Butt in gear: Songbook now in progress

Today, I stared at the pile of manuscripts and chord sheets, and decided that it was time to get going on some sort of songbook, a compilation of most of what I’ve written and recorded in the last 25 years.

Thanks to a friend’s suggestion, I grabbed an app called Scanner Pro online. It comes with a free seven-day trial period, so I spent my entire morning scanning everything I could find, saving it to my files and sending copies of the PDFs to myself for opening later on my computer. Anything I missed can be photographed and added in later, but I believe that’s only a few things. Then I can lay it out, create a final PDF of the whole thing and send it off for printing and/or uploading to something online.

It will not be glitzy. I am not glitzy. 

But it will be legible and I will give anyone who obtains a copy permission to photocopy pages as needed for performance or educational purposes. Because copyright is basically dead, to me and to much of the world. And at this point I kind of don’t care. I’m realistic enough to know this project will not be a money-maker, but it will be a way to get my music out there to more people and perhaps give my songs legs for a little longer. And as long as someone finds one of my songs useful I will be happy to let them use it.

Still working on a title.

Also pondering graphics, though they won’t be extensive.

The truth is that I am tired. Exhausted. And so, while I hope to get my songs out there, it will be rough and ready and kind of punk. And I will be glad when it’s done.

Below: Bagheera, interrupting my work.

To be awkward is to be authentic.

Passover is a little crazy for me this year.

I’m struggling for meaning.

I’m struggling for relevance.

Everything feels up for question right now, for many personal and global reasons.

I’m grateful for my beloveds, who are holding me in ths moment when I lack clarity.

I’m grateful for the beautiful green world, the a sweet affection of our cats, and the calm blessing of living on a quiet street.

I’m blessed to be able to spin my legs on a bicycle, to bask in the sounds of music and to rest when I am tired.

And I am grateful for a message I’d scrawled in my notebook a few years ago when still in the deep dark of the pandemic, which has come back to remind me now that I can only be where I am:

To be awkward is to be authentic.

So I am sitting in my awkwardness ths Passover, missing pieces and skipping over that which I cannot find relevant and paying attention to my body and heart a lot more deeply. I am sitting with the cognitive dissonance that comes from being tribal, and clinging to the hope that comes from being human, and if this is all I can do, it will be enough.

Wishng all my friends who celebrate a zissen Pesach — a sweet Passover.

The Universe farts abundance

Three signs from the Universe came this week.

1. My counselor reminded me that slowing down and feeling things is the right thing to do at this time, and encouraged me to hang with it.

2. Returning to regular bike riding has helped my blood pressure drop by twenty points in a month.

3. I was offered a composition commission that’s not due until December 1, and I accepted. It’s just what I need to focus on what I can still do, and I don’t necessarily need a guitar to compose.

Three things. I’m grateful and relieved.

In the bardo

I read something today that suggests I’m in the bardo, a place between phases of life, a waiting place.

It’s scary. It’s full of unknown. 

And I don’t know how to live with the unknown.

I am losing so much right now — my most of my music making, my ability earn a living, my physical vitality, and really a strong sense of myself. I don’t know who the fuck I AM right now, and it’s terrifying.

I’m living in this void while the world around me continues to move along with the functions and rituals I used to look forward to with delight. Today, they feel empty and pointless. I am SO filled with sadness and loneliness and disorientation that all I want to do is sleep or cry, with moments of functionality (like cleaning house or doing laundry) in between.

I know that I’m not being a great partner to my Sweetie right now, and I’m sure it’s no fun for her while she is working so hard to support us both. 

I’ve tried going back to things that I used to enjoy greatly, like bicycle-oriented socializing, but they don’t fill me nearly as deeply now. I know that physical activity has s good for my moods, but I cannot do it consistently when my hands hurt so much and so often. I don’t understand what is going on and I don’t know how to deal with it.

I’m in the bardo, a place where, according to Wikipedia:

“ Metaphorically, bardo can be used to describe times when the usual way of life becomes suspended, as, for example, during a period of illness or during a meditation retreat. Such times can prove fruitful for spiritual progress because external constraints diminish. However, they can also present challenges because our less skillful impulses may come to the foreground, just as in the sidpa bardo.”

I feel like I went into the bardo during the Covid lockdown, fighting like hell on the way down, and have only recently sunk all the way into it. I can’t fight anymore, but I don’t know how to be still. I don’t know how to be still and receive whatever I’m meant to receive and all can do is flail.

How much of this is waiting for the new meds to take effect? How much of this is the unmasked ADHD? How much is depression which isn’t responding to whatever drugs I’m on? How much of this is autoimmune illnesses overlapping and compounding each other? I keep thinking that if I knew the sources of all this, the intersections and everything, I could pick one thing and start there. But all I keep coming up with is sadness, depression and occasionally wishing I could just die already. Because living like this, sick and slow and unable to physically work my shit out because everything hurts, unable to work it out through music because I can’t fucking play instruments without hurting, and honestly I don't know what my life is FOR right now. And I don’t know how much longer I can live this way.

Why?

I’m quick-cleaning the house for guests, to gather and celebrate a festival of freedom in which I don’t feel especially free.

What am I even doing this for?

I and the world feel so broken these days.

There is no one to give me the kind of comfort and reassurance I need so badly right now, and I cannot self-hug and self-love my way to finding it.

I feel useless to my Sweetie, who is working so hard to keep us housed and together and who is herself exhausted by it all, and surely by me as well.

Everything feels so hard right now.

Why would I want to make it harder by observing Passover?

And yet, here I am.

I have no more responses about Israel right now. Because fuck.

Iran fired missiles on Israel last night, supposedly as retaliation for Israel firing on the Iranian embassy in Syria, which may have been in retaliation for support Iran has lent to Hamas and Hezbollah against Israel.
Nearly all the missiles were intercepted by Israel, the US or Jordan.

It's new because it's the first time Iran has ever fired on Israel directly.
It's old because Iran has funded other anti-Israel groups for years, and will continue to do so going forward.
It's really, really old because Israel was established in the midst of an otherwise hostile, Arab Middle East.
I know it probably had to be at the time. A third of the world's Jews had been murdered in WW2, and almost no other country wanted the remaining Jews to settle within their borders, so they had to go somewhere. Why not the land of Jewish biblical history? It made sense. A lot more sense than, say, Uganda. (Really, Herzl? Uganda?)

Unless you already lived there, and had to be moved aside to make room for so many refugees.

And this conundrum, this unbreakable Gordian knot, is why there will never be peace in the Middle East. Not in my lifetime, or in yours, or in your children's.

Sorry.

Forgive me while I struggle to find the purpose of praying for something that will never come about.

Forgive me for a lifetime of detachment that has effectively prevented me from buying into the whole story.

Forgive me for going small and inward just now. I am one of zillions who is fully aware of just how fucked we are, and how little any of us little people can realistically change the outcome.

All I can do is right here in my little corner of the world.

And God? What, even?
God didn't save the six million.
I am not convinced that God can save us now.
Is that because God isn't real, or because we didn't live up to the image of Godliness we've sold ourselves for millennia?
I don't know.
But right now, all I can really trust is other people close to me.
And whether or not that will be enough may not matter in the end.
It just has to be enough to keep me sane, that's all.
So I will love my people, my beloveds.
Not all of them are Jewish, and in the end that doesn't matter.

Love your people. Do it.

It won't save any of us from death, and it won't make the world more peaceful in the long run; but it will make our lives more tolerable in the times of despair and more beautiful in the moments of grace.

And at this point, that will have to be enough.

Because WTF, even.

This is just how crazy things can be in the world today, in any ten-minute span of time.

5:20 pm — nice lady whom I don’t know knocks on the door, smiles and hands me a nicely boxed piece of special matzoh, made in Israel and courtesy of the local Chabad house. She wishes me a happy Passover. I thank her, and wish her a sweet Shabbat.

5:25 pm — a FB contact that I know through the drumming world sends me a message. A few years ago, I mistakenly sent this guy a message meant for another of my friends who is Jewish. I apologized for the goof and he said it was all good.

I hadn’t heard from this guy since, and we’re not FB friends. 

The unsolicited message is a video that contains disturbing, graphic images of the suffering in Gaza, with a voiceover by Democracy Now! Host Amy Goodman.

**Both of these things came unsolicited.**

One was someone offering me a joyous gift and friendly greeting.

The other was someone who thought sending me graphic images of violence — timed just before Shabbat — was a good idea.

After my head stopped spinning, I blocked the guy who sent the video. 

Because WTF, even.