Weekend Thoughts

Wow – I finally found a corner with enough light to write. I just relieved Sonya at the Windsor Elementary Pajama Jam → an actual dance → in the hollow gym/cafeteria with the latest pop beats blaring,: distorted with indistinguishable song tracks and undecipherable lyrics. As the rhythms shoot out of speakers to ricochet between ceiling, floor and enclosing walls and stampede through the corridors, I feel short of breath as the screaming beat box captures my heartbeat: resistance is futile.
My eyes are still fuzzy from the recent dual volcanic eruptions: the smoke trails circling. The fire is gone but the smoke lingers...the same could be said about other recent events → something about the finality of the June 20 deadline to vacate the premises: our home at 306 Theodore Street. The feeling seems similar to waking up in your tent in a field soggy and cold with dew; emerging into a world with smoke drifting from the remains of smoldering campfires scattered evidence of a delightful weekend spent with music and friends at a festival under the stars...as the sun illuminates and the reality beckons → it's time to pack up...it's Monday tomorrow...but not until tomorrow: today we will prepare...Monday will catch us neither unsuspecting nor unwilling. Monday will find us not only refreshed but also recharged. Yes Monday will find us happy to greet her. Perhaps we will find Monday even before she seeks us.
I had to pause and watch Connor group dance Thriller. Smiles fill me. Now they're all singing: “Oh, oh, oh it's magic! Never believe it's not so”. And the DJ is our neighbor. I will miss our neighborhood.
What is the meaning of life? =
            Why do I do what I do? =
                        Peace through music.
It is a rare moment alone here on a rainy gray Saturday after a parental pride filled morning at soccer. Carrie Elkin: it is finally turned up to its peak intensity. My molecules stretch and reach and space opens inside my chest to ease the knots...ah...and oh my, the lilacs...
And now Danny Schmidt.
One of the most rewarding and amazing facets of my life is knowing the fascinating artists: humans with real relationships and real joy and real sorrow and real life and the artist reveals this reality in its naked vulnerability: truth → an interpretive word, a flexible and by necessity, transient concept → one that must flow to ensure its integrity, must react to real hope, to real life.
To sing and dance and ponder the magic woven in this relationship between these two beautiful humans, Carrie and Danny, shines the light on the magic woven in my relationships and in all relationships.
                        Peace through music.
The stories behind the songs: they are our stories too. They plead for personal, individual, flexible, inner interpretation. All they ask is for the freedom to roam – to shift and change to fit the place where understanding waits.
I believe music does this for us all: it shines light on the magic of life. I also believe different music speaks to different people. It remains very important to me that Charlotte's Web present top caliber artists of many genres. The doors that music can open are opened for me by the singer-songwriter; for others it's jazz and still others, blues. For some it's reggae and others it's guitar. To be present and bear witness when doors are opened by music is my raison d'être and my joie de vivre.
I believe helping others open doors makes me a better human because it makes my community a better place which makes me a better mom and wife and daughter and neighbor: I add to the world and the world adds to me.
And now Ellis, who awakens my wonder and reminds me to be.
I'm spending the afternoon at peace through music, contentedly attending to laundry and dishes and general family/home maintenance.
My husband is filming the Rockford Dance Company school performances of “Oh, the Places You'll Go” on the very stage where the announcement was made that there had been an accident...that fateful early spring evening in 1972 when the audience at Boylan High School was told that the show was cancelled and the name Charlotte's Web was chosen. It represented the web we depend on to catch us when we fall. The grief that united those who knew Charlotte Powers was soothed with music; it was opened and released so the healing could go on. And the music wove the Web strong to catch us and help us climb.
                        Peace through music. 

Leave a comment