“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.
