November 2015 Update
On the business front, let me firstly say that i have no bloody idea about business. Secondly, my heart goes out to the many creatives who are attempting to work and pay taxes in several countries at the same time. Each country has its own finicky financial laws and you better know them. With the passing of my accountant in Australia some years back i somehow now found myself way in over my head. Thank God this tale of woe ends here. Some good news please Wash? Since returning to Australia, i found great help and those scary monsters have proven themselves to be just that. Isn’t it great to be able to say that? And really, it’s just money, pretty minor, considering.
Hope you like the song. i do. It’s a lovely touch of Australiana. i love the masculine metaphors that run thru it. The ones about mentoring and courage and turningupness. Kinda fits comfortably into what i’m coping with at present.My closest friend, mentor and brother, Michael Tarlo, made his transition at the age of 82, last week. For a week before that, i got to have the privilege of sharing this time with him. Given that i wasn’t feeling very well myself, it was a tough call. Brother Michael is now a cloud. And we’ve been getting a lot of rain here in Queensland. And that’s felt good for me. ‘Cause it’s been raining in my heart. It feels like grief is the price you pay for intimacy. Buy it anyhow.
Sometimes the bridge is about rest and acceptance. i find that a tricky place to sit. With what’s gone behind, what’s next ahead, i feel like i’m suspended, patiently slung in the arms of angels, with the river flowing beneath me. Waiting. And that’s ok.
The shiniest of them all, and the ones that drew me the most were the opals. In particular, the black opals. As beautiful as anything i’d ever held in my hand.
April Update 2015
Thank you for letting me in
Thank you for letting me love you
We are two hearts in one skinThank you for letting yourself be loved
You worked so hard to get here
Thank you for letting yourself be loved
For all the laughter and the tearsYou are the greatest gift
Never forget
How many others love you
Like I doThank you for letting me love you
What a privilege this has been
Thank you for letting me love you
This love is my medicine
Norman Rockwell, It’s All Your Fault
Midwestern morning. After my brisk morning walk, i am happy to report that the ground is starting to thaw.My heart is also thawing and warmed by the completion of another He She We workshop yesterday, co-facilitated with Dianné Jean Aldrich. i am fresh from the privilege of sitting in circles with brave and curious women and men who decided to suspend their beliefs and judgments to gain a clearer understanding of what it is to communicate with one another, within and especially across the genders. Trusting, stepping out and off the ledge, i enjoyed watching us all fly.
So i will not bore you any more with platitudes about this. Just thank you.
Angela Kaset and i put this message into this month’s featured song in Nashville, five or six years back. Angela is another mega singer songwriter, country songwriter of the year, award-winning, etc. We wrote this song honestly, no frills, no grandiosity, ordinary, open. We wrote it to each other, to ourselves, and to all those that we love and who have loved us. It’s a blessing song. Play it to someone you love. (love with a big L.)
Nashville Bound in April!
Nice piece of synergy at work here, i enjoy that word synergy; the whole cycle. The above video was taken in my beautiful writer’s room on music row in 2011. Makes me smile. In two days i will go back to where it really started for me as a professional songwriter 25 years ago. Nashville and my corner of the music business which has served so well.
i get to wander what remains of those famous musical streets of gold.
(Unfortunately with the coming of music file sharing both songwriting and music row has become largely un-sustainable, they are both dying.) i’ll also get to play with my beloveds, my sangha. Eat turnip greens, catfish and grits. Gobble down donuts at Krispy Kreme, the same one on Nolensville Road i sat in as a 30-year-old youngster and wondered what the hell i was doing in Nashville. The dogwoods will be starting to bloom. And i will go zooming with brother Shawn Galloway on rollerblades around Nashville. Living wild as ever.
Funny story. Living in Nashville got me off the belief fence. i’d never called myself a Buddhist before i lived in the bible belt. Mostly i decided to call myself an “ist” so they’d leave me alone. Or at least so they would know what they needed to save me from. And they might have succeeded. As my friend and mentor Tom C. Armstrong always said, poignantly speaking for God here regarding evangelists and fundamentalists: Good help is hard to get.
i will get to sit in my own Circle of Men again, and taste that sacred deer meat with those brothers and their sons and their sons. It’s 25 years pretty much to the day since i’d originally decided to light a candle, that i would be an alone man no longer. That’s a pretty good effort — 25 years of Wednesday’s with men, without a miss — don’t you think?
Underlying this whole trip is my beloved goddaughter Maggie Moo. And i can’t wait to do what godfathers do. i’m feeling my throat close with emotion knowing we will be in the company of horses and eating moon pies together soon! That’s what i’m most excited about: being home. Wow, that just slipped out. i figure home is where my homies are. So it’s a good call. Nashville is just that. That sense of place and continuity that my troubadour lifestyle craves.
If you’ve never been to the guitar town, dear ones, c’mon down. You’ll learn to say, “Jeet?” (Did you eat?) Don’t eat before you get here. i’ve got a meal for you. Jaybird’s catfish will set your heart on fire.
Wilson’s Tree
Joke: what do you call a boomerang that doesn’t come back? A stick.
April for me marks two milestones. Two ends of the stick. On the happy end of the boomerang, i get to celebrate my 58th year, happy continuation Washuntara, on April the 30th.
At the other end of the month, on April the 2nd we mark the life and the transition of my beloved Wilson Forrester, my across-the-street neighbor whom i met when he was in nappies (Aussie for diapers). He passed four years ago to that
day, at age 19. It seems inconceivable that this much time has zoomed by, that merely months before April 2, 2011, we were celebrating the high school graduation of this young fella who had been such a part of the web and weave of my life, who had taught me so much about how to be a man and mentor.
The community will gather around the tree we planted in East Park for Wilson, with its plaque “Live Love Laugh.” And so we will continue to live, love, laugh like Wilson. For Wilson.
My pop used to read the obituaries. And i admit to sometimes having a look-see myself. i don’t really feel scared of dying, i’m scared of not living. Living wild. Dreaming hard. And loving big.
Love you big, W
March 2015 Update
NEWS & MUSE
Where Did You Go?
Dear friends,
Heart of My Heart carries its own credentials. The last email i received about it told the story of a mother and teen who, after hearing this song, pulled over in the car and wept in each other’s arms.
This is why i write songs.
And here is how this one got written. One fine afternoon about five years ago in Franklin, Tennessee, my cowriter Karen Taylor-Good and i stepped into the fray of what was a real-life situation. Like i report in the video, Karen walked in and i said to her,” Girl, you look like hell!”
“If you were raising a teenager, you’d look this way too,” was her comeback. Karen speaks to this in her own words here from her book On Angel’s Wings, available at StoweGood.com.
Teenage Mutant Alien Pod Person
By Karen Taylor-Good
I gave birth to my only child on July 22, 1983. My life changed forever. All of a sudden, there was a tiny human being who needed me. I was the most important person in her life. I rocked. I ruled. Her eyes lit up every time she saw me. I was so cool.
Then I blinked and she was six. She still needed me. I was still the most important person in her universe. She loved every outfit I ever brought home for her. I was Mommy. I was cool.
She’s seven. She adores me. She’s eight, nine, ten. We go camping together with the Brownies. She’s so proud of me. She’s eleven. She loves to go to the movies with me, out to eat with me, just to hang. She adores me.
Blink. She’s fourteen. Uh oh. What’s going on here? Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The Pod People have come and replaced my precious baby. She won’t be seen with me. She looks at me with such disdain. “I HATE YOU” she says. But Rachael… it’s… ME… Mommy… remember?
Your best friend…..remember? Nope. I am stupid. I am clueless. I am NOT cool.
Rachael, my Rachael. I miss you terribly. I ache for you. Where did you go?
…KTG
Heart of my Heart
What happened to the child that loved me back? In his classic work The Prophet, Khalil Gibran reminds us, “Your children are not your children… They come through you but they are not of you.”
After hearing this song, audiences often ask me if i have children. My answer is: yes i do, just not any of my own. (Also, i still am one. Not child-ish, i hope, but child-like. And how could you possibly not have what you are?)
Lacey and my god-daughter Margaret Emma… let’s play
As a godfather, uncle, brother, friend, mentor and protector, i daily aspire to walk in the way of the warrior who is the consummate parent. It’s been incredible fun, and, as KTG so eloquently described above, i’ve felt that “kick in the guts” when those i love so fiercely turn away.
i take great care as to when and whether i unleash this song on an audience. Easing into it, i listen as the words and melody intertwine with the sound of hearts being wrenched open on their hinges. The air is sucked out of the room, things get blurry, and it all falls under the wheels of the wildest of all rollercoasters, the one named parenthood.
With Heart of My Heart, Karen and i put words on the raw joyousness and disappointment that come hand in hand, heart in heart, with that whooshing rollercoaster drop, the one that happens when your children start to pull away. i think that if my own father had a few words like these, so much pain and suffering could have been avoided. i love to see men in the audience shedding the tears their fathers never cried, turned free at last. It brings me hope.
After 35 years of men’s work, here is what i know: being a good consistent parent matters. Being perfect doesn’t. The struggle is love. It’s tough; there is no rule book.
When children start to separate (which they will do if you’ve done your job), how much resistance they feel is all-important. If you’re afraid they will fall they may never fly. It really is a balancing act and you will, at some stage in the performance, fall.
That’s ok, fall. If you are afraid to fall, you may never fly either. Independence works both ways.
A Stitch of Hope
This song is a suture for the heart. The end doesn’t say, IIF you’re in there.” It says, “i KNOW you’re in there.” And “I’m here for you, dear one” when you want to come home again.
Much has happened since this was written. Rachel, Karen’s daughter, is a teenager no longer. Rather, a magnificent young woman making her creative way in the world. Karen and Dennis survived, as did Rachel, and they are stronger for it as a family.
Parenting is playing the long game. As hard as it may be, the descent, the uncertainty, feelings of abandonment, and even hopelessness is as much a rite of passage for you as it is for your children. This age-old separation process is both heartbreaking and life enhancing. And, like the rest of the human condition, requires a good solid sense of humor.
It is so beautiful seeing elders and those in the audience who have been through these times and are now at peace with it all. Maybe they are just happy it’s not them anymore. Or maybe they have seen that most times it really does work out ok in the end. It truly takes a village to raise a child. Do you have your village?
My favorite recent movie is The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. In it, Sonny, the lovely young Indian hotel owner, whose hotel is not quite up to expectations, has a great philosophy:
“Everything will be all right in the end… if it’s not all right then it’s not yet the end.”
Gray
Live Wild, Dream Hard, Love Big,
…w
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