BE WITH EACH OTHER

Hello! Again! It has been crazy busy. Building, making, cleaning, writing, driving, planning, honoring, worrying, grieving, sweating and so on. I am at a weird spot in my body and mind. I’m so spread out I haven’t spent time with myself. I have no “spiritual connection” to myself. It feels really odd, like my vessel needs refiling. I am not lonely, just disconnected. 

And now the fucking bill “passed,” was purchased, or threatened into being. Social media is ticker tape horror, as it should be. Things are very bad. I don’t have to tell you. 4th of July could not have been LESS appropriate but here we are. 

On July 4th I sat with my clutch forever family member, Beth, in the entryway of the barn at Squirrelwood Horse Sanctuary trying to comfort the horses during the barrage of illegal fireworks on both sides. A nervous whinny and spin from Doc, repeat pacing and bumping into several corners of his stall from Toy.. They have no idea what is happening and it scares the bejesus out of them. These poor flight creatures don’t fucking need this, and neither do we. We eat grilled cheese sandwiches and stare out into the otherwise glorious night. We watch the fireflies and marvel. They are so magnificent. Who needs fireworks when you have fireflies? How can people be so oblivious? The more we disconnect from nature the more we lose our appreciation for the little wonders, which are actually huge wonders. Our perspective becomes a barren “bigger and louder” seeker. Beth and I feel the monumental, crushing absence of Beth’s beloved partner, Diane. She is a magnificent marvel too, and since she passed in January, we both find ourselves not quite convinced that she is really gone. Perhaps she is a little bit here because she still lives in both of us, especially Beth. The feeling of her comforts us. The things we notice on her behalf that she would have loved make us feel a unique, tiny joy, just like the light show of fireflies.

There was also a stone in my stomach. Being apart from ManFriendJeff while the country and the world are burning is never easy, but the 4th of July with the “passing” of the “bill” was too much. The dread laid me pretty low. ManFriend is out on a long tour and his absence is glaring. We have been together for ten years now, and I rely on him to ground me sometimes. I also rely on him for the news. I am on a media news fast as I hate the heightened, often tabloid sensationalism of most news outlets, especially on social media. I’m very sensitive and intolerant of it. ManFriend reads many news sources and can translate them for me in a very flat and factual way. It’s no less horrifying, but it has no extra terror or unnecessarily enraging elements to it. ManFriend has a gift for boiling it down to its elements. I think it has to do with his technical, autistic brain. He has a gift for delivering “just the facts” without embellishment from his own emotional reactions to things. It is an incredible skill which I am in awe of. I missed him terribly. Together with the missing of Diane it was almost too much.

The next day Beth drove me the hour and forty five minutes to Newark to catch my flight to London to work on the musical. Thanks to some missing info as to where I was actually going, I had to pull my bag and try to catch a flight home. I got lucky and sprinted to my gate just in time. Decades of crossing the border as an undesirable “not real musician” as in, “in a band”, not a classical or “legitimate” musician in the border authorities’ opinion, I have suffered a great deal of border tension and abuse. I don’t fuck with the border or take chances. I don’t travel without ALL my info. The border (universally, not just the States) has never been good for folks like me, not even pre-9/11, not even with the proper visas! The border guards can do whatever they want, and so they do. They have stolen my money, threatened me with bizarre charges like “felony piracy,” separated me from band mates for hours and hours, screamed in my face, crossexamined me like a criminal, voided my passport, denied me entry into my own country and made me miss shows. Every time for nothing. Every. Time. Now I was going to be late getting to London. I was furious and heartbroken. I didn’t want to let my colleagues down, but I wasn’t willing to risk my livelihood, which has taken such massive hits since I lost my house in 2017 and then the pandemic right on top. I went home and got into bed with Coco the dog. We both had thrashing anxiety dreams.

After a few days of trying to get to London and Newark airport making that impossible, I finally got a flight through DC. There was no layover and I had to run through three terminals with really heavy bags. I was soaking wet by the time I reached my gate. I was out of breath to an alarming degree and pretty upset. I was going to fly overnight in soaking wet clothes. I was run down to an alarming degree. When I finally took my seat I was still heaving. My shoulders were screaming. I was working really hard not to cry. I put on the headphones and spent the night watching the first season of “Barry” which I had meant to do since it came out. It was really good and kept my mind off my body to some extent. In the morning I arrived at Heathrow, drove to the hotel, showered and went straight to work. I was really tired, but it was so good to see my team again. I had missed them so much. The few previous days in travel limbo at home were so anxiety inducing. I had been experiencing in real time the beautiful things of home; the soft summer grass, bird songs, my beloved animals, sleeping in my own bed, hanging out with Mike Bulington, who was house sitting, and my stepdad, Bill. After a rainshower I sat on the porch and marveled at a spider web blowing softly convex in the breeze. It looked like the skeleton of a large silk scarf. I saw spotted fawns in the meadows, their legs like little folding rulers, running and hopping awkwardly. The milkweed was at the peak of its powers and drowsily fragrant. When I would open the front door it would caress my face and I would exhale the word “amazing!” every time. But I also experienced the strange and slightly troubling sensation of not being able to completely absorb the sensations of all that beauty because I was supposed to be someplace else. It was like I was half ghost. It broke my heart some. Now that I was at the rehearsal theatre I could finally exhale.

Now I’ve been in London for five days and the whole team and I are killing ourselves to make our presentation dates this week the very best they can be. Everyone is exhausted but they still bring their all and push through the hard spots. I’m so proud of all of them. I am so honored to work beside them. It bolsters me. We are from all over the world and we have the same end goal. We are united in this. The energy of this is very healing. It reminds me that though things are very bad we are not yet beaten. I am not beaten. I’m holding out for Palestine. For Africa. For Ukraine. For peace. For all of us. 

Crouton and LulaBell send their regards.