The Cello's Wail

Can you show me how to make the cello wail, to produce the guttural plea which is the sorrow of mothers whose children lie in shallow graves and the emptiness of lovers long gone and the crimson of the dirt as the blood dries on the streets in neighborhoods of color here and there and everywhere?

Can you show me how you made my body sing in the night while everyone else slept and the moans of our pleasure were muffled by pillows and bites of flesh and a certain knowledge that we would not and could not last the interminably heated summer and the looming miles which felt insurmountable, your heat  (your fingertips) palpably out of reach?

Can you show me how to lay a sorrowful burden bare, to expose it to the light and leave the ugly parts disinfected while preserving the infinitesimal flecks of gold?

Can you show me how to wander in a wilderness wholly exposed and overcome by wicked gales but driven toward the sound of bow against string, the echoing amongst the trees, a song that turns the wounded and weary traveler in the direction of shelter?

Can you show me how to make the cello wail? 

Little Star

I was walking in the long, cold night, quaking from the soles of my feet to the center of my frenzied heart. It was dark and quiet and I was alone. There was the wailing of the fox and the shuffling of hooves or paws or claws under shadowed trees. The force of the wind tore through my jacket and pushed me sideways, the snow hammering my closed lids.

I was walking in the long, cold night, tears trickling into icicles on raw skin. My ears ached, though my headphones remained for the company of the mournful cello and haunting choir of voices.

I was walking in the long, cold night and the blue spruce and bare aspens wept for the friends who had gone (theirs and mine), for the promise at every birth of grief, and because they could feel in my step that familiar burden and could only wonder why, why, why?

I was walking in the long, cold night when the clouds parted and the wind halted and the world held its breath. The rustling under the trees ceased and the trees, too, paused their curious murmuring. Piercing through a night that would not end and a grief that robbed me of breath, appeared the little star.

I was walking in the long, cold night and a little star broke the darkness, casting the snowy trail in miraculous light straight toward the door of the cabin and the roaring fire which promised to keep me through the night.

Let Me Whisper

Let me whisper to you gently in the night the truths that we dare not say without the veil of darkness.

I will remind you that you have lifted me from despair, pulled me from the dark places I hide.

Let me tell you stories of our ancestors and the beauty and pain they saw here. Let me remind you of their courage in the face of remarkable odds and devastating uncertainty. I will speak to you of resilience.

I will murmur, urgently, of the ways the earth would dim in your absence, the color melting from every rock and bough and leaf as it detaches from the branch and settles, crisp and browned, in the mud.

I will speak of the kisses exchanged in the night that were nothing more than a placeholder of my and your humanity, that demand a recognition of our fleeting vitality.

I will remind you that I cannot be without you because your soul is my own and joy is incompatible if one is only halfway anything.

We can remember the bitter wine and the taste of exotic locations in our mouths and the moments that came before which were simply a dream of the future we live.

I will tell you of the hardships I will endure and you will endure and I will comfort you if the grief is too much to bear; I will remind you that nothing is unsafe if your hand is in mine.

Let me whisper to you gently in the night that all is ashes and dust without you.

Let me whisper to you, urgently, that I persist because you do.

Let me whisper to you gently in the night (can you hear it?) that I am because you are.

I will say it, so quiet now, that I love you. 

I love you.

Hey, Human

When I was younger, I traveled to the places which held the most adventure; I was thirsty to know what the world looked like outside of my small frame of reference. I yearned to know people halfway around the world, how they lived, who they worshipped, and to meet the people and things they chose to love. I figured, with such easy nonchalance and excitement, that there would be good wherever my feet took me. And in all the places I journeyed whether it was Kenya or Peru, I found people to be kind, open, and curious. I found generosity, selflessness, and a mutual yearning to know one another.

What is it about adulthood that has made me more fearful and less inclined to take risks? I don't think people are worse now than they were twenty years ago and I don't think the world offers any less beauty or insight. The world is still out there and I think, despite voices which echo litanies of fear, we should all strive to explore as much of it as we can, to know the faces of the other and realize that they are not so dissimilar from ourselves.

I do fundamentally believe in the goodness of people and of their potential to do beautiful things. I do still yearn to board a jet and find myself in a place where the language is challenging but people are generous and forgiving. I yearn to see myself reflected in the eyes of someone half a world away and be reminded that we are infinitely connected. There is no doubt, despite a history marred with staccatos of pain and chaos, that we all belong irrevocably and permanently to one another. The destiny of all of mankind has always depended on the joyful recognition of a fellow human in the exchange between strangers, on the intimacy of fingers-laced at sunset, and on the boisterous laughter that emerges from a primal place in the soul that is a tireless reminder that ecstasy is as much our inheritance as sorrow.

Gregory Alan Isakov and Friends

In the wake of the last week, music has been more central to my life than it has for at least a decade. It has been on in my office, the car, on walks, putting away dishes, and chatting with Tim. I'm desperately hungry for new songs I haven't heard before, things that elicit and reflect the powerful things I'm feeling. Becoming an adult in most of the developed world, it's almost possible to feel convinced that the arts are a hobby, that the individuals who hold up mirrors to our lives and our society are somehow less important. We don't pay most artists living wages and we don't give them much social status unless they have risen to the absolute pinnacle of accomplishment.

Gregory Alan Isakov, Trent Reznor, and Asaf Avidan have been my constant companions over the last week. I've listened to Ramin Djawadi, Dvorak, Faure, and Eric Whitcare on repeat. I've been craving songs I listened to in college, things that give me comfort and a sense of normalcy. And when it all feels like too much, I turn on a song written by someone who seems to have manifested my own pain and translated it into musical form.

Tonight, Brandi Carlile whispers, "I see your suffering and I have felt it, too. Rejoice! Mourn! Celebrate! Fume! This is your humanity. Be calm, be brave, it'll be okay."