Comments On a Mother’s Legacy

An Old Irish Blessing

May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind always be at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, and rains fall soft upon your fields. And until we meet again, May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

“She’s dying,” the doctors told my grandparents. “There’s only one thing we can try, and we don’t know if it works at all.” My mother was in the hospital again, hanging on through the last of a string of life-threatening illnesses that started with measles at the age of five. My grandparents, who had married and begun their family late in life, were not about to lose their firstborn at this point. My grandfather hired bums from the Bowery in lower New York City to donate blood for the many transfusions she had, and family life had revolved around trips to the hospital for years. This was just one more thing. “Do it,” they said.

And so my mother became a test case for penicillin, even before the clinical trials began in this country. And it was truly a miracle drug. She recovered completely and was never again sickly. For the rest of her life, she would make sure everybody in the room knew she had entered it—and she wasn’t going anywhere.

Until she died, I had forgotten how beautiful my mother once was. At many times she closely resembled Shirley MacLaine, although in the later years she headed in a different direction, fueling her body and brain with decades of cigarettes and a lifelong passion for ho-hoes, ring-dings, cupcakes, chocolate, ice cream, and any kind of pastry slathered in a syrupy glaze. (As a result, her last several years were spent in an intense relationship again with doctors and Coumadin clinics.)

But much earlier, before the kids (me and 2 siblings), she had wanted more from life. My mother was a dreamer, an Aquarius rising who lived more probably in her private world than in the one we saw her in. In the early pictures from college, she posed, pushing out her 1950s busooms and turning out her toes beneath the flared skirts she carried off so well. My mother always had fabulous legs.

Growing up with her, I never had a sense of who she was, and ever since she died, I have heard a myriad of impressions from friends and relatives who experienced her over the course of many years. She was cranky, intimidating, smart, pushy, demanding and over all, funny. She was very funny, but in a mean way. In the nursing home they said they knew she had been a woman who took charge…okay, so everybody sees what they want to.

Her name was Barbara, and she may well become the next legend in a family of women who broke the mold. There was her Aunt Jessie, who took off for Alaska sometime in the 50s (I think) and came back to work as the first female comptroller for the New Yorker Magazine at a time when women were lucky to be secretaries. Jessie got my grandmother a job there as a bookkeeper in the 60s, and they worked daily in the company of Brendan Behan, James Thurber, and Truman Capote, who was then a mail boy.

My mother did not have a big career. She had a big imagination. I remember coming home to find her stripping the walls of my bedroom to paint it deep forest green. I remember her keeping the three of us out of school once when it was raining, and then taking us to see “Half a Sixpence” at a local theatre. I remember later when she tried to get stoned with my boyfriend, and when, newly single, she moved to New York and had a better social life than I did.

I never knew what she was trying to accomplish with her life, and by those standards, I didn’t view her as a success. She even said, at the age of 83, “I think I’ve wasted my life.” She was demented at that point, but having what I thought was a lucid moment.  Silently, I agreed with her. And then she died.

It was a winter day, cold and gray. I drove past a frozen lake with old men and kids ice fishing and stopped to watch them. The emptiness she left behind was huge. After a lifelong battle with this woman who had been so difficult, even in the best of circumstances, it was so strange to not have her as force, pulling against me, and I felt myself sagging.

So I have waited, now that I know I am the front line female in a family that turned out a few rare petunias. And yes, I have my eccentricities, obviously bred in the bone for many generations. I waited for some epiphany to come, some great wisdom on how a life should be lived. I watched the fisherman sit on the ice, waiting for the fish to bite, probably waiting for hours. I couldn’t tell from that distance, and I didn’t wait for them to catch one.

I waited over the next week, for the weight of maturity to find me—and it did, as I took on my mother’s penchant for a whole junk-food diet. But that was not what I was looking for. It has settled on me slowly. Legacy is in the little things.

 Although she was never what you would call a feminist, my mother raised two girls in the seventies, sure in her belief there was nothing we couldn’t do. Her own sense of failure pushed us out into the world with the expectation that we would live the big life she had planned…and on the occasions we did do something, she was sure to be there.

There was no denying that she was weird and inconsistent, and given to wild imaginative rides powered in no part by logic. My mother was about possibility…and miracles.

A Memorial Flyer created by my sister, Nancy

I can see now, looking at the pictures of her youth, that she had great plans, and greater confidence. And the crankiness and bitterness of the later years was still peppered by a belief that life held something more. In the few years before she became really demented and moved to a nursing home, she lived alone, having divorced my father in her fifties to search for that something. And she was bored by life in the quiet senior apartment, but didn’t know what she wanted to do.  “Mom,” I said. “It’s not like there’s some big party bus that’s going to pull up at the door and invite you in.”  “Why not?” she responded.  She had fought so hard to be here, she felt life owed her something.

 And now, two months later after examining her legacy, her voice reverberates through me, a strong presence that will clearly not go away. Her ashes have been sitting on the mantle in a black box, wearing the big white sunglasses she wore in the last months, which we will set free today. She did leave behind her spirit—and a wicked sense of humor, and you can’t confine that.

She had been around the world to many places I have never seen, although I often travel for work. She had moved to Mexico in her 60s for a few months (and then moved back to my couch, but that’s not the point here). She had been to Banft and Brazil, Finland and France, Greece and Germany, and even Orlando. And she had postcards from every one of those places, kept over a lifetime. Pictures that would be hard to find today, but that showed the world as she marched her little feet through it.

And there were the family pictures of her three fair-haired, fair-eyed babies. She made the quintessential 60s mom on the surface. We did seem the perfect family. And we never suspected the depth of her quirks. She had dreams. I will never know what they were, as she didn’t share most of them with me. She did ask me if I thought she could bury the body at the Croton dump for the mystery novel she was writing, but never wrote. And she always wanted to travel—in the end, even a trip to the supermarket was exciting for her.

And then there was that sense of humor. That slice and dice kind of wit that made you laugh while she drew blood. Like when she fought with my sister, who in her twenties was an actress, trying to get established. She did a few small parts in movies, a TV commercial or two, an off-Broadway play—by acting standards, a huge success. So she had this fight with my mother who did something typically Mom and probably mean. My sister recounted to me how she was screaming at Mom, telling her, “that’s it. If you don’t stop, you’ll never get to see me again. The only way you’ll be able to see me is in the movies!” Without a single beat’s pause, my mother replied, “Which row will you be in?”  You can’t write stuff that good.

She had a real flare for language, and color, and was given a bit to drama. She tried a lot of things, writing for a newspaper, real estate, paralegal, and then real estate again. She didn’t stick with any of them, or ever draw much of an income, but she certainly drove my father to great success in the law, where he set precedents and established new practices in corporate litigation. He did very well, and they were able to move to a nice house in the suburbs with their three kids. Her mother was very proud. She asked Mom, “did you ever think you’d have so much at this stage in your life?” And Grandma told me “she gave a typical Barbara answer, ‘I thought I’d have more sooner.’

So Mom was never satisfied, and saw her life as a failure. I think the evidence suggests otherwise. After weeks of looking at the pictures and postcards that catalogued her travels, I have come to one conclusion. You were wrong, Mom. You didn’t waste your life. You lived it, without a roadmap to go by. As Woody Allen once said, “98% of life is just showing up.”  My mother did a lot of showing up.

Most of us are not destined to do big things. Many people will think they are doing big things, but in the end they won’t matter any more than my mother’s accomplishments did.  Hers was a part of a bigger story. She did her part and there will be lots more to tell.

For a while after she died, I had so little to say. The well around me felt huge and confusing. My mother’s off-kilter view of life had for so long tilted my own picture of the world, and I now know it will continue to do so. My love of color came from her. My sense of wanderlust, also from her. Her passing has opened in me a desire to explore the world some more on my own, and in doing so, to pass on her legacy.

Good going Mom!

© Copyright 2013 – Arts Enclave.

A Freelancer’s Brain on Drugs – Adventures in Wonderland (or CVS)

Freelancing is a lifestyle that tends to appeal to people who have a somewhat unstructured approach to life (with the exception of my sister, also a freelance writer who  functions gloriously by organizing the unorganizable.) Anyway, I like the relatively free-form dance of my days, but yesterday I went on an usually light journey, just blowing in the breeze, sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry.

When I awoke yesterday morning and got out of bed, I could tell I was a little stiff, but that’s not unusual. I’ve always had back pain, and the tires to this old car have been on the road awhile, so you have to expect a few squeaks. But attempting to stand, my body folded into the shape of an arrowhead; it wasn’t going no further up or down. This was unusual.

Okay, I knew I was in trouble. Busy day ahead, and just bending to put on my socks was proving to be harder than giving birth. I had two deadlines in the next few days, and another job I would have to leave the house for (which would mean standing on my feet–or more accurately, staring at my feet) for several hours.

I’m searching for solutions. Pain is a powerful motivator, and it comes to me: drugs! Riffling through my old prescription bin in the back of the closet, I come up with an unused migraine prescription of Fioricet with codeine that expired in 2007. It hadn’t helped my headache then, but right now I’m open to any possibility.

Expiration dates are relative. As a medical writer, I know this. The drugs do gradually lose potency, but it takes a lot longer than a year or two—I’m thinking more like a decade or two—and the manufacturers want to make sure you will keep buying  new versions of the drug you think is rotting in your cabinets. I hardly ever throw out drugs. I have enough old drugs to plug a landfill. Popping a 4-year expired Fioricet into my mouth, I am hopeful it will provide some relief so I can actually get my work done today.

Some twenty minutes later, I have to interview a high level administrator from the National MS Society. The interview goes well and I am focused enough to begin to transcribe the tape. I sound okay, not too loopy. And then, after she gives a lengthy response to one of my less-than pointed questions, I hear myself say, “awesome.” Okay, there’s 25 years of credibility shot dead with a rubber arrow. I’m not even sure how she managed to finish the interview without laughing, as it is cracking me up—of course, I may still be loaded.

I realize I should eat something—but what? Ah, salad, with that fresh avocado I bought the other day, the one I have been meticulously nurturing to the perfect point of ripeness. I set it on the windowsill two days ago, and I remember removing it yesterday, afraid I would forget about it and allow it to rot. So where did I move it to? I begin a half-hour avocado hunt, which I relocated yesterday in all sobriety. Now certifiably stoned (awesome!) I am patiently searching even ridiculous places for the aforementioned avocado. I even check the freezer—where it is not. Actually, I am surprisingly qualified to locate it, since I apparently put it in a drawer with the chinese food and pizza menus—and that was when I was straight.

Taking a break from my new friends, the Fioricets, I let the next dose time go by, planning to get a little grocery shopping done. But first, I decide to stop at CVS—for no real reason, except that I have extra bucks, which are like winning the CVS lotto.

After shopping for a while, I am nearly ready to buy a pink doggie dress that says, “I heart tail”.  On a normal day, the only thing I find more obnoxious than the thought of dressing my dog is the idea of putting her in a pink dress, and yet my drug-adled brain is cheerfully ruminating over something that is wrong in so many more ways than just these two.

Luckily, I can hear my right mind screaming from the dark closet I have her locked in. “Go with the dog bed!” she is pleading. “The dog bed!” I can feel my CVS extra bucks burning in my pocket. Do I feel lucky? The dog bed it is—but blue,…or green? Never mind that stupid dog has already demolished three of them, leaving great balls of stuffing all over the house to choke my vacuum (and then deciding she no longer likes the nasty deflated dog bed, she climbs on my furniture). That dog doesn’t deserve anything, especially not my extra bucks. If CVS still had the electric toothbrush in stock that I bought for myself the other day, I would be buying one right now for my son, who probably doesn’t need it any more than the dog needs a dog bed.

So I take the dog bed. No, let’s get two for when she destroys the first one. Logic has no place in my universe at this point.

I head to the supermarket, my original goal, parking instead over by MacDonalds. I never eat at MacDonalds, but the world is a new and bright place today. I manage to walk past the door and pop into TJ Maxx next door to look for a bath mat.  Suddenly I’m shopping for comforter sets, despite the fact that I already have one. This is a quiet shopping frenzy, one that is probably not obvious to the casual observer, but inside my head, I am obsessed, determined to buy something I absolutely don’t need. Luckily for me, almost anything will do, as long as it has a price tag—even a cheap one. So I take a look at the dog beds.

After cruising for a while and looking at a Michael Kors handbag on sale for $199,  I leave without buying anything, probably because I am finally coming down from my high—as evidenced by the return of the pain (dun-dun-duuuhn!). This makes for a sobering and tooth-grinding drive home, at which point I decided to pop another Fioricet for the night. Ahhhhh…This stuff is awesome! (I love to hear my own voice slowly say that word.) Why didn’t I take it when I filled the prescription six years ago?  (And where is that avocado again?) Just for fun, I look up what Fioricet with codeine might be doing to my brain—not that I am in any way concerned. And I find a message board where a bunch of demented people are blathering on in much the same way I have been doing…because they are stoned on Fioricet with codeine (which they all agree does not a damn thing for headaches).

All in all, not a bad day—or to quote myself, awesome.

 

 

The culprit, with the next old bed.

 

 

AUTHOR’S NOTE:  ONE CAVEAT – NEVER TAKE EXPIRED ANTIBIOTICS. ALWAYS GET A NEW PRESCRIPTION TO ENSURE THE PROPER POTENCY.

© Copyright 2013 – Arts Enclave.

PIPPIN on Broadway, UnFosselizing a Classic

There was a big debate in my family last night on the drive back from NYC—was the new Pippin, which we just saw in previews at the Broadway Music Box Theatre—revamped enough from the classic Bob Fosse-directed original 1972 musical to have its own signature?

My sister and I have memories of that magic from when it opened in 1972, and we saw the original cast in the early months of this show with our parents and grandparents. And yesterday we took my son to see it in revival, hoping to recapture some of wonder. So, we were initially mildly disappointed when the opening started without the classic dark screen jazz hands that sets the tone for the whole play….but as the show went on, it had many new delights and much of the old charm. My son, who only saw clips of the original I dug up on Youtube (which now seem dated, even to me), much preferred the new version, and felt it was unique.

The original was literally a hard act to follow.  Aside from being directed by Bob Fosse, it launched the Broadway (and beyond) careers of Ben Vereen, John Rubenstein, and Jill Clayburgh. It also had songs (and especially lyrics) nobody seems to forget by Stephen Schwartz (whose credits also include Godspell and Wicked):

 

And time weaves ribbons of memories

to sweeten life when youth is through

But I would need no memories there

if I could share

my life with you…

TIME and LEGACY are the running themes of this show, which, despite taking place at the time of the Crusades. is THE MEANING OF LIFE. The book by Roger Hirson follows Pippin (the first son of Charlemagne—) through his imaginary journey to find his unique fate. The songs eloquently take you there, where he variously tells you, “ I gotta find my corner of the sky,” and “when you’re extraordinary you got to do extraordinary things.”

The score is so singable that the audience even gets the opportunity to sing along (on one song only). My sister and I sang it the whole way home in the car, with my son now jumping in.

Oh, it’s time to keep living

Time to keep taking from this world we’re given

Time to take time

For Spring will turn to Fall

In just no time at all.

It launched Ben Vereen in a part he continued to play for more than 2 decades, even recovering to dance it again after a devastating car accident. It also starred Jill Clayburgh, in her first major Broadway role, and John Rubenstein, whose face (minus the big afro) you have seen on every TV show, from NCIS to West Wing, Bones, House, Desperate Housewives and Law and Order (and in a film I worked on, Hello I Must Be Going).

And there was Fosse burned into every move. The shape of a Fosse-directed figure, the way it moves, is something completely outside of other dancing styles. Picture the Broadway shows he directed, Sweet Charity, 1966, Pippin, 1972, Liza with a Z, 1972, Chicago, 1975, and Dancin’, 1978, and you see the tipped heads, sharp outlines, curved spines, in-turned feet, and spread fingers jazz hands.

And there were the movies he directed, including Sweet Charity and Cabaret, and the darkly honest self-portrait, All That Jazz. Fosse was a fascinating artist, and a disastrously self-destructive and somewhat explosive personality, who died in 1987 at age 60 of heart attack brought on by years of excess. But he left his mark on shows we still enjoy today, and watching Pippin back in 1972 and again in 2013, it’s clear his fingerprints are as much a part of the show as the music itself.

The moves are still there, although current director Diane Paulus of the American Repertory Theatre in Boston, cleverly introduces the backdrop of circus acrobatics to fill the stage in a way the original couldn’t. The individual chorus players, mostly trained circus performers, move forward to capture the audience attention in wonderful moments that do help put a new stamp on this show—a little Cirque du Soleil on Broadway. Even Andrea Martin (yes, of SCTV) literally gets into the act in a delightful off-the-ground spin as Pippin’s elderly grandmother.

The CAST of the current show is nearly as wonderful as the original. In 1972, I didn’t know who Ben Vereen, John Rubenstein or Jill Clayburgh were, and I’ve never seen these new cast members either, but I think they will go on to big careers just like their predecessors.

Patina Miller has the challenge of playing a lead character who doesn’t even have a name—most of us call him “the Ben Vereen character” after the dancer who is so embedded in this show’s history. She does a great job, and those who never saw Vereen (like my son) will enjoy her performance immensely, but I still hear his delivery and see him dancing beside her on stage. Maybe next time I see the show, I’ll be able to see her more clearly on her own.

The lead character of Pippin is wonderfully played by Matthew James Thomas (formerly Peter Parker in Spiderman on Broadway).  He sings and charms his way through the show, creating a new performance separate from others who have played Pippin before him (William Katt performed the role after Rubenstein left), and brings a new, gentle physicality to role that was previously missing.

And then there’s the role of Catherine, the young(ish) widow. I loved Jill Clayburgh in everything she did (she died much too soon in 2010), and I have powerful memories of her from this show….but…even then, I felt surprised she was in it. She was never a singer, and the numbers she did really called for a strong, sweet voice.  ENTER Rachel Bay Jones, singing beautifully, and bringing a really freshly funny new play on this character that is even more enjoyable.

And yes, whatever they say about the choreography, it has enough of the Fosse feel to hold the uniqueness of the initial physical shape of the show on stage to be very recognizable, while still bringing in a contemporary feel all it’s own with the jaw-dropping acrobatics. It’s not the same, but of the same artistic pedigree (Schwartz and Hirson both worked with Paulus to make changes that would be relevant to today’s audience, and choreographer Chet Walker admittedly worked closely with and under the influence of Bob Fosse).

My one complaint—and it is, to those have loved this show all along, a big one—is that the opening absolutely needs the jazz hands. This may be a new 2013 version of a show that opened 40 years ago, but opening speaks “Pippin” as much as the name, and it feels very flat without it.

SPOILER: The opening to the original Pippin, which is now in revival on Broadway.

But the new Pippin still has Magic to Do.  Listen to the original cast album, or watch the original opening here, if you want to see how it was, although you may prefer to see it as it is, without any shadows of the past performances.  Either way, if you go to one show in your lifetime, Pippin should be it.

And luckily, Pippin is back on Broadway. Probably for a very long time.  A very long time. The show is in previews until the opening April 14 when it officially opens, but judging by the lines around the block, that is just a technicality. You’ll want to see this show, whether it brings back memories, or creates new ones.

The Pebbles on the Road

Zen Thought for the Day:

Sometimes the Universe is trying to teach you something amazing. Chances are, you will never figure out what it is, so you should just shut up and go where it tells you.

Monday was a very long day of travel for me as US AIR’s navigational/economic strategy sent me from Hartford CT to San Diego, CA via Charlotte, NC. Geographically, I made a huge right angle around the country. As my son pointed out, “you may have actually gone backwards!” What I didn’t know was that the Universe had something to show me.

Okay, so seven hours after leaving home, I actually board the plane in Charlotte for another 5-hour flight to San Diego. There is much afoot on the runway, and the pilot announces they have reversed the take-off direction for all the planes, so we are going to the other end of the runway. A little unnerving, but at least consistent with the way things have been going. Of course, the pilot says, we are running even later, and we finally take off a little after 5PM into a heavy mist that signals turbulence.

And what turbulence it is. It’s impossible to read or sleep (and I already slept enough on the first flight of the day) with all the heavy rocking as it turns out we are skirting a storm that will soon slam the Northeast.  Luckily, I have a window seat for the entire show. I can actually see the plane bouncing on gray and white balls of air, and feel the resistance as we chug through the clouds. Lightening bounces around the atmosphere and I swear I see it bounce off us too. My view is from behind the wing—a view like William Shatner had in the Twilight Zone. It’s a moment when you really have to let go of any notion you are in charge of your life.  And it’s surprisingly peaceful. Not in charge. What a concept!

And then, suddenly, we emerge from the clouds into a remarkable smooth expanse of sky. I spend the next hour watching as we chase the sunset into the west.

Chasing the sunset (photo by LPeckel)

The Captain announces we have found our “altitude” and the rest of the flight will be smooth. The carts come out, the lights come on, and the energy bounces around inside the plane now. While we pass the beverages around (the only thing still gratis on domestic economy—don’t get me started!), we inevitably start to chat, my neighbors and I, a 60-ish gentleman from India, and a woman of about the same age from the Phillippines. And I decide to share my photo from my I-phone. In turn, my compadre shares one from his phone. “I never take pictures,” he says, but I took this one.  He shows a remarkable sunset spilling out in pinwheel fashion from behind a mountain in Goa, India.

This man tells me he has lived on 5 of the 7 continents. For the next few hours, I am enraptured by the story of his life—and it is truly a story. Debapatra started as a child in Calcutta, where his family was poor, but he did well in school. His parents knew he would never get a good education in India, so they took what they had and sent him to boarding school in England. There, he found a mentor, who decided to undertake his advanced education. As a child who had always worked, Deb declined a ski trip from his patron and instead took a job with the postal service during his vacation, which angered his mentor.  His patron said, “work for the experience if you want to, but don’t do it for the money, when you have alternatives.” His patron insisted on giving him 3,000 pounds each summer to instead explore the world, and so he did.

Deb’s parents wanted him to return to India to be near them, and he did get a lucrative job in Bombay, ironically about 1,000 miles from his childhood home in Calcutta. Over the years, he lived in Kenya, parts of Australia, Jamaica, South America, and the United States (including Texas, California, and Washington DC).  He married and raised a son and a daughter, who spent their childhoods traveling, as he often moved for new jobs. Deb’s life work was doing logistical strategies for companies like DHL and FEDEX, figuring out on a grand scale how best to transport millions of packages around the world. It seems that could only come from the mind of someone who has been there, and that’s how his unique career evolved.

Deb now lives in San Matteo, California, where is wife is planning a huge traditional Indian wedding this summer for the daughter. The plans he describes of the 2-day event evoke my recall of the wonderful movie, Monsoon Wedding (which I completely recommend), and Deb laughs and says, “yes, much like that.”

After 14 hours of travel, I finally arrive in San Diego.  So logistically, it was a miserable trip. But there seemed to be something leading me to Charlotte despite any logic that I should be there. For one, it took me around storm Ukka, which plowed through the Midwest into the Northeast, and probably would have prevented my travel altogether.

And it led me to an amazing pebble on the road, one that took me on a 3-hour tour of the world, as I would never get to see it on my own. And I’ve remembered to add Katmandu back to my wish list, and now Goa.

My thanks to the Universe and to Debapatra. Enjoy this video by Gomez–it will always remind me of you.

© Arts Enclave, 2013.  All photos property of Arts Enclave–all rights reserved.

Saranac Lake – the Small World of the Winter Carnival

You never know who you’ll run into at a frying pan throw in the Adirondacks, but there I was with my little camera and someone said my name. Turning around, I could see two pairs of eyes and big smiles beneath the snow gear.

It was Jelane and Eileen, of the Travels in Abbey blog, on one of their weekend jaunts (this time minus the infamous Abbey).

Eileen and Jelane are awed by the spectacle of the FPT.

The Lore of the Frying Pan Throw

To explain the frying pan throw a little, it’s kind of like a javelin throw, except it’s all women, often wearing funny hats, throwing a cast-iron frying pan to see who covers the greatest distance. Oh, and it takes place in the snow.  I don’t know who won today, but she threw that pan 52 feet–that was in the under 40 division. Another winner in the over 50 division got it 47.2 feet. And it was a good day, because the frying pan didn’t break (unlike last year when they broke several).

The Queen prepares for her toss.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned it was cold out. I have been informed that it is a slight misnomer that Saranac Lake is the coldest place in the continental U.S.—that is only sometimes true.  It’s about 8 degrees now, but it hit a high of 15!

Back to Jelane and Eileen–they write a column on their exploits around the country for my new monthly E-newsletter, Aurora: A Guide to Living In Color. The first issue is just out. To subscribe just email the word, “yes” to Auroralifeincolor@gmail.com

© Arts Enclave, 2013.  All photos property of Arts Enclave.

Live From New York it’s…Saranac Lake

At my home in northern CT (which is only an hour from southern CT), when things get cold—like last week—we stay in and eat soup, throw a log on the fire, and curl up with the remote or a book.

 

But here in Saranac Lake, the coldest place in the continental U.S. –or as their new slogan reports, “the Adirondacks’ coolest place—they’re out all night. It’s Winter Carnival, an event they have been holding on and off for 116 years.

 

Saranac Lake Winter Carnival – Ice Strategy

Last night I went late in the afternoon with my Saranac Lake guide, local artist Sandra Hildreth, as the temps were dropping from a high of 14° to see the work on the ice palace. After the horror of the Thursday meltdown, in which temps hit the low 50s and things began to melt, volunteers were happily working to cut out ice blocks and assemble them once again for the big night….which is tonight.

Adirondack Artists Guild Opening

 

Then I went to 4 art openings in a row, followed by a coronation, where another of my favorite artists, Tim Fortune (of Small Fortune Studios, he reminded us) was stepping down as last year’s king. He made a warmly eloquent speech to a packed audience last night at Town Hall.

 

The new Court were presented and the new King and Queen were crowned.  Having been there, I don’t think it could be topped, so I will not be attending when Prince William is crowned.

 

Today we’re headed out for the curling exhibition by the Ice Palace, the woodsman’s chopping exhibition, and the ladies’ fry pan toss.  I love this place. It’s like stepping back a hundred years to when people knew each other’s names and towns had personalities.

 

Saranac Lake has a huge personality—and a huge heart—and I’ll be writing about it this week, right up to the closing ceremonies next Sunday, February 10th.

 

Tonight, there will be fireworks at the Ice Palace!

 

Check out the full schedule of Saranac Lake Winter Carnival events here, including photos by Mark Kurtz—there’s still time to get to see it for yourself (just bring your long underwear!)

 

© Arts Enclave, 2013.  All photos property of Arts Enclave–all rights reserved.

Kenny Loggins, Georgia Middleman & Gary Burr – Creativity Times Three (also known as Blue Sky Riders)

Georgia Middleman loves a great hook. Gary Burr looks for the North Star. And Kenny Loggins, he tries to find the truth of the emotion behind a song. Together, they are making music as Blue Sky Riders, and today they launched a CD of new songs crafted (mostly) by the three of them together, called  “Finally Home.”

I have written about Kenny Loggins here before, as I am fascinated with his seemingly limitless facility for reinvention—or more aptly, evolution in to the next person along the way…it’s a life skill worth learning, and a creative process that keeps raising the bar on itself.  So I was thrilled to be able to interview the band by phone while they were working on the album in December.

First we talked about the genesis of the band, which was really a Kenny Loggins concept. “Before we became an official band, Gary and I wrote together for an album of mine called “How About Now,” including the title song. And that’s when I started kicking around the idea that I wanted to write and record with Gary,” he said.

Gary Burr was a top Nashville songwriter who was inducted into the Country Songwriting Hall of Fame in 2005, had penned 10 No. 1 hits and 32 top-40s.

Kenny explained that he had been writing with Richard Marx for a few years then, and he knew he wanted to record in Nashville.  “So I started calling a few friends who I worked with, Dann Huff, people like that, and Richard, who I’d worked with, and said, if you were going to Nashville, who would you have to write with?  And so they turned me on to a half-dozen writers, and Gary was on the top of everybody’s list.”

The idea took hold and just kept returning while Kenny recorded that album. “He and I first started singing demos of the songs we’d written together, and I noticed that the vocal line was a really tight blend, and then I learned that he had been the lead singer of Pure Prairie League, back in the L&M days,” Kenny recalled, “and we had a natural vocal blend. He’s a lead singer. And I thought, having that much fun as a writer and being that compatible, I thought it would be really cool to start a band….But of course that’s ridiculous—no one sixty starts a band. And then we kicked around the idea and decided to go for it a couple of months later.”

But the concept wasn’t fully baked, yet. Kenny decided the duo needed another voice. A female one. “I got the feeling we really needed a third, and I called him and said “I think we really need a girl in the band who’s a strong writer and a strong singer, and I have a feeling you know who it is.”

Gary did know who to call—from across the room. “The girl” was Georgia Middleman, a Nashville songwriter and recording artist with 3 albums of her own and a catalog of songs like Keith Urban’s 2009 hit, “I’m In.”  Georgia and Gary had been dating for a while at the time, just supporting each other’s separate successes, when Kenny’s idea brought them all together professionally.  “I flew to Nashville and met Georgia. In Nashville you just  throw a stone and she’s in your band.” (Gary and Georgia were married last summer during the BSR preview tour.)

THREE ROADS TO NASHVILLE

Few bands can claim the kind of songwriting pedigree Blue Sky Riders brings to every song they do. Nashville was where they finally all found each other, but they took different routes to get there.

BSR Interview -In the beginning…Kenny, Georgia and Gary talk about how they got together. (click to listen)

Gary had already sold a few songs when he moved from Connecticut to Nashville in 1989. “I’d been going back and forth since about 1982. I got a really warm reception and it really was a very creative place to go.”

Originally from Texas, Georgia moved there in ’92 after working in New York. “I love the craft of writing and I love writing a hook. I love melodic hooks and I love lyrical hooks,” she explained. “I really treasure Nashville because I feel like it’s given me the craft of how to structure a song. A hit song. I’m not saying my songs are all hits, I’m just saying that’s what I aspire to write.”

And everyone knows a Kenny Loggins song, even if they don’t realize it. His hits go back to his very first one with “The House At Pooh Corner,” followed a string of Loggins & Messina songs like “Your Mama Don’t Dance,” then followed by the movie themes to “Caddyshack,” and “Footloose,” (contrary to belief, he didn’t write the “Top Gun” theme, but recorded the hit.) There were many albums after, including the “children’s songs” he wanted to do, and my favorite, Leap of Faith, with songs like “The Real Thing.” And for his 2008 solo CD, Kenny had set his sights on Nashville and found Gary, who had already found Georgia.

BSR Interview – the band talks about songwriting. (click to listen)

The writing process comes naturally to all of them, and from the beginning, they were able to write songs that represent them all. Kenny talked about the process in a video he posted of the group “creating” a song from pieces he had carried around in his head for years, which he called, “Windeer Woman.”

In that songwriting session, Kenny played the opening bars, Gary added the next part and the two of them almost seamlessly rolled into the song. Georgia listened to how it evolved and then began to shape the narrative of the song, to make it more real. “I need to know whose fault it is that we’re saying goodbye—“ she told them, and they immediately began to respond. The song evolved again, and this time Georgia suggested that it was turning too sad, and again, they all shaped it until the final product was quite nearly finished in a single session, almost as it appears on the new CD (listen to a snip of the finished “Windeer Woman” ).

As Gary explained it, he looks for the single point in a song they can all relate to. “When I’m writing, or co-writing, I always try to figure out what the North Star of the song is…it’s kind of like when they pitch a movie in Hollywood and you’re able to say, ‘It’s Die-Hard on a submarine’ — and you know exactly what the movie is. I need to be able to reduce a song down to a sentence. This song is blah-blah-blah-blah-blah,  six words, that’s the song. And I write it at the top of the page and every line has to get me—has to be steering toward that North Star. You know, you only need 30 lines in a song. You don’t really have room to put a line in there if it doesn’t have anything to do to help you to get to the North Star.”

So when Georgia asked them questions about who the characters in the song were, and what their backgrounds were, “she was putting up a North Star for us, and I love that kind of thing. I loved knowing who these people are and knowing what the six-word synopsis of this creative idea is,” he said and Kenny agreed. “I felt the same way. I’ve always said that you have a central emotion, and everything circles around that emotion, so that everything should be in some way—even if it’s obliquely—but everything has to be poetically pointing at that central emotion.”

The process for this song is a fascinating one, but it changes with every song.  The cut “Dream,” came from a piece of lyric Kenny texted to Georgia, which she then added a chorus to. “The reason we write together is so that the songs will have that personality that I call the “fourth one in the room,”  that’s Blue Sky Riders,” Kenny said. “It’s not a Georgia song, it’s not a Kenny song, its’ not a Gary song. It’s all three of us, and how we meld together.”

Georgia summed it up for them.  “I love the analogy of Michaelangelo carving out David in the stone. He said that David was already in there; he just had to carve a way to get to it….when I can see what the song could be, when I have enough understanding of Gary and Kenny are talking about—once I can see it, I can collaborate, and I can offer ideas.”

BSR Interview – Kenny tells how Blue Sky Riders got its name. (click to listen)

The artists and bands we have been fans of for so long are making the rounds of clubs and theatres with laundry lists of the songs audiences expect to hear from them.  It’s great for the audience to be taken back in time to something familiar, but it doesn’t engage you the way new music does. Personally, I have missed that.

Blue Sky Riders is new. And different. But at its core, the band has all the elements so many of us already appreciate, because it comes from three established songwriters who have been filling our heads with beautiful melodies and great lyrics for decades. And when they come together, there’s a wisp of magic that builds, because for once, you don’t know exactly where it’s going.

As Kenny put it, “The beauty of this band is that we are not at a loss for ideas for very long—maybe 5 seconds.”

And they sing. Together, like their songs, they have a sound that isn’t Kenny, isn’t Georgia, isn’t Gary, but it is distinctively Blue Sky Riders.  Check out some samples from the new CD, Finally Home.

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