“What’s died wants to fall away
what’s mine isn’t mine to stay
when I try to keep something close to me
it keeps me from being free”
– Nine Days

I am trying not to fight winter. It has been years since I’ve had to sustain myself through the freezing rain, feet of snow, and numbing cold that blankets Pennsylvania. Something about Oregon made it easier – it
was a gentler season, with so much that remained lush and green. There
wasn’t this sense of barrenness, this impression that everything living
has stalled, frozen. I know there is something that remains alive
through the dark, that all of life must adapt and change in order to
survive. I am learning to adapt.

Here is the distance between two
seasons of outward growth. Here is the stillness, the space to mourn the
life that is gone and use what remains to begin planning the life
ahead. I have been grieving the relationships I had cultivated in
Portland, the comfort of physical proximity and presence of people very
dear to me. I have been touched by their words and voices, their
presence within me that ushers me forward along the path they have
walked with me this far. I have been grieving my maternal grandmother,
whose departure from this life last week has left a deep and unsettling
emptiness. I have been compelled to fill that emptiness with the
unconditional kindness and warmth to others that she exuded throughout
my life. I have been grieving for the age of dissonance we live in, for
the cruelty we inflict by turning people into abstractions, into the
darkness in ourselves we want to control and wipe out. I have been
looking my own darkness in the face, mindful of the ways I diminish or
hurt myself that result in my unkind treatment of others.

I have
returned to my source, to my family, and spent many nights in the studio
my brother built as we cultivate this project to completion. My urge
for outward connection, for finally sharing these songs with the world,
is tempered by the desire to be true to the character of each song, and
so in the spirit of winter I try to look deeply and be patient with the
slow flow of life. There are days when I want to burrow into the
blankets and sleep until it passes. It is much harder to be present to
the difficult seasons. But how much we miss when we are trying not to
look at something. How much it hurts when we try to cling to an old way
of life, to remain static in our relationships. How many colors we miss
when we try to shut out the cold.

I don’t know how to talk about a lot of things so I usually end up talking about poetry. Poetry freezes a moment, looks deeply at the past and present contained in one interaction, shares a story that is not just of one individual in one time period, but a collective experience spanning generations. Poetry weaves perspectives and intentions into a more complete narrative, reflects what we say all the time as individuals and society without knowing it.

Poetry is especially important in moments where we wonder how a police officer can kill an unarmed man on camera with only the videographer facing punishment. These actions, these collective responses, are rooted in millions of everyday moments where people are complicit in social and political systems of thought that place the value of some human beings above others. I look at how I move through the world, ways that I subtlety, casually invalidate the experiences of others. I try to see the fear in me that was in Daniel Pantaleo, Darren Wilson, so that I will NEVER let it drown out voices of people who are expressing the pain my actions cause, directly or indirectly. I try to engage with it, take away its power, so it will never make me think that because I was born into a certain amount of privilege, I am more deserving than others of basic human rights.