandmother, and a few really-good-cook boyfriends that I’ve had over the years.  I love feeling like I have acquired wisdom, and a love of teaching.  I love that I’m helping, and not just receiving help.

To be fair, the counter was rather cluttered, and the mug was too close to the edge of it.   When it happened, in my own perception, there wasn’t an iota of drama to it.  There were a million other things happening as it was, pots bubbling on the stove, things to stir, taps to turn on and off, the fan whirring, and it didn’t make a particularly loud noise, though it made enough of one to look down, and there it was.  My mug.  Broken.  And wet coffee grinds splattered out in a star-pattern all around it, next to the blue-sneakered feet of a very sweet kid.

I’ve always said that there are two types of people in this world.  The type that gets mad at you when you break something of theirs, (or at least visibly express their annoyance, disappointment, and disapproval), and there are the types that will go out of their way to make sure you don’t feel bad about it, because they know you already do.   I’ve always said I would never want to have kids with the first type, because kids spill and break things and knowingly making them feel bad for it is terrible.  I remember being a kid and breaking a glass.  It felt terrible.  Even when my mother told me it’s no big deal, I still felt terrible.   So when I saw my broken mug on the floor, my immediate concern and attention was to put my hand on the kid’s arm gently and say, “no big deal,” in a calm, nonchalant and sincere-sounding way, and just get to the mopping of it up.   Not to overplay the “don’t feel bad,” no need for a big educational speech about material things and transitory reality and non-attachment, and certainly not to say, “that was my mug.”  I didn’t know if she knew and I preferred she didn’t.

Those quick calculations of empathy aside, the truth of the matter is that other than recognising that that was the mug that fell and broke – I felt nothing.  It didn’t matter to me at all that it broke.  I had it for a bit, and now I don’t.

And if it symbolised stability, consistency, I am staying, the fact that it now symbolised "ya never know," was fine by me.  It's always been that way.  I have long preferred what comes with the not knowing.   The current global situation has made me consider quitting the road, and if that mug was supposed to be some icon of domesticity, the fact that it broke is more of a reassurance than anything, that I still have plenty of road ahead.   Besides, it was far more interesting, visually, with all its new unpredicted edges.

I’m moving in nine days.  I’ve been here for four months, longer than I’ve stayed anywhere in eleven years of touring full-time. I’m going to be in the new place for a month and a half, and after that, I’m not sure.  I could have brought the mug with me to the new place.  I would have.  And if I really want to have my own mug in the new place, then I can go and buy a new one.  Or maybe I should wait and see what kind of mugs are at the new place.   Maybe they’re all the same in shape and size and colour.  Wouldn’t that be crazy?  Maybe there’ll be all sorts of variety, and I’ll have my top three favourites.   Or maybe instead of buying a mug to bring with me wherever the road will next take me, maybe if my stays are going to be more substantial in length, maybe I should buy a new one each time I arrive somewhere, and leave it behind when I leave, as a gift,  and get another new one for the next place.

I don’t know.  I don’t know anything.  Nobody knows anything anymore.  But I don’t mind that it’s broken. Look. It’s still beautiful.

 
 
 
  

Picture
1 Comment

Music in the most surreal of times...

4/8/2020

0 Comments

 
​ 
My dears,

What a strange time.  I oscillate between a sense of defeat and hope, fear and wonder, despair and appreciation of all forms of beauty.  First - I hope you are all safe and healthy and doing your best to be cautious.  
I am doing alright, though I won't pretend that I'm not panic-stricken and grieving for what feels like the scariest crux my road life has ever been in.  There in no road, now, and road is all I've known for such a long time.  There has not been a "home" for me to hunker down in, at least not one of my own, for over a decade now, and that's miraculously not been much of an issue... until now.
As always, I am extremely lucky and grateful to have been taken in - this time by a wonderful retired couple in Winnipeg, where my last show mid-tour was before the trains got canceled and things got serious.  Frustrating to be in a city with fine musicians and not get to meet them for some local collaboration, but perhaps that will come if things start to ease up.
Not being able to perform, not being able to book more shows because it's impossible to know how long this will last, facing the financial consequences of the cancellations of wonderful shows I'd worked so hard to line up for April and May -  including what was to be my first U.S. tour, a follow-up to the Winter tour I got to do with Dan Bern across Canada just over a month ago - it has been devastating.  I am trying not to look too far into the future, and, as I think all of us are trying our best to do, in processing the constantly nerve wracking and all-encompassing adjustments every day, if not every hour, to just stay present and do the best with what we've got.
I have a brand new album, my tenth album, which I was excited to tour with and start mailing out to radio, reviewers and fans - but for now I'm happy to tell you it's out in the great big digital world, and if you're able to buy it, it would help my cause, both pragmatically and spiritually, an awful lot.  It's an album I'm very proud of that took four years to make, and has absolutely killer musicians on it from Toronto (and one from Vancouver!)
I have, as well, a brand new music video for the title track, Strange and Beautiful Things, which I animated myself with very rudimentary skills and resources, as one of the first 'projects' of things I can try to teach myself while stuck. 
And I've been writing. What else does a gal like me do?
A few new songs, 6 or 7 by now, written in the context of this bizarre and astounding isolation and being forced to stay put. I'm including one here for you to hear, and there are more of them posted on facebook, instagram, and youtube.
I'll be releasing them as some kind of album on bandcamp eventually ,as I'm also teaching myself some very basic recording skills with a new microphone for my laptop.
It is a lot to process, for each of us it means something different, but for all of us it's overwhelming to try to understand, in all its implications, and deal with, with no certainty of duration.
But we are strong, us humans - and incredibly creative and resilient and there are examples all around of how people are doing their best to make the best.
And so am I.  And the one thing that's always been there for me is song, so it is song, and more song, that I continue to share with you.
With love and appreciation to you, and with hopes of the good things renewing,
Peace,
- Orit
0 Comments

First UK Tour: stole my heart

7/5/2019

0 Comments

 
The other night, in Inverness, my third last gig of the tour, gathered outside at the cobblestoned court-yard a man said to me, “thank you for reminding us who we are,” which is perhaps the finest compliment a songwriter can receive. I was already moved and emotion-filled when another man, an older man-of-drink of the wise and poetic variety, began to speak deep and soulful truths to me. “But you already know all this,” he said, and the very last thing he said to me was, “but when you can laugh and cry at the same time, that’s when you know you are in a deep state of truth.” 
And then the very next night, standing at the sunset beach of Nairn, the northern most point of the tour, (where it doesn’t get dark all the way at night this time of year,) after a campfire and good company, I stood to look at the water and both cried and laughed. How does one hold on to eternity? How does one hold on to immense experience of intense encounters? One can’t. At least not all of it and not forever. I can continue to attempt to put everything into song, but I can’t hold all of it. And then I too will be gone one day. And perhaps ALL of this will be too. To face time like that, it made me both laugh and cry.
Right then. How do you sum up something so incredible? The word EPIC comes to mind, and though it’s used way too often, which renders it less potent a word, it really is the best word for it, three weeks of a very unique adventure journey that felt worthy of Homerian verse, with mythical-seeming characters, ancient landscapes and castles, and of course, a chariot/caravan/camper called The Moose.
One thing I didn’t expect going into this UK tour was being reminded of a huge part of my identity’s origins. My birthplace was Oxford, England, and I lived there until I was three, so maybe that has something to do with the profound feeling of a homecoming, in the details of certain sights, smells and flavours, (biscuits, Ribena, and cucumber face lotion from Boots to name a few), or maybe it’s just the fact that touring my music in the UK has been something I’ve wanted to do for so long and now I finally did - there is deep satisfaction in that, to be sure. But I think it has more to do with a way-deeper-than-I-realised cultural inheritance I’ve been walking around with this whole time, only to have it awoken and invoked into a more heightened consciousness. From Shakespeare, to Monty Python, to Scottish comedians I’ve liked, to the ubiquity of good black tea, to the folk songs I’ve loved and known through phases of my musical soul-searching (Rob mentioned that the heathers start to bloom later in August, and my brain immediately sang “All around the blooming heather, will you go lassie go,”; My friend put “Caledonia” on a mix-tape for me when I first left home at seventeen and it still makes me cry whenever I hear it, and one of my most significant relationships, which also shaped my musical tastes profoundly, introduced me to Dick Gaughan,) maybe it’s the connection to the war, which everyone in the UK still talks about, and the ancientness of the stones here, which reminds me of the ancientness of Jerusalem where I also have roots. All I know is that I can’t remember feeling this kind of profound internal reshuffling caused by external landscapes and sounds and accents and smiling faces, enhanced by the very warm reception me and my songs have received here. Add to that the ridiculous amount of side-splitting laugher I have gotten to share with Rob Ellen and Hamish Roberts in the caravan, this was a indeed an adventure of epic proportions.
You have got me by the heart and soul, UK, new friends and landscapes. I don’t know how to come down from this except for to continue in my work and make sure I return again. So for now, I wish you all great love and give you my most heartfelt thanks. Rob Ellen, you are a legend and a delight of a music-loving man, Hamish Roberts, you are an exquisite and humble talent, a good friend and a keen, intelligent, and sensitive human being. I feel blessed beyond words. Thank you for sharing yourselves and this chapter of road with me.
And if any of you are in Montreal, I am playing a show at Grumpy’s Bar tonight.
With so much love for all of you, dear friends, 
Orit 
#MyRoadLife
0 Comments

Just "to be" in Jerusalem

4/24/2019

2 Comments

 
Long before I had any political or historical awareness of the categories I was born into quite by accident, I lived and played here, learned to read and write, sang songs, climbed trees, rode my little tricycle, loved my family. Then we moved to Canada. 
I returned after high school to study at the university, became a teacher, attempted domestic love, dreamed of a family of my own, watched the rise of violence and hatred and the demise of hope unfold in ugly and terrifying chaos.
I visited a few times after leaving, tearful, traumatised, apologetic in a thousand directions, understanding with desperation that I was inevitably connected, bound and sentimental.
But sometimes, just sometimes, maybe it's ok to allow ourselves to just take a break from the categories and implications and just be.
A week in Jerusalem, a warm visit with family. Permission to get neither literary nor political about it, I granted to myself, most likely out of "intensity- fatigue"... it wasn't all that conscious a decision.
If we have a conscience in this world, given its current state, we're in for a strenuous and emotional ride, hard social work, and exhausting evaluation and criticism. 
For once, I took a break, in the most intense place I know. I learned that I could and I should, at least once, give myself that permission, and yes, I am privileged to have been able to. I am aware.
Jerusalem, you complicated beast of a city, through a lens of gentle simplicity, you have quite a modest beauty. I cherished this visit in ways only my former self can truly understand. On some very important level, our human trivialities and tragedies mean nothing to your hills and valleys. Eternity is a non judgmental witness through which we all pass very fleetingly.
2 Comments

Detachment and Perfectionism

10/10/2018

0 Comments

 

​I saw a quick video presentation about some type of meditation, the name of which I can’t recall, but it had to do with observing how stimulus affects our bodily sensations, to become aware of the sensations, that we react in stress not to the stimulus itself but to the sensations that it causes in our body.  Interesting.  As someone who has moderate to severe physical reactions to or manifestations of anxiety, this was immediately compelling.  If I can observe and “control” my bodily sensations, can I react less stressfully to what I witness and experience?

The idea is to observe ourselves. That, I do plenty, but somehow, even after at least 36 years of intense self-awareness, (and self judgment, sometimes good sometimes bad), it appears that there are layers I am still uncovering, ever new insights, or deeper continuations of previous ones, or ones that are tangentially connected to previous ones, and I have much to learn still about myself, or at least put into action.  This is both daunting and rewarding, rewarding because that means there is still hope for improvement, and daunting because I feel so far from my goal of inner-balance, and with ever-less time to achieve it.  The problem isn’t just my reaction to external stress-causing stimulus. The problem is inner conflict.

A lot of what I’m observing has to do with fluctuating self-esteem, or perhaps self-love versus self-loathing.  I am almost always aware of myself and though this has benefits, it is also somehow exhausting, because it is always awareness that comes with judgment, or at least self-doubt.  When I hear myself speak, see myself move, my loveableness, for lack of a better term, seems to always be in a state of question.   I never last too long in a state of self-admiration without it quickly being usurped or at least overlapped by shame, shame for the self-admiration.  When I am excited about my accomplishments, or have a surge of confidence, there is some kind of fear involved in it, as if I am catching myself talking too loudly, or that I know it’s not going to last very long.  And when I’m not in a state of self-admiration, then I’m feeling the shame of low self worth. And then I am both ashamed of my low worth, and ashamed of feeling unworthy because rationally I know I am not and therefore either side, worthy or unworthy, is self-indulgent.  What I would like to be, for the most part, is neutral.

 I think this is where the word detachment comes in, though in the video about meditation it had more to do with detachment from external stimulus, moving through life remembering it is possible to be less affected.  But what concerns me equally, is not just detachment from disturbing (and I suppose, in turn, pleasing) stimulus, but also from judgment.  I doubt the possibility of this, since I am so concerned with ethics.  How can we be good if we can’t judge ourselves (and others) in the quest to determine what is good?  How can we be both detached and good?  How can we be both detached and meaningful, effective, inspiring?   Is detachment just a space we have to visit in between bouts of meaning?

Today I had a memory of receiving a doll for what must have been my fourth birthday.  It was a plastic baby, with curly golden synthetic hair, eyes with eyelids that closed when the doll was horizontal, and opened when it was upright, and when a button, the only button on it, was pressed, it would make the following sound: “Mama. Mama.  Aaaaaaaaaaaaah. Mama.”   The “Aaaaaaaaah” rose in pitch until it peaked in the middle of its duration and then lowered again, almost an arpeggio, but plastic, nasal, muffled, and with the creepiness of all sound-producing mechanical toys, though the creepiness I am only attaching in retrospect. In the moment, I loved it. I was astounded by it.  I couldn’t believe I got a baby that actually cried for my birthday. I loved babies, I loved pretending I was a Mama, and I loved babies that cried because I loved soothing them.  Even by four years old I was told I was good with babies.  Real ones.  But to have my own, a plastic one would have to suffice, so the more “realistic” the better.
I remember turning the doll over and lifting the shirt to examine the back, wanting to figure out how it made sound.  I discovered the battery hatch, and tried opening it.  It blew my little-kid mind that this thing could make noise.   It felt like magic but I knew it wasn’t and I was determined to understand the mechanism.

And I distinctly remember that as I gazed down with intent at the plastic back, I heard my father remark to my mother with pride and a smile you could discern from hearing, that wasn’t it amazing how curious I was, and look how concentrated my expression was, and isn’t it neat the way I like to figure stuff out.  I can distinctly remember swelling with a kind of pride at the compliment, and staying an extra few minutes longer on fiddling with the mechanism because now I knew that doing so made me appear smart, and good somehow.  I have shame over the pride I felt back then, or if shame is too strong a word, a definite discomfort in the sensations that the awareness of praise made me feel.  I had done something naturally, but now, it having been praised, it could no longer ever be purely natural.  This is of definite current interest to me as it may well pertain to the surges of discomfort I have developed as a performer after receiving very positive public reviews.  What was naturally good about me now had to be maintained and began to feel fraudulent, though it wasn’t.  Is this imposter syndrome?

Perhaps that is my first distinct memory of being observed, noticed, and praised.  This was different than being told the picture I drew was nice, or that I sang a song well, or said something smart.  This was an overhearing.  Maybe the point I was digesting was that even when I’m not told I’m good, I might still be observed and commented upon.  Others whose judgment mattered to me might talk about me.  Again, as a public performer, this has now become a known fact. They do.

I can honestly say that pretty much since then, four years old examining a talking doll, when I am not alone, or just with a friend I can lose myself with, when there are others present, I have conducted myself with a keen sense that I am making an impression on whoever sees or hears me, and I always want it to be good.    I suspect that we are all like that.  We are all keenly aware that our gestures and utterances, our appearance and actions are being observed, possibly commented on, and judged.   And if I am uncomfortable when I think I have made a clumsy impression, I have to confess that I am equally uncomfortable when I think I have been good or special and it has gone unnoticed.

This seems bottomless.  No matter how many times I have “proven” that I am smart, beautiful, and kind, or talented, I want to keep making that impression, because I am never sure for long that it’s true and there are other, countering, nagging notions of self that either tell me the opposite, or perhaps even worse, tell me that none of it matters anyway.

This is ego.  This is self esteem coupled with existential angst. This is learning to accept that others’ judgments are a legitimate factor to it because it is others’ values that shape our own sense of what kind of self we want to be, and that, therefore, caring what other people think is not a character flaw.  I do not have to feel ashamed about caring about others’ opinions of me.  We are constantly told not to be bothered with what other people think, but what other people think is a major contributor, the most significant contributor to our sense of self and what’s good, bad, right and wrong.   Therefore, it is discerning whose judgments are worthy and of interest to us that is perhaps where the emphasis should lie.   And in order to discern this, we must, paradoxically almost, make up our own set of values by picking and choosing the values around us that resonate with us the most.  For this, perhaps, temporary, periodic detachment is necessary.

It is easier said than done.  Even when we know and repeatedly articulate our moral and functional and aesthetic aspirations, which we have gradually narrowed down from all the voices that society hoists on us, it is never fully possibly to shake off the voices we already know we don’t agree with.  They cause us doubt.  They cause us inner-conflict.  Maybe some people have more certainty than I do, and maybe I have more than I think, as it is obvious by my life actions and decisions that certain values don’t actually interest me, (materialism, fashionableness, keeping up with technology, for example,) and there is some traceable line of behaviour that could dictate a reasonable biography of my moral, functional and aesthetic existence that maybe on the outside doesn’t look as chaotic as it feels on the inside.

Alignment, is what I seek. Consistency of character. Consistency of behaviour that is in line, aligned with my moral and aesthetic articulations and aspirations. I want to be the person I want to be.  (That there are conflicting notions within me about what that looks like has certainly been a consistent challenge). And I would like to at least shed the sense of shame I feel in the moments of pride when I have accomplished exactly this.  And I would like to hold on to my knowing for longer than I seem to be able to before casting everything into doubt again and weighing it against countering voices.  Moral vigilance through constant questioning is, I think, a virtue. But being in tune with a knowing self, an intuitive centre, and a bold and brave pursuer of action based on this knowing is also a virtue.

 Whose voices are within me that make me cower or feel guilt over being good? Is there a force, outside or within me, that is making me less than I can be because it is making me afraid of self actualisation?  Was it former bullies or abusive partnerships that cut me down when I did well?  And whose standards of perfection am I striving for?  I am not at my full potential, that much I know.  But am I actually good?  And can I find a balance between accepting with humble and unashamed pride that I am good and worthy, and still identify my shortcomings so that I can aspire to do and be better?  And where does detachment fit into this?  Is it simply the giving myself breaks from concern over my worth? Is neutrality of existence possible, and is it even something to strive for when the world needs and begs for righteousness?  Does one have to choose when and from what to be detached, and when and to what to be attached to, (knowing of course, we are mortal beings and it all ends in dust).

I looked up the word perfectionism yesterday and found two totally different streams.  One was from philosophy, the other, psychology.  The psychology is only of interest (to me)  in as far as it points out the reasons for neurotic and somatic (bodily) discomfort that such a state-of-being might produce.  The philosophy is, of course, more exciting to read about and identify with.   The philosophy of perfectionism doesn’t have a down-side.   It only differentiates between the various definitions of perfection and whether it is intrinsic or extrinsic.

So where to from here?

Perfectionism and Detachment.   Is it like trying to figure out what you want but not caring if you get it? Is detachment passive and perfectionism active? Is it trying to succeed in life based on the inherited and gradually selected standards of others, but not caring if they perceive your success, or about what you and “they” might think if you fail to achieve it?

Have I articulated my moral, aesthetic and functional wants, hopes, dreams, and needs?   How close have I come to achieving those which I have articulated?  Where have I failed, and how, and why? How much was in my control? Who are the people whose judgment matters to me, and why?  Perhaps these are the key questions I must venture to answer, for these are the questions and answers of carving and pursuing DIRECTION.  And though I fully understand that one’s intended direction is more linear than the path that ends up being traveled, (mostly because of obstacles, internal and external, or surprises that tweak or change the goal,) perhaps it is still important to answer those questions, check in with them from time to time.  For even though one could trace a path with moral, aesthetic and functional markers of personal consistency, I have been feeling rather haphazard, conflicted, and aimless.  It feels like most of what I have accomplished has been equal part my own work and some external force, like inspiration and fate.

How do I feel about who I am, who I have become, what I have said and done?  How close have I come to my original goals of selfhood and what are my goals now?  Are my goals now based on my genuine value-selection or are they still cluttered with the wrong people’s expectations?   Whose approval do I seek, what does it matter if I get it or don’t get it, and what processes have I put in place or still need to, in order to come closer to actualise my intended self?
​
Surely, neutrality is not a preferred state of being, for I do not believe in asceticism and detachment as a goal within itself – how can we contribute to the world around us from such a state?  But we need to seek neutrality still, as a space we need to have within our reach, a sphere of silence, so that we can shake loose the confusion of the wrong voices around and within us, and re-emerge not neutral at all, but with the life-force of our authentic selves, reaching, aspiring, in action.
0 Comments

On Sharing Hard Truths

7/23/2018

0 Comments

 
Last week at gig, I performed the hardest song I’ve ever performed in my life and didn’t think I’d make it through the song, or the rest of my show, for that matter.   I had been debating for a long time whether I should sing it in front of people or not, and I chose that night to do it because there were friends of mine there who have known me from the beginning of my music life, some of whom I thought would appreciate the song for its content, and some who know my work well enough to see that I had ‘attempted’ something bolder.    I wrote it sometime last year because something, a conversation, had triggered it and I couldn’t carry it without expressing it, at least on to a piece of paper at first, if nothing else.
I wrote it, and it’s gruesome, but the events it is about were.  I didn’t add or remove any truth.  I wrote it because it happened.  And I didn’t know if it made any sense at all to share it as a song, but I felt compelled to in order to humanise, to personalise, to bring to light the stories that are personal within the otherwise political or social.  To cry out.
I get nervous before a lot of my shows anyway, and sometimes for the first few songs, until I get into the right ‘space’ I am still managing the adrenaline in me, which means a pounding heart and shaking legs, and I’ve been that way for long enough to know I just have to keep going until I’m comfortable.  So, the other night, after some deep exhalations, I did one song, felt steady enough through it and went right into this song.  I said, “I’m just going to get this over with now,” and my friend Suzanne who was in audience said she knew it was going to be an intense one.
I have never felt my body do what it did when I was singing it. It was so forceful I thought I would collapse when the song was through.  My hands shook, my arms shook, my legs shook, my heart pounded, my body got hot, a hundred times more than any nervousness I have ever felt before on stage.   I have learned that you can put 100% of the emotion of the lyrics into a performance, but that for my own survival as a constant performer, I don’t always do this.   But with this song, there is no way not to.  There is no way to sing it and not feel every single feeling that comes with it.
The song is the conflation of two true stories about terrorist attacks. The song is about the tragedy of it but also the trauma of witnessing.   You can rationalise the statistical improbability of violence happening to you, and you certainly should, but there are too many people on this planet walking around with deep trauma, and as much as there is love and friendship and generosity and hospitality out there, there is, it seems to me, a growing dread and fear of more and more explosively violent events.  It is right to try to manage this fear through reason.  But it is also right, I think, to admit that it’s there.
I share this for all the victims of violence out there, with love and the understanding that you can analyse social and political ills all you want, but the human experience that is unlucky enough to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, goes far beyond these analyses. 
May we do our best to overcome fear and choose compassion in as far-reaching a way as possible.

0 Comments

The Ol' Blue Greyhound and Me

7/15/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
  
When people have asked me where I live, I used to joke “on the Greyhound.”   The first time I heard, “Kathy, I said as we boarded the Greyhound in Pittsburgh,” from Simon & Garfunkel’s “America,”  I thought the Greyhound was cool.   The only time I rode it as a child was with my two sisters, from Calgary to Vancouver and back, when we went to visit my grandparents.   On the way back there was an avalanche in Revelstoke, which created a five-hour detour.  When my parents came to the station in Calgary to pick us up and we weren’t there, they went to the counter and asked if there was any information. Apparently, the woman at the counter suggested that we had probably just run away from home.  My poor mother said we weren’t those kinds of kids, and the woman said that all parents think that.  Customer service has never been the strong-point of the Ol’ Blue Chariot, but even at thirteen years old I remember the special feeling I got reading my book in the wee hours of the night, riding through the Rockies in the darkness with my overhead light on.  A soldier across the aisle had asked me what I was reading.  It felt like an adventure.  They even gave out granola bars and juice boxes in those days and showed movies.  That was before they introduced Wi-Fi and everyone had their own device.

I recently found a pencil drawing I made at about seventeen years old.  It was at one of a few art-therapy sessions I was sent to because, well, let’s just say, I was feeling a bit more distraught than usual for a while.  The drawing was faint, but it was of a girl leaning her head against a bus window, with a somewhat blank stare.  I remember the therapist asking me where the girl was going.  “I don’t know,” I said. “She just likes the ride.”  If there is foreshadowing in life, that was surely a moment of it.

Years later, when I decided to go full-time with my music, I confided in a fellow singer-songwriter whom I had met in Toronto.  He laughed and said there was no way I could be a Canadian touring artist without a car and a driver’s license.   That Greyhound Discovery Pass was like the universe saying, “Oh yeah? Watch her!”

Indeed, the best thing that happened to me, as far as I was concerned, was discovering “The Discovery Pass.”   Greyhound used to issue it as an option instead of individual tickets, and I would pay $600 for two months of unlimited Greyhound travel in any direction.   This included the States, but without a proper work-permit to go play shows there, I never did, and I had enough to do in Canada anyway.  This was my ticket, no pun intended, to a full-time music career without an agent, manager and publicist.  All I needed were a handful of guaranty gigs (meaning, agreed-upon pay regardless of turn-out), and the rest could be filled with pass-the-hat or ticket gigs which I could afford to risk because I didn’t have to pay any extra money to travel to them.  I was couch-surfing while touring anyway, and getting pretty hefty favours as far as recordings prices went, so really, those six hundred dollars were my only expense other than pressing CDs, the odd bar of soap and toothpaste, tampons, and the food and drink which, at least once a day, if it was a gig-day, I often didn’t have to pay for anyway.

God, I rode that bus everywhere.  Toronto to Thunder Bay, (21 hours), sometimes with a stop in Sault St. Marie, Thunder Bay to Winnipeg or Saskatoon, from there to Calgary, or Edmonton, and through the various towns of the Okanogan and British Columbia, to Vancouver, to Vancouver Island, and back again.   I became acquainted with the tiniest of stops, the fifty-cent second hand, terrible romance novels in the Wawa corner store pit-stop, the vending machines in North Bay where there was a one-hour wait at five in the morning with nobody working there, the graffiti at the Red Deer station that said “Have no Fear, Have Music,” the convenience store at the stop between Toronto and Ottawa that reeked so badly of moth balls, whatever food you bought there tasted like them too, and the cowboy saloon-style convenience store in the middle of the Rockies on the way to Nelson, that advertised, “now selling Samosas.”

I once had a 24-hour ride that popped me out in Brandon, Manitoba, to play a bar-gig until 1.a.m., only to get on again at 2.am. to head to Alberta, another 24-hour ride.  I once had a four-hour wait between the gig and the 6.am. departure from Golden, B.C., where the gas-station store worker drank vodka and “jammed” with me, playing a bucket as a drum while I sang some Johnny Cash song at his request.  I would play a gig in Peterborough, and then hop on at 4.am. and continue on to Toronto for a matinee show the next say.  I rolled around through the Okanogan, and had a six hour wait in Kelowna, even though I was only one hour away from Penticton where I needed to be.    I rode it to the States and back twice, (boarder patrol on a Greyhound is quite a circus, let me tell you).     Some have asked if I feel safe on it, especially after that horrific and infamous beheading, but I have lived in Jerusalem where, for a period, buses were blowing up or getting shot at every few days, so one freak occurrence in Canada wasn’t going to phase me.

I’ve seen sunrises and sunsets over mountains, prairies and forests, thunderstorms and blizzards, all through Greyhound bus windows.  I have heard snippets of hundreds of strange conversations about family feuds, prison, drugs, reunions and heartbreaks. I’ve heard people talking to their loved ones on their cell phones, and at annoying times, listening to their music too loudly through headphones. I’ve heard babies cry and get comforted, seen people be helpful or pretend to be sleeping so they wouldn’t have to give up the seat next to theirs.   I’ve stood and smoked cigarettes in pit-stop parking lots, in silence with the other smokers, or in smokers’ conversations where for six or seven minutes you share some life-story and then get back on the bus to your seats never to meet again    I’ve squatted over moving toilets after too much coffee and pumped liberal amounts of sanitising gel onto my hands, can conjure the smell of the cleaner all the buses use. The smell lives in some part of my brain like it’s as common as the smell of a rose. I’ve stepped over many pairs of legs of sleeping passengers who spread across the aisle for something akin to comfort, and I have heard the variations of dozens of bus-drivers giving their welcome-aboard spiel, some with good senses of humour, some with bad ones, and some with none at all.  One driver sang John Prine songs into the announcement microphone as we arrived into each stop.

The Greyhound may be crazy, but it was kind of my one consistent home.  For someone who travels pretty much full time, I still get anxious about each journey:  The packing, the prepping, the timing of getting to the station on time, the worry over whether they’ll let me bring the guitar on board rather than put it with the luggage, which, during winter means it’s in a freezing cold place for hours, on top of bouncing around with suitcases.  I was once told by a station official that I couldn’t bring it on board because it could potentially be used as a weapon.  I looked at her like it was obviously crazy and she said “if you don’t believe me I can show you the policy in writing.”  Those Greyhound workers in the stations can be awfully power-trippy and nonsensical.   I just got on the bus with the guitar anyway.  The Greyhound is one of the only places where I am actually defiant, though I’m smartly quiet about it.   I worry about whether my luggage is overweight and whether I’ll be charged for it, or if they’ll notice that I have one too many carry-ons.   And there is always some anxiety about shifting scenery, leaving whomever I’ve been staying with and arriving in the next place with the next set of people.  

But when I board the bus and nestle into my seat, (preferably a window seat so there is something to lean on, and preferably, two seats to myself which makes all the difference in the world to comfort), there is this incredible wave of relief. I’m on, I’m seated, and now I can just sit there and not worry about anything until the ride is over.  It’s out of my hands, and that is a surprisingly glorious feeling.  The letting go of control for a set number of hours has its own therapeutic value.

When I’m not on the Greyhound, except for the very rare times I am house-sitting alone, I am always around people, a guest in their space.  There is always conversation, and a lot of it.  These conversations are intense experiences of human encounter and they give me much to think about, to ponder and philosophise, and when I’m going from show to show and home to home, there is often not enough time to process it.    Tour-exhaustion has as much to do with this as it does with performance fatigue. Those several-hour stretches on the bus have been for me like a kind of sanctuary, where the turning wheels below me allow my mind to do the same without any interruption.   There ain’t nothing like staring out a window for hours with scenery rolling by to clear the mind.

The pattern is almost always the same. I put the guitar in the overhead compartment, placing my to-go mug of coffee on the seat, (and often spilling some, I’ve learned to bring napkins).  My carry-on goes by my feet, my purse as a kind of pillow.   I watch as other people board and let my mind invent little stories about each one.   I pray nobody sits beside me so I will have more room.  I settle in and get comfortable, and I use that term very loosely. Over time I have nearly perfected the as-close-to-comfortable-as-one-can-get techniques.  It is as though Greyhound seats were designed by a torture-specialist.  No matter how you try to position yourself for something akin to sleep, there is always, always something jabbing you somewhere.  I have a travel neck-pillow that I move from neck to back and even under my butt sometimes, all in the efforts to prevent pain in the various parts of my body that, over the years, have begun to complain more. And I always bring an extra two sweaters to try and soften the hard bits that dig into me, the arm-rest, or the window-sill.

I have also nearly perfected my bus snacks, which is no small feat when you’ve discovered, twenty years too late, that you have always had a wheat allergy.  It’s just as well, since the only stops for food the bus makes are in fast food joints, or Tim Horton's, (I won’t pretend I don’t miss the doughnuts, though). The only restaurants are the Husky station in Golden, B.C. and the diner in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, where there’s a statue of Spock from Star Trek, and the greasiest food I’ve ever had in my life.   Sure, the odd treat is ok, but if you spend as much time on the Greyhound as I have, you don’t really want to partake in those indulgences lest you end up with premature heart disease.  Those who have seen me off to the station have likely seen me prepare my feast of a dozen rice-cake and peanut butter sandwiches.  Those things would survive an apocalypse.  Their only downside is that they leave you looking like you’ve been through some kind of Styrofoam explosion.

And so, as prepared as can be, I wait for the bus to start rolling.  I wait for the announcements to come and go, and then I lean my head against the window and fall into something like sleep.  It is not quite sleep. It is almost more like a meditation.  It feels very much like I enter some other layer of consciousness where the thoughts in my head sort themselves out without any direction from me.  It feels like a clearing of conversational debris, a sweeping, an unconscious synthesising. All the worries tumble around and, one by one, they leave and I come out of it feeling mentally refreshed and ready to think about something in a focused way.  When I come to, or wake up, I usually take out my little laptop. 

In the beginning there was never Wi-Fi on the buses, so I would either listen to tracks I was working on, or write long journal entries, poems and sometimes songs.  I would think about where I had been, I would plan what to say at my next show, I would daydream about my future and try to sort out what felt unresolved in my past.  I would try to find meaning in the short-term memories of where I had just been, and in the long-term memories that rose in me out of a subconscious suggestion of relevance.  Rolling along on the Trans Canada Highway seemed to be the perfect place to do this because it was like the concretisation of the metaphor of being on life’s journey.  I was on the road, but really, I was, in those moments and hours, on the actual road.

I had, long ago, on a bus from Ottawa to Montreal, written a spoken-word piece that never saw the light of day. The notebook it was in got lost and I was never quite able to remember it, but it went something like this:
 
“On the bus from North Bay to Alberta,
Or from Antwerp to Berlin,
I’m not in the place I’m going to
nor where I have just been,
The highway stretching out for miles
Just kind of sets me free,
Because I am just now,
But too, just was, and soon will be.
When I die, just spread my ashes where the cargo loads,
So I don’t have to choose a place, I’ll just stay on the roads.”

 
A few years ago, I went with my Discovery Pass to the counter in order to get my luggage tag.  The guy said, very nonchalantly, “oh we’re not doing those anymore after October.”   He had no idea who he was saying that too, and I had no idea what I was going to do.    It was around that time I found out that Via Rail had an on-board entertainment program, which meant if I got accepted, I could travel Toronto to Vancouver, or Montreal to Halifax, for free in exchange for performing for the passengers.  I have been a Via performer ever since, which has been an incredible experience but has also meant I don’t stop in as many towns along the way.   Thunder Bay, which was at least a once-a-year stop, or Brandon, or even Winnipeg, just don’t end up happening anymore.    But I’ve still been riding Ol’ Blue all over Alberta and British Columbia, still living the humble dream of sharing my songs and stories with the people of Canada, still able to afford it despite the measly income playing these shows provides.

And now I have read that come this October, the Greyhound will discontinue altogether from Saskatchewan Westward.    Even if I learn how to drive, I won’t realistically be able to go from never having driven to suddenly driving through the Rockies alone, and how will I be able to afford a car, and gas, and insurance?  I would have to make a lot more money doing what I do, for that scenario or for hiring a driver, and who in their right mind would come along on my never-ending tour?   At a time where venues are paying less if not closing down altogether, and people are paying for music less because they can download it illegally or stream it, riding the Greyhound was my answer to the dire financial reality of music-as-income.   With the bus gone, my touring survival remains to be seen.

But where there’s a will, there’s a way.  I’ve had many obstacles before and persevered, and so I am very curious to see what the next chapter brings.  But one thing is for sure.  The Greyhound is as imprinted on my ass as it is in my heart and mind.  This is the end of an era, and I shall look back on it with fond memories of hours and hours and years and years, during which my little determined self said, “Yes, I can do this. Yes, I WILL do this,” all while staring out a window, taking in that one-and-only smell of Greyhound disinfectant.  
 
 

0 Comments

Home is Where the Stories Are

3/6/2018

1 Comment

 
Picture
Gillian Snider’s home was not the first I entered in my travels, but its warmth and colours and the stories its walls told spoke so deeply to me, it was the first I sat down in to write about houses.   I had arrived that day by Greyhound bus on a cross-Canada tour, pulled my giant rolling suitcase, which I lived out of, over gravelly back-streets, with one wheel broken and my guitar case slung over my shoulder, along with my purse which was heavy with my laptop.  Gillian wouldn’t be home from work for another few hours. We had not yet met.  A bar owner in Thunder Bay named Sheila, who hosted several touring musicians, had told me that if I was going to Saskatoon I should ask Gillian if I could play a house concert.  I had followed up on her advice, and now here I was. 
Gillian had instructed me to let myself in and to say the dogs’ names, Dante and Clyde, so they might stop barking when I came through the door.  They did not bark at all, as it turned out.  They were gigantic and gorgeous, the one black and the other mottled.  I said hello to both of them and reached out my arm, low so as not to be threatening, so they could come and lick my hand.  Their friendly tail-wagging welcome made me glad.  It was uncomplicated, as far as weary arrivals go. No talking necessary.
I was relieved to close the door behind me and free myself from my coat and my luggage and boots.  I made myself a cup of tea with the red, old-fashioned kettle that was there on the stove.  The tea was easy to find in the white wooden cupboards, as were the mugs. I selected a dark ceramic one, noting that the choosing of a mug was always something I did with great consideration.  The fridge, where I looked for milk for my tea, was packed to the gills.   The kitchen floor was checkered and the whole room was charmingly unmodern.  Not too clean, not too dirty.  Just right.
The dogs settled in the living room, flopped down on the large, soft couches.  There were two cats, I was told, but they had not revealed themselves yet.  The room was dim and full of pet hair. There were dark, evocative paintings on the wall, and there was a blue rug beneath the old-fashioned trunk-turned-coffee table.  Plants with outstretched vines, a piano, guitar, accordion, and a music stand all stood perfectly positioned on the wooden floor.  It looked like a scene from a play that was about to begin, and was indeed, where I would be playing.
The adjacent dining room was brighter.  A big, oval wooden table stood at its centre, taking up most of the room, and there was a large book-case taking up most of the far wall, brimming over with books of all sorts, some new and some tattered and old, titles that beckoned me to stay longer than I could.   A window overlooked the back yard, and the wall that framed the kitchen doorway had photographs and children’s drawings, knick-knacks, and posters.   There was hardly an empty space to be found.
Everywhere my eyes looked, there was the cluttered accumulation of a family and music life lived.  Still alone, I could almost hear the echoes of children playing and growing, the clunking of dishes, the footsteps.  It was magical.  There was so much presence of life spilling from every saved object and item, and it occurred to me that it had not become this way all at once.  It sank in that many years of living had created this.
 I had not seen a house like this in quite some time.   Most of the places I had been staying in were apartments of students and musicians.  There’d been guitars and records and beer bottles but hardly any books, and certainly no children’s drawings.  This was a house I could relate to, though the ones I grew up in never accumulated quite as many artifacts.  My family had moved every few years and each of our homes gave glimpses only of various family chapters.   This was a house like the ones I used to babysit in when I was earning money in my teenage years.  This was a house like the ones I used to imagine having, the type of house I used to want before the road became my home.  This house was a home.  It evoked both comfort and a twinge of sorrow.
I took out my notebook to describe it because I realised it moved me to witness it in the midst of my transitory travels, and it wasn’t just personal, about what I used to imagine and never got.  It was about my fascination with these units of shelter where babies are raised thinking it is their whole universe, that children run in and out of with muddy shoes and gushing stories, between school and friends and activities, then teenagers, then adults returning for visits.   It was about the joys and sorrows that the walls contain over years.  It was about the structures that house the meaning of time itself.
After the show, where several people had gathered to listen to my songs, eat snacks from trays and plates and talk about life, when only Gillian and I were left in the kitchen, we began the great conversation, filling each other in on our lives.  We had interesting points of intersection that made us feel like the greatest of friends.  Such different backgrounds, and yet we had had similar experiences, similar losses, similar reactions and thoughts and reflections.  I talked about one day having a home and she talked about one day leaving the one we were standing in.
The shower upstairs, where I went to soothe my tired muscles before going to bed, had a selection of soaps and body washes, shampoos and conditioners and cleansers and razors and I thought about how all the bathrooms I see have different ones, and how people go out and buy these products with their various, coloured packaging and their many scents. I wondered how they made their choices, and how so many of us seldom finish one product before we buy another, wanting a change, but not wanting to let the old one go.  I stood under the hot water and opened a few to smell them, as if I could get to know about life itself if I did.  My senses were grateful for the fragrant information.
I missed my old bathroom collection.   I missed my old books.  I missed the idea that I would one day have a dog or a cat or maybe even children.  But I also knew how much I loved seeing so many homes, and loved that I would see so many more, that I would stand in other kitchens with other interesting people, getting to know myself better as they talked about themselves.  I thought about the fact that I did not want Gillian to leave one day, because I wanted this house to be here forever for me to keep visiting.  I knew it didn’t work that way.  I wondered if I would ever live somewhere again.
I’ve seen the inside of several other fridges since then.  I have spoken to many more people about their lives and mine, while sitting at their dining room table eating their food.  I have stood in many more showers smelling the soap in an effort to absorb who they are into my understanding.   I have pet many more dogs and cats, played with more babies, glanced with fascination at book titles on other people’s shelves, paintings on other people’s walls, and photographs, and drawings.  I have figured out ovens, and faucets, and coffee machines, found the kettle and tea and chosen mugs for myself to drink out of, found the light switches in the dark, fumbling.  I have slept on many beds and couches knowing my home is not a unit of shelter but hundreds of different ones belonging to others, spread over cities and countries and continents. I have left and returned to the same ones, and encountered new ones on each leg of my long journey, and I have been grateful beyond words for the privilege to visit in every single one.
This morning I read that Gillian’s house had a fire.  Thankfully, everyone, including the pets, was rescued. They were told, at first, that the house would have to be demolished, but as it turns out, they will be able to salvage the structure with some rebuilding.  It is too early to tell.  I can’t imagine any of the books survived, and it is heartbreaking to think of the children’s drawings gone, and all those records and plants.  Gillian remains the stoic and positive person I’ve known her to be, grateful that everyone is safe.
It was just today I was sifting through boxes of mine at my parents’ place, wondering why I’ve kept old university essays of mine, old letters and photographs. If I had a home, they might be out on display, but as it stands, they are just filed away.  For the first time in years it occurred to me that I know who I am without these old artifacts, that whatever traces of me I have clung to by hanging on to them, will be with me regardless, integrated into the very fabric of my soul.   
Gillian told me that the firefighters saved the musical instruments after they got all the pets out to safety.  I had offered her my accordion, which sits at a friend’s place in Berlin, in case hers hadn’t survived.  When I found out the instruments were rescued I was not only relieved, I thought it a marvellously poetic gesture on the part of the firefighters.
What matters most? That everyone is safe, yes, but that we can keep playing music, literally and figuratively, is what gives us that crucial vitality, our meaning. The songs we sing and the stories we tell keep every piece of evidence that we have lived lives and we are still thriving.  Artifacts are beautiful to hold and show, to hang on walls, but they disintegrate and fade, are vulnerable to the elements, just as our very bodies are, here for a time, then gone.   If the stories and songs of our lives and loves can survive and still be shared, we have not lost a thing. We are lucky. 
If this house doesn’t make it, I will be visiting Gillian wherever she creates her new home.  Perhaps, one day, she will visit me in mine.  Perhaps I will bring her a book as a gift, or some fragrant soap.  Perhaps we will draw new pictures.
 

 
 
 

1 Comment
<<Previous

    Author

    Orit Shimoni, AKA Little Birdie, is a traveling writer, teacher and musician.

    Archives

    April 2020
    July 2019
    April 2019
    October 2018
    July 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    October 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    March 2017
    October 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    October 2015
    July 2015
    January 2015
    June 2014
    March 2014
    September 2013
    June 2013
    April 2013
    February 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    July 2012
    October 2011
    September 2011
    July 2011

    Categories

    All
    Life On The Road
    Radio Interview

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.