Hello Tuesday. Not a bluesday.
On waking up early, happiness, all the Gwens, staying up late, NPR, the end of the world, me being pollyanna, and how simple phrases can conjure so much feeling in a song.
Good morning and welcome to my Tuesday. Is yours well? Mine is a mixed bag of good and great and also weird.
Louie woke me up at 6:10 this morning, and was amazing. He was really excited to have risen early and was saying things like "Now we have plenty of time to make delicious OATMEAL" and "We get to walk to school and we don't have to worry when the dogs stop to poop!"
That kid. He's always so darn happy. Maybe I should instal an alarm clock in his room and get him to start waking me up when it goes off on school days. So much better than Alexa waking me up. I can just tell her to STOP but there's no stopping Louie, and I never want to be in a sour mood around him because I'm just grateful to have won the Happy Kid Lottery and don't want to mess things up.
Last night, before bed, I told Lou that he'd been invited to a party by a kid named Gwen and he was like BUT I KNOW TWO GWENS and then happily mused for like 30 minutes on which Gwen might have invited him to a party. The Gwen he chases at recess? The Gwen who is good friends with his good friend? It was a mystery he was so delighted to ponder. So delighted that by the end of the 30 minutes, the 2 Gwens had turned into FIVE Gwens and he said, "I am so popular with Gwens." Indeed, Louie.
Niko is in their happy place because we have two dogs at the moment - since we are dog sitting Cricket - and they love sitting on Niko. To Niko this means that they can command anything be served to them while they sit with the dogs because no one wants to disturb the cuteness of a cuddled dog at 9pm. I oblige. I didn't do well with getting Niko to go to bed at a decent time last night, however, because I fell asleep on their shoulder among that pack of dogs. I awoke with a jolt at 11:15 and yelled I KNOW WHERE IT IS, DON'T WORRY - in total mom mode even in my sleep. Niko thought it was hilarious, and also thought it was hilarious that they were binge watching Supergirl way past bedtime.
Last night I did something that I used to do every night and every morning - until I couldn't take it any more around September 5thish, of 2018! For years, I was an NPR listener on the daily. Got all my news from them. Suffered through the 2016 election and stayed true. But then! The Kavanaugh hearings broke me, big. I guess those hearings were right around the time Buster and I really started to lose faith in our marriage being the same as it ever was, forever more. That was a hard time. I'm not going to rehash it here, but listening in on NPR that week destroyed me and maybe it was then that I decided that I was going to really pay attention to figuring out how to write songs instead of paying terribly close attention to the drama of politics.
That's a long paragraph to say that I listened to the news last night. It felt homey, while I cooked, and also frightening. Turns out that I don't keep very loose touch of the news - I didn't hear anything I hadn't already read about in passing. But, yeah, it's still the end of the world out there. The very slow end.
But, you know what? It's always been the very slow end. Every generation has brought about this very slow end. The end of the world hasn't been news for thousands of years. It just keeps happening. Over and over. Every generation is absolutely convinced that they are the apex of tech and also destruction. In spite of the seriousness in all this - I'm not gonna stop thinking that we should just make love and make art. Maybe that seemed simplistic to you yesterday - but maybe that's because you don't understand that by Make Love - I mean make all the touching, vulnerable connections possible. And by Make Art - I mean, do all the things you feel moved to do that make things better for people because when things are better - people are happier - and when people are happier - they make More Love. And when they make more love? They make more art.
I just wanted to clear that up for you because I think that sometimes I make these blanket statements that can come across as pollyanna. I mean. I’m fine with being pollyanna and think that’s why some of you stick with me after all these years. I just kinda think this planet is beautiful even when I’m really caught in a web of crazy. I'm not exactly a nuanced speaker on the topics of making love or making art. Possibly I lack nuance because I am too busy loving and creating to do much careful wording. None of this is carefully worded. All is full of love. If Bjork said it, you know it's true - because she's one of the greatest artists of all time.
I don't know why I'm stuck on all of this. I'm trying to be stuck on more tiny details. I heard a metaphor (not mine) in my songwriting workshop recently that really stuck with me - it was something like "we are as neat/ as a folded sheet". The tiny detail of a folded sheet really stuck with me. Brought the scent of clean laundry with the sticking. The heat of a sheet removed from a dryer. The perfect fold of a sheet that's loaded into its place among other perfectly folded sheets. Things that fit. Things that smell good. Writing a song about the bigness of making love and making art is too much. But writing a song about being as neat as a folded sheet? Is simple and says so much. I'd like to stop writing in memoir with non-specific words and be more neat as a folded sheet. Everyday life is beautiful, and I notice so much that it often overwhelms me. But using words to easily capture in verse the bigness is hard - I wonder if the Neat as a Sheet writer felt shy about his line. Like it was too... simple. Basic. Basic white sheet. While I'm over here listening to that phrase set in music and smelling clean laundry and thinking of the way fresh sheets feel when you slip into them with someone you love. Which is all so big. Bigness in basic comfort and pleasure. Where does all the nuance go to sleep? If lucky, within the unfold of a perfect white sheet.
Yep that's today! Tuesday! Hope you’re loving it!