Henry Miller and the Hungry Eye

Finally, an early morning. The streetlights on the hill are still lit and the sky is deciding whether or not to drop its dark protection. I have been playing catch up with sleep for some reason and have been uncharacteristically rising in well-established mornings. I missed this feeling, of holding the hand of the day as we emerge into light together. It’s in this liminal space that writing lives with me.

Leading up to and now well beyond my magical Big Sur birthday, I have been becoming reacquainted with the writer Henry Miller. At the Henry Miller Library I picked up three of his books and have been savoring one called Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. It has been my bedtime reading, which means a slow savoring of his writing. Continue reading “Henry Miller and the Hungry Eye”

To A Love Song

Today, back to blog posting. I’m going to talk about music.

I have drafted three of these posts in the past week, addressing life from several different angles, trying to make sense of my part in the chaotic times we are living through.

Finally I have come to this. I will talk about music. Continue reading “To A Love Song”

Riding a Rollercoaster at 30 Rock

A highlight of last year was being asked to appear on Late Night with Seth Meyers on NBC. The 8G Band, the show’s house band, is led by Fred Armisen, and due to his busy schedule, they often ask drummers to fill in for a week. To be asked is a great honor.

I’ve come to see everything that happens in my life, big and small, as opportunity to use the tools I’ve gained through years of contemplative practice to watch the rollercoaster of my interior life. This was quite a ride.

When the message came to hold the dates for my appearance, and the possibility became a reality, I noticed that what rose in me first was excitement, a buzzy feeling of having accepted a challenge.

This didn’t last long. Soon, a wave of trepidation crashed over me. As usual when I am stressed out, the focus became an attack on my appearance, and I began to worry about being seen by so many, how I looked, what I would wear.

I balanced this stress out by remembering that I was being asked to play drums. Drums are comfort and purpose. When I am behind the drums, I am more at home than anywhere else, and I kept reminding myself that drumming was what was important here. It’s what I do, and drums have never failed to meet me. Just play drums, I kept saying to myself.

A few days before I was to leave, I was given a list of possible songs to learn, including two songs we would play for the studio audience before the show. My heart sank when I heard them. The songs were fast, indie rock and punk songs that were exactly the kind of drumming that I had never concentrated on. I started out playing with singer/songwriters, then immediately went into stonerrock, AC/DC, then Bonham. Heavy, swingy tunes are my forte. I never played this kind of straight rock throughout my career.

It was funny to see myself stress out over these songs. Any other time, I wouldn’t have thought much about learning them, getting through them, but now they represented the bigger challenge of my appearance on the show, and all of my worry settled into them. I played them for hours, and my body was so tense I couldn’t get them right. All the stress of the coming experience settled right into these songs. They set my confidence off-kilter, and I was filled with dread.

I arrived to 30 Rock studios on Monday morning and met the band. Seth Jabour, Syd Butler and Eli Janney were welcoming. We were in a tiny rehearsal room, and we began preparing the pieces of music we would be playing for the commercial breaks and for the guest walk-ons.

The band’s kindness will always be a great memory for me. Something I noticed throughout the week was that at no time in that studio, when the band was discussing the upcoming guests, was there even the smallest amount of shade thrown. So often in a group of people when discussing other people, there is some denigration, or some negativity that gets tossed around. There was absolutely none. In fact, the positive attitude from every single person on the show, from the hair and makeup team, to the clothing people, to the production and stage crew, to the security guards, to the receptionist, to finally, Seth Meyers himself, was remarkable.

This reminded me of two truths. The first one is that when you are with people who are the very best at what they do, they are usually folks who see negativity as a waste of valuable time. I have seen this in some of the best musicians I’ve crossed paths with.

The second truth is that the negativity I was expecting was in the room all right, but it was all within me. Every time I flubbed a fill or played that opening song like someone who didn’t know how to play drums, the cascade of unworthiness ran more intensely.

In fact, the whole week was a lesson in managing my internal negativity. Every error I made was an opportunity for intense self-attack. The stress of the cameras, the fact that I was cueing the endings from commercial breaks, watching the fingers of the production manager count down and the intense tension that would take over my body as I came to the ending drum fill, it was indeed a challenge. I felt as though I had forgotten how to play drums.

I have spent my life trying to get out of my head when I play, and here I was required to be 100% in my head, highly alert to cues that were not musical. It was disorienting.

Each night after the show I would try to get out into the city, distract myself from the overall feeling of defeat as I replayed everything I had done wrong throughout the day. One night, I saw a Broadway musical, Some Like It Hot, and the exquisite perfection of the actors and dancers and musicians reminded me, this is New York. Top of the top. I regretted the years I had spent away, even though my life had taken me exactly to where I was meant to be. Again, a feeling of unworthiness washed up.

On Wednesday, I played terribly. I left the studio that night and started walking downtown in misery. For the first 15 blocks, I was as low as I could get. My life was a sham, I had devoted myself to an instrument that I couldn’t play and every decision to now had been wrong. I felt like my chin was scraping the sidewalk as I walked along.

For the next 10 blocks, I tried to rally. I entertained the thought that I couldn’t possibly be the very worst drummer who had done this job. Or maybe I was the worst, but maybe others had just as hard of a time. This helped my perspective a little.

On the rest of the way to the Village, I spoke to my mom. My biggest cheerleader. She echoed the idea that I couldn’t possibly be doing the worst job of anyone ever, and she helped lift my mood. “Just do better tomorrow,” she said, with that matter-of-fact clarity that dispels internal cloudiness.

I was drawn into a basement comedy club, and the dingy black space swallowed me up. This felt familiar. I thought of all of those little clubs I had spent time in when I lived in New York long ago, all of the late nights and inspiring shows and firsts in my drumming career. I let the memories wash over me. The comedians were varied and unknown, young people figuring it out. I was a rando in the small place, as everyone seemed to know each other, and the anonymity was a balm. Maybe it’s not all about me.

As I walked the 50 blocks to the hotel, I was met by all of the memories that always meet me in New York: Washington Square Park and the many moments of youthful craziness spent there, streets leading to different day jobs and practice spaces and all of the ways I was always seeking, searching for who I was. I started playing drums here, drawn almost unconsciously to a life I didn’t expect. Now, I was walking to hotel room paid for by a tv network, and tomorrow I would wake up and try again to be worthy of an opportunity that so many deserve. People believed in me.

A part of my great struggle here, I realized, was that I didn’t want to let anyone down. The 8G Band, the lovely man who hired me, my husband and family, my band and friends. This was the worry the whole time. Not the studio audience or that nebulous idea of the viewing audience. I wanted to prove to those I loved that I was worthy to be there. Darn it. I guess the search to be loved is never ending.

What if it’s not all about me? I remembered the feeling of playing with Zepparella, the freedom and joy that I aim to transmit in every beat. Where had that energy of joy gone? Somehow, I thought I had to leave it aside to step onto that elevator at 30 Rock. Somehow, I got it in my head that I had to be someone else. Somehow, I was under the impression that to be worthy of being there, I had to let go of what was intrinsic to me. I wasn’t good enough as I was to be there.

I thought, what if ultimately, it didn’t matter how people perceived me, as long as I transmitted joy? That is my job I think, in life, to find the ways I can be a light. Why should this experience rob me of that privilege?

I woke up excited, for the first time all week. Just play everything perfectly, I said to myself, but not with an energy of defeat but one of certainty. As I practiced in the morning, a lightbulb clicked on about how to approach the parts I had struggled with. I felt happy. I let go of Clem, and all her expectations and negativities, and I just played the drums.

One of the last things to happen for me was to meet Seth Meyers, and he asked how my week had gone. I told him it had been a rollercoaster of thinking I was terrible and then building myself back up. “Oh, I felt like that the first six months I was doing this,” he said. I left with that gracious reminder that our own worst enemy comes from within. And that should something like that happen again for me, I’ll remember what the whole point is.

***

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About Time for Thanks

A realization lately. I have been asking a lot.

Throughout my life, even in times I was sure there wasn’t anything I was speaking with, I have spoken to source. I sent wishes for someone’s healing or blew out a candle or prayed, whatever we call those moments when we speak to something larger outside of ourselves. It has occurred to me that in these moments, I have always been asking. Asking for friends and family to be well or to recover. Asking for my finances to straighten out. Asking for whatever is coming next to arrive in the way I would most like.

May the frightening thing in the news not come to pass. May those people find relief from suffering. May the show be successful, or the friend find her way, or the family be safe and happy.

We map out how we want it all to look, and we have a picture of the outcome. We create this picture based on the past, and it is through fear we speak. Fear of not having enough, fear of it not working out in the way we vision, fear of pain or sorrow, fear of change. I think I am supposed to know what the future is to look like. So I ask and ask and ask.

In the past year I have been shifting to a different kind of prayer, a different type of conversation with the great unknown. I began working with a mantra meditation, and the words I focus on praise and thank. After doing this for several months, I suddenly found myself unreasonably happy. Something changed in my moments, and my moments have changed. I see that my prayers have been so one-directed. Now the energy is moving in another way.

I have been given so much in this life. To many it would seem pretty limited: never owned a house, scraping along hand to mouth through work that pays very little, small bits of success, tiny hovel of an apartment. To many others, I live like a queen. But beyond things, there is so much given. Absorbing work I love, family supportive, friends numerous, husband a true partner, interests galore and ability to follow those interests. Health. Travel. Stories.

Once I start thanking, I cannot stop. I could go on and on. Thankful for the rattly refrigerator keeping my food cold. For electricity. For water that comes out of the tap and for its heat. For the sky and for birds and the change of seasons that frames my life in interesting ways. For the ocean and the sound that meets me when I wake: fog horns and barking sea lions. For people I meet in my day, in the grocery, in the laundromat, on the sidewalks, who go about their business as if everything were okay, as if life is here and we are going to meet it with a smile.

I am not immune to the great suffering that rises in waves through humanity and is sure to meet me as well one of these days. It is inevitable that things I want to happen will not happen, or that shocking, terrible things will rise.

There must be a way to be able to meet difficulty, not as if I am being attacked or put upon, but as if this too is the natural flow, the natural rhythm of a life. Valleys and peaks. Carried by the current as the river takes me over crests and into canyons, and back out. A great log ride through life. Maybe the gratitude that I am here at all is the current, and realizing this allows me to enjoy the ride.

For all that I am gifted, may I see then the ways I am cared for. Some of the saddest folks I know seem unable to recognize their allies, distrusting those that are there in support. We see again and again people who have become so distrustful that they forget most people just want happiness for themselves and others. Anger and distrust, allowed to amplify, strengthens feelings of having been deceived, having been forgotten and unloved, and soon, we begin to mirror that which we believe wishes harm. This cycle seems to be at a fever pitch these days, and in every hostile, angry being encountered, this deep suffering is palpable.

I want to make sure I appreciate all the ways I am supported and taught. I want to make sure I don’t let my lens of fear cut off the care that is all around me.

I question whether all this gratitude I feel is not just a sneaky way to ask for more. The way around this is to find where I feel lacking, where I feel fear. This shows me where I feel unworthy of all I’ve been given, and the belief that there is still not enough.

Can I feel myself worthy of love? I recognize all the parts of me I would say are not worthy. My laziness in a weekend of lying about, my grumpiness at night, my cruel thoughts about another, my fear of what is to come, my damn right foot that stumbles in the Bonham triplet. All the ways I resist knowing that my life is just an experience of the All remembering to remember itself.

One thing I have been deeply grateful for in my days has been a series of lectures by Alan Watts, and I have fallen in love with this philosopher, embarrassed that I have taken so long to arrive to him. His voice has been in my ear as I move through my days.

What is the self that I love? What is this thing that I am so interested in advancing and in protecting? And you look very closely into what you feel when you think you feel yourself. You know what you find out? That your self is everything that you thought was someone else, or something else. You have no knowledge of yourself you see except in relation to others. Self and other are as inseparable as back and front. There is no knowledge of self without the knowledge of otherness. There is no knowledge of the voluntary without the knowledge of the involuntary. Of can without can’t. So they go together…
– From Out of Your Mind: Essential Listening from the Alan Watts Audio Archives

I examine my actions through a lens he has opened. I explore the dualities in which I catch myself. I look for the shadow strengthened by the light of my actions. Does my meditation practice imbed the belief that knowing the self takes time, or that I somehow need to do work in order to know the moment? Am I just postponing real understanding each time I sit?

Is there something here to be fixed? Does my gratitude just cry out from a deep ache of what is lacking?

Do I love to receive love? Do I love to hold on to what is here that suits me? Do I love only to strengthen the illusion that this unlovable being is not so bad? Can I escape the pattern of misery that stops me being able to trust?

Or can I love for loving. Can I love without need. Can I love as if nothing is lacking and there is more than enough.

The ways we are gifted are so numerous that thanking drowns out all fear that we are not worthy.

I look around the room at all the items here. Old yellow kitchen table that brightens the whole space with sunshine. Record albums curated by a man who shows me a world of music so vast it seems each person may have a song to sing, and has pressed it into vinyl. All the books, and the funny rising panic that comes on when I think of all there is to read and all there is left to read. The little pieces of interest from our travels, so many places and so many people that the room feels cluttered and magical with the voices of those who have met us along the way. I am grateful for the hands that have crafted these little things: musical instruments and dandelions in acrylic cubes and animal skulls and a mechanical monkey toy, Victrola and plants and a salt lamp, family photographs and lights from Turkey and yard sales, artwork from friends and yellow tulips on the yellow table standing at attention in the morning darkness.

There is the foghorn. There is the sound of stillness outside the one-paned window that allows the sea chill into the room that these two blankets abate. When I fall into my heart, there is a gratitude that does not echo a fear of losing what is here. I look around me and see only abundance. I need nothing more than what is here. I am just gratitude, remembering itself in one more gift of a breath.

***

You can listen to me read this on Soundcloud or as an iTunes Podcast.
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The wonderful hummingbird photo was taken by Jessica Whelchel.

The Scrabble to Get There

A Bodhisattva is a being who is able to reach nirvana, but defers this in order to stick around to help suffering beings on their path. The Bodhisattvas promise to practice the six perfections of giving, moral discipline, patience, effort, concentration and wisdom in order to fulfill their aim of attaining buddhahood for the sake of all beings.[1]

It has been a month of traveling, with the restrictions lifting and the vaccination in order. Two weeks in Southern California with my family, a week in New York with my dear mentor and friends, and to Nebraska for more visiting.

Airports have lost their charm, at least for the time being. It seems as if everyone is discombobulated. Humans have forgotten their easy flow of being, and there is a kind of uptight scrabbling and agitation that sets everything on edge. People have been cooped up in their own spaces, getting their demands met in every moment, and I guess they’ve forgotten how to comport themselves with strangers. Not every impulse gets met immediately when you’re outside of your household, and people seem to have forgotten this as they bully their way to the counter or cut everyone off in traffic. Continue reading “The Scrabble to Get There”

The Question of Not Enough

With the anniversary of lockdown, I imagine many of us are looking back at the past year. I remember that first foggy morning, gazing into the city and listening to a kind of stillness I had never heard here before. It seems both like yesterday and forever ago.

For many people, the opportunity of this year was in having time to look closely at our patterns. The distraction of our social lives went away, and the way we truly live came into clear focus.

Continue reading “The Question of Not Enough”

All is Well

I am gratefully a good sleeper, but now and then comes a night when things are out of whack. This time, I blame it on choosing Bonnie and Clyde, the 1967 Faye Dunaway version, for the Sunday night movie.

For me, for many, this was the best era of movies, between 1967 and 1976. I hadn’t seen this one in a long time, and just gazing at Dunaway alone is worth the price of admission. I forgot how gruesome the end of the movie was though, and the energy of the mayhem woke me up from dreams. I am pretty diligent about what goes into my brain, violence-wise, for just this reason. Continue reading “All is Well”

Choosing Magic

I worked in a restaurant in Chelsea long ago, a wine bar on 7th Avenue in New York City. It was a small place with three levels. There were some tables upstairs, overlooking the main bar area. Downstairs was the kitchen, and there was a room with a fireplace and sofas and tables close together.

It was cushy and comfortable in that room. With the wine flowing and the warmth from the fireplace, things got quite rowdy down there, especially on late weekend nights. I wore steel-toed motorcycle boots, running up and down those stairs all night long with those heavy shoes. At the time, this was my idea of fitness. If I ever need a hip replacement, I will blame it on those years and those shoes. Continue reading “Choosing Magic”

Pocketful of Stars

I fell into a hole for a few days. The San Francisco air quality had been such that when the pug and I went outside for our daily peramble, he sneezed for the whole walk, and I came home headachy. My own struggle was a constant reminder of the devastation happening close by. Friends were evacuating their homes. The gut-wrenching destruction of fires haunted me, the lives lost, the trees and plants, the animals. I hooked into the heavy feeling and dug in.

The wildfires affected many places from my history. I have driven from San Francisco to Washington so many times I can see nearly each mile in my mind, my aching delight in the vast beauty of forest always very present as I wind through. Okanagan County Washington, where I picked apples for 6 weeks, long ago. Santa Cruz, where I went to college. Vacaville, Oroville, spots on the “places I’ve played” list. Continue reading “Pocketful of Stars”

The First Trance

The drum begins. I begin my journey on a bluff, overlooking the Pacific. Rolling grassy hills, the coastline rippling side to side, and the big birds delighting in the marine updraft. There is an opening to a cave there, to my left. The first time I entered this cave, a wave of fear washed over me because it was so dark. Then I remembered: this is my shamanic journey! Turn on the light! And light flooded in from above, highlighting the massive space. A soft dirt floor, ferns and the distant sound of water. A lower world where everyone I meet has my best interest at heart.

For a couple of years, culminating in the past few months of the quarantine, I have been studying Shamanic Counseling with the teacher Isa Gucciardi. This path is a surprise in my life, and yet I also feel as though I’ve been making my way here the whole time.

Continue reading “The First Trance”