Monday, February 8, 2016

Yeah. This Day

You know, I've never had one second of my life where I thought I might be a musician. Okay, there was that ten minutes when I bought at guitar at the age of nineteen and tried to learn to play it and started writing a song which I still remember the first lines of and NO! I will not be repeating them here because even the thought of them makes me cringe and why on earth would I remember those lines and yet, can't remember what I ate for supper last night? 
Well, that's a lie. I can remember what I ate for supper last night but the point being is, I have no musical ability whatsoever but if I do have one talent in the musical field it is a talent for meeting and falling in love with all sorts of people who have vast musical talents and abilities. Who are artists and craftsmen and craftswomen in the field. Singers and songwriters and players of many instruments and like everything else in this world, once you step into a place of true love, you realize you are in a sweet web of many connected parts and so it is and so it goes and many of my oldest friends are musicians and I respect and honor them with all of my heart and I hope they know how much true joy and hope and inspiration and dancing and healing they do with their art.
They have all done that for me, whether I have listened to them in bars or in listening rooms or in theaters or American Legion Halls or my very own house. Whether I listened to them quietly with my eyes closed or while dancing my heart out.
Musicians slay me. They are some of the most intelligent, charming, humorous, down-to-earth, spiritual, irreligious people I know and I am in awe of them because they can do things that I can't fathom being able to do and most of the ones I know can cuss like motherfucking sailors which is a big plus in my book.

Now. Let me stop right here and say- in the spirit of honesty and fairness and balance- I have known some real asshole musicians too. There's nothing about being a musician which confers immunity to assholiness. But here's a secret- the biggest assholes are not the most talented musicians. Not in my experience. They just think they are.

BUT, all of that is not exactly what I came here to talk about. What I came here to talk about is the visit I had with my friends Marilyn and Spencer Bohren who visited me today. Spencer is a musician and Marilyn is his wife/life partner/mama-of-his-children, and one of the finest career managers in this world. She's also a midwife and a teacher. I've written about Spencer and Marilyn before and Elizabeth got to meet them just a few weeks ago and talked about them on her blog.
Webs within webs, you know.

It was a wonderful visit. They have been over in Apalachicola where Spencer was playing at the Dixie Theater there which is a very special place for the Bohrens. They are travelers, those too, and back before they ever had children they discovered Apalachicola and spent quite some time there.
More webs?

And so they drove here today and Jessie and August came out to see them. When I met them, Jessie was not yet born and Lily was still a baby. Marilyn had, as I did, three children at the time and all of them were traveling the country together in an Airstream trailer that they pulled behind a red-and-white '55 Chevy.

Picture from this website. 

And so it came to pass that when they were traveling through our part of the country, they'd park that Airstream and that glorious car in our driveway and as Spencer said today as we were reminiscing, when all of our kids met, that's when the magic happened.
I've written about this before. How when the Bohrens came to town, I let my kids stay out of school and those children wrote and produced plays and made-up games and had more fun than they could have had at Disney World, right there in our backyard. I specifically remember one production which featured whip-cream pies in faces. And we were all the sort of parents who laughed and laughed and had no problem whatsoever with providing whipped cream when it came to ART.
But all of it was a sort of Kismet.
Once Marilyn and I took a trip by ourselves together down to St. Petersburg where we stayed at a motel on Pass-A-Grille Beach and spent every minute of every day and a whole lot of the nights talking and talking and talking and sharing hearts and stories and secrets and we wrote each other letters for years and recommended and traded books back and forth and we both had our fourth babies around the same time.
Her last baby is about to graduate from law school and as I said, my last baby came over with HER baby. We ate lunch, quiche from my hen's eggs and salad from the garden (we had not discussed any lunch plans but Spencer and Marilyn knew that I'd have that covered) and we caught up on news about our children and grandchildren and their travels (they are still travelin' people and now go far beyond the borders of the US) and when we got up from the table I took them on a walk in the yard to show them all of the sights- the chickens, the cats, the camellias, the bee tree. We'd been discussing my incredibly mixed feelings about moving to Apalachicola and at one point, as the wind made the magnolia tree sing in its rustling voice, Spencer grabbed me by the shoulders and said, "Oh Mary! Your problems are so difficult! Having to choose between one paradise and another!" And we laughed. Because he is exactly right.
And then Lily brought her three over after she picked up Owen at school and THEN the fun really began and Owen told Spencer all about...something. Pokemon? I have no idea. Gibson, who stayed up too late partying last night had fallen asleep on his way over and then fell right back asleep on my bed when they got here so they didn't really get to meet him but they got the gist of the situation of my life.
Which is chaos.
And joy.
Jessie gave them a copy of her Cicada Ladies CD and they gave me a copy of Spencer's new CD.


Which you can order here. 

Before they left, Mr. Moon had just gotten home so they got to see him for a hot second too and when I went to hug them good-bye, my tears welled up.
I bumped my head gently with Marilyn's, wanting with all of my heart to be able to simply transmit all of the thoughts I had in me to her. All of the love.

Here are two pictures. One with August showing you just how big a thrill it was for him to meet Spencer.


And this one, in which he described just how big a thrill it was to meet Spencer AND Marilyn.


And if all of this wasn't enough, Jack the Cat came into the house today. On his own.


I told Spencer and Marilyn what a momentous occasion this was.
They were incredibly pleased to be here to witness that.

Yeah. Musicians. I've known a few.
I told Spencer that the last time I saw him play, I realized that although he's always been a very, very fine musician, that he's burst through to a new realm entirely.
"And I've heard a lot of music," I told him.

And I've known a lot of people.
And these are the finest kind.
I love them so much I gave them my audio version of Keith Richard's "Life" right off my hallway altar.
What more can I say?




Hallelujah.

Love...Ms. Moon

13 comments:

  1. Wow hon, what a golden day for all of you. Thank you for sharing it with all of us!! Love you so!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow hon, what a golden day for all of you. Thank you for sharing it with all of us!! Love you so!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. L and L- You know what I'm talking about. You know. I love you so.

    ReplyDelete
  4. What wonderful friends you have! I could feel the love in your word. And Spencer's rendition of Hallelujah brought me to tears!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I love Leonard Cohen and have heard Hallelujah many, many times and was disappointed in all of them but one. After listening to this I can now say all but two. This is incredible.

    Also, speaking of Elizabeth, I keep getting a virus warning saying it is a malicious site whenever I try to enter her website and was wondering if anyone else was?

    ReplyDelete
  6. I so love Spencer's music and have three of his CDs playing on rotation in Sophie's room! And it was so much fun hanging out and talking to Marilyn. I'm so grateful to you for setting us up!

    ReplyDelete
  7. It is a wonderful thing to have long-standing committed friendships. They sound like great people. :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. It is nice to have lovely lifelong friends. Pass-a Grille is one of my very favorite places on earth. Gail

    ReplyDelete
  9. Wow. What a lovely post.
    I have absolutely no musical ability either. But the universe keeps sending me musicians.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Catrina- I'm telling you- the man's amazing.

    Birdie- I am so glad you liked it! No, I haven' gotten that message at Elizabeth's site. I wonder what's going on?

    Elizabeth- My pleasure! And they loved meeting you!

    Steve Reed- And they have some stories to tell!

    Gail- I used to spend a lot of time down there. It's a very cool place.

    Denise- We are lucky in that way, aren't we?

    ReplyDelete
  11. I wish I played a musical instrument. I had a recorder and a ukelele as a kid but I was too shy to even practice alone much less in front of anyone. well, the ukelele, I did learn half a dozen songs or so on. I still have it.

    ReplyDelete
  12. We just got back from a 3 day stay in St Pete Beach, we did go to Pass-a Grille once, it was very windy. We try to go at least once a year. I want to move closer to the gulf so bad. Gail

    ReplyDelete

Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.