Happy Earth Day! When I woke up this morning I realized that Earth Day is kind of like all of our birthdays combined. We all come from Earth, and therefore we are Earth, and a birthday is a celebration of the mother as much as it is a celebration of the birth of a child. In celebrating the Earth, the source of our lives, we also celebrate ourselves, each other, and life itself. So Happy Birthday.
With birthdays come presents – and so how appropriate that when I opened my mailbox late last night John Houx’s Green Period. was waiting for me. You all know I’m a fan of John’s writing, and last Friday I had the pleasure of seeing him shadow Larkin Grimm on gu zheng. Larkin was captivating as she moved from stories about tree-cleavage and spirit orgasms through songs that walk the line between life and death. I felt a lot of Goddess energy, Kali in particular. Isis, too… but more on that later. John’s airy presence was a perfect counterpoint to Larkin’s powerful voice and energy, and to watch the two of them play was as beautiful as it was to hear them. Now I’m listening to one of my favorite songs, “Apple On A Table, Green”… thank you, John. The perfect Earth Day/Birthday present.
Also at the Bowery Ballroom was the wonderful Kate Maki (who I’d seen perform before but I can’t recall when or where and it’s driving me crazy) and Great Lake Swimmers, who were headlining. The Canadians are currently touring together… you know, I have this strange love of Canada – for the majority of my youth I told people I was Canadian. I still have Canadian luggage tags on my instruments and when I am traveling I say I am Canadian. I didn’t even visit Canada until I was eighteen. I just thought I’d throw that strange tidbit out there. I’m sure Joni and Neil have something to do with my allegiance.
On Saturday I played my own show up in Hartford. It was the most beautiful day of the year so far – sunny and low 70s – and as I was riding the train I thought how nice it would be to sit outside in the sun for a bit. When I got to the train station I got to do just that because my car, which got used to running 1000+ miles a week and now waits in the driveway like a well-hydrated puppy waiting to go outside – didn’t start. When jumper cables failed to produce any signs of life I called my dad, who just so happened to be in the area and who didn’t mind coming by to get me. In the past I might’ve been stressed out about not getting to the gig in time, but I resolved not to waste the energy and instead I enjoyed the sunshine. It was a very different experience. A good one. Everything always works out, anyway – turns out I was scheduled to play an hour later than I thought.
My dad offered to lend me his Prius for the day and driving it was incredible. I was nervous at first because, although I’ve logged a lot of miles, I get really stressed about driving someone else’s car. Especially my dad’s. I did some severe damage back in high school when I backed into his car… which was parked in the driveway. So I was happy to discover the above backing-up feature. I’m sure this made him happy, too. Of course the greatest feature about the Prius is that it is a hybrid, and I enjoyed trying to maximize the fuel consumption by monitoring the dashboard screen:
As for the show, I would say a few words about it except that Dan Barry of the Hartford Advocate seems to have beat me to it. He wrote a really nice review of my set, saying that I “made time stand still,” which I find amusing, and which I credit to my car incident. Sometimes we have to be forced to stop. In stopping, we become present. In becoming present, we have presence. We become present for ourself and others. Therefore we become receiver, present, and giver all in one – just like the Earth. It’s all interconnected. I’ve been seeing these connections a lot recently. As I evolve, my understanding of the interdependence and interrelationship of all things deepens. The Earth provides everything that we need and the more I recognize this the more it becomes true. I just need to pay attention and be present.
For example – here’s some cool synchronicity. My friend Matt Jones lent me On the Road with Bob Dylan a few weeks ago. This chronicles the Rolling Thunder tour Dylan and company did after he recorded the songs for Desire. Desire was my first Dylan album, and therefore the portal to whom I am not just as a musician and writer, but as a living being. I heard “Hurricane” on a mixtape “borrowed” from a friend of my older sister, the same life-defining mixtape that also turned me onto Phish (“Stash” – oh my god). Those first notes entered my body and changed everything I thought I knew about music. I felt the universe surge with tension, seize, and explode. Everything expanded. The possibilities were infinite. I was especially taken by Scarlet Rivera’s violin playing, as I was studying classical violin at the time and not yet a guitarist. The violin has always been love-hate with me, which is to say it matters to me. I was in a lot of youth orchestras and I got really-burned out after high school. I used to practice hours a day and now I haven’t played the violin in almost seven years. “Hurricane” was the first song I taught myself on the violin, playing along and improvising rather than reading someone else’s music. In recent years, particularly when listening to Andrew Bird, I feel a void.
About the same time that Matt gave me this book, Sharon Gannon announced the Focus of the Month of April at Jivamukti Yoga School: “Isis.” I was excited by her essay and the new focus for various reasons involving love, moving forward, stability, creation, and so on. I was most excited, however, because there was a good chance that teachers would be playing “Isis,” off of Desire. I hadn’t listened to Desire in a really long time – possibly years – and sure enough, Bob started showing up in class. Walking home a couple weeks ago I found a tarot card outside my apartment – The Empress. On this particular card she is outfitted like Isis and seated on a throne. I picked it up, went inside, and shortly thereafter I was reading On the Road with Bob Dylan again – I came to the point when Ratso walks into Sara’s hotel room and she is wearing a necklace with an Isis pendant and there is an Empress tarot card on the dresser. Pretty cool.
At this point I realized that the universe really wants me to tune into the Isis-Empress energy right now. It’s been revealing itself to me through creativity and many, many magical ways. It is still revealing itself, as the month is far from over, but I feel that the violin is a key element. Last week I heard a musician playing as I descended the subway steps and I felt a pang of “I miss that.” As I walked across the platform our eyes met and he stopped playing, handed the violin to me, and said, “You play?” This is no coincidence. I was shocked. So I took the foreign object into my hands and played the first thing that came – “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” A far cry from the Bruch violin concerto I studied senior year of high school, which pretty much was the nail in the coffin for my classical career. But if anyone can bring the violin back from the dead for me it’s Isis, who reassembled and resurrected her brother-husband, Osiris. Yann Tiersen yanked some nails out of the coffin last week at Irving Plaza (see above).
I hope you’re enjoying your Earth Day/Birthday and that this year brings you many presents… after all, isn’t that what our future is? The accumulation of presents – presence? Therein lies true wealth.
– Bob Dylan 
