We Are Sea-Farers

It was late. Well, not late for me as I had been home from work about an hour, but late concerning the day as it was now half past midnight. I decompress alone upon returning home while everyone else is in bed asleep. I enjoy the stillness of the house at this time. The dog quietly waiting for me by the door; kneeling I scratch her ears, stroke her long back, kiss her nose, then take her outside. The quiet of the backyard where various aromatic plants perfume the night air; Champaca Alba, Salvia Clevelandii, Patchouli, Plumeria, African Jasmine. I search the heavens for favorite stars and constellations, Cassiopeia, Orion, Southern Cross, Big Dipper, Pleiades. What animals are stirring; something in the Palm or Orange tree, an Owl, maybe a possum sitting atop the telephone line will stare down at me? Small planes overhead, their passing distant and nearly silent except for a slight drone and buzz. I track them by the lights blinking underneath and along wingtip edges. The dog goes for a last minute tinkle and sniff of the yard, and together we come in and close and lock the back door, our reflections silhouetted in the dark windowpanes. I turn off the dining room lights and then walk through the galley kitchen to the door leading into the garage. I open this heavy door, and click the switch turning off the front yard lights. Lights we have posted in brick columns the gated yard contains running along the burn of the street. I close and deadbolt the door. Next to this door is a small bathroom I use at night where I brush my teeth, and then back through this end of the kitchen turning out the light. From here in the dark now I cross the great front room guided only by the soft light of a singular post in the front yard. It casts a glow through the blinds and efficiently lines the floor before me like an enormous pad of paper. This is the dream light and it remains on watch until dawn, making a friend to moths and the errant random bug. Quietly I enter my daughters room. She is asleep and her white noise machine burbles the soft sounds of a stream she enjoys having on at night. I pull up her covers and turn down the stream to a quiet gurgle.

I walk to my bedroom and slip into bed closing my eyes, ready to fall away from the day into sleep.

It was a high pitched, singular, beep, I heard then. Like a small digital wrist watch could make. I opened my eyes waiting quietly, for the second, and then continual, beep, to sound; thinking, I would now have to get up, find the watch somewhere in the dark, and turn it off. But there was nothing. All quiet. No more beep from the perceived watch. Instead it was followed by a bright but isolated, flash, just outside the french doors in our bedroom. As bright as lightning but small, contained, and not much larger it seemed than the width of the doors and the narrow vertical side-windows which bordered them. The deep grey curtains were closed shut, and for this briefest moment were illuminated from outside. Lightning? I began to count;
one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi,...
expecting a small distant thunder call. Nothing. I waited another few moments. No digital, beep. No accommodating, flash. 

I puzzled for a moment, something imagined, perhaps. Unexplained but certainly plain and natural had occurred. The tonic of two separate events collided. First, a beep. Then, a flash. Mixed together in my mind making the sum greater than the whole. Had I the answer to this minor mystery right then, I would have fallen fast asleep. I closed my eyes, laid my head back down and tried to settle my wondering thoughts.

Beep. Beep. I open my eyes. I heard the small but distinct digital sound again, twice, and then immediately following, right outside my bedroom doors facing the backyard; a backyard completely fenced in with 12' high ivy and bougainvillea covered walls, two lightning-bright flashes illuminate against the curtained windows. This time I sat up slightly, resting one side on a bent elbow. I counted to myself again, hoping for the thunder roll;
one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi.
Silent. No car driving past on the street, no plane flew or mobile craft helicoptered overhead. No one in the house stirred, not even my easily-stirred partner fast asleep next to me. Nothing was happening at the neighbors. It was silent. Not a sound. Nothing to give away or explain the beeps and flashes.

Of course I had to get up. Investigate. Look around.

What is it which prompts such a thought? To make one explore such things in the night, when everyone else is asleep and you are basically, alone? The need to protect your family and home? The need to understand the place you are in? Or is it the invitation to mystery so great, even if frightened or anxious, you still go out into that great dark room and peer around the corner.

I step into the great front room just outside and to the right of our bedroom door and peer through this space. With the glow of the dream light it is much more vast than it appears in the day, and as such I wait and look at unnatural shapes of art, furniture, plants. From here I can look out one of the front windows, the blinds about two-thirds closed. Open enough so I can see the outdoor security lights are not on. The lights on the brick posts lining our yard to the street are off. The singular glowing post is alone, and but for the tips of Milkweed plants and an Hibiscus against the window, I see not much to report. I listen carefully to nearly nothing other than maybe a faint humm of the refrigerator and the slight spill from my daughter's room where the burbling brook continues to play. I step a few feet into the front room and half expect a field of dozens of little grey visitors to come running past me like salmon swimming upstream against a current, but it is just me, and the dark, and the quiet.  I look toward and face the kitchen. There isn't a watch left out randomly beeping, nor are there flashes of lightning, even though it is cloudy and a slight mist was in the air when I arrived home. Lightning is extremely rare in Los Angeles. If it had been lightning the flash would have surrounded the house in a fashion causing all doors and windows to become lit up, but the only thing lit up was just outside our bedroom doors. I continue my search, slowly stepping through the dark toward the front door where I can turn to my right and look into the open back room and dining area. I see the dark silhouette of the couch, the enormous plant standing by a window, and the french doors to the back yard where me and our dog just visited the night stars. I walk through this area to the french doors and carefully step into their frame hesitantly looking into the backyard. Nothing. The pool shimmers darkly from ambient light pollution, but most of this is darkened by the huge fence, and trees shadowing the space. I turn and then look through the galley kitchen and notice, the light in the garage is on? I can see the frame around this door is brightly lit from some light on in the garage, but much brighter than I know the garage light actually contains. It is a bluish essence, like a cross between a neon light and fluorescent. There is a fluorescent light in the garage, but you have to turn it on from a switch which is currently blocked by a stack of unsorted boxes, and two bicycles. Simultaneously I can't help but wonder on the tightness of the seal around this door. I mean after all, it should be totally sealed making it fire proof as cars drive in and out of the garage and as I am looking at this three-sided lit rectangle around the door, which may or may not be now properly sealed, frozen by the mystery of it, when it instantly goes out.

What. The. Fuck.

I can sense my mouth drop open and I am stock still, immobile, with my back to the outside doors as thoughts like a damm bursting open tumble through my head in unorderly fashion, making senseless demands like, you must go into the garage and investigate, and, who is in the garage, and, why am I so far from any light switch, and, I should stay in the dark that way any prowler will not see me and I will have the upper hand because they don't know they woke me and I can slide along the floor and find my way to protecting the family and getting help and surprising them and I saw Jodie Foster in that movie with Anthony Newly, no not Newly, umm what is his fucking name, that movie where she was in the dark of a basement, it has a poster of a moth in a mouth, not unlike the moths now fluttering around the singular front post whose light is so brief and dim it couldn't possibly cast a glow into the garage and did it just go out and maybe there was a car in the street parked perpendicular in the street blocking the street and its headlights were on bright and like spotlights they shown through the garage window the one covered in blinds so no light actually can get in and I don't hear a car it is actually so quiet it is making this entire scenario more uneasy oh God why don't I hear a car driving around the block or a dog barking or the humm from the freeway just four blocks away or cars drag racing up and down Ventura, and before I realize it entirely, I have made my way stealthily through the galley kitchen and find I am standing in the doorway of the small bathroom next to the garage door. I may be shaking. I open the frosted window in the small bathroom trying to get a look out onto the front yard, hoping I can see some answer for why there was a light on in the garage. I see nothing, and continue to hear nothing. On my tip toes I step toward the door to the garage and place my right ear against it, and hear nothing. I pause and consider my options...wondering if and what I should do. I turn the deadbolt and quickly open the door as my hand reaches for the light switch, just past the door frame and click it on.
The garage is as quiet and silent as I left it just a few minutes ago when I shut off the front yard lights and locked up the house. I stare into the garage. I see the alarm light of the car blinking as it does when parked and locked. Nothing is out of place. No one had been in here.
I turn out the light, and close and lock the door.
I am standing once again in the dark. Slowly I walk through this end of the kitchen and into the entryway of the front door. I close my eyes and reaching outside myself I ask,
Who is here?

We are seafarers looking for safe harbor. We are astounded by your bravery.

I open my eyes, and am stock still.

What does one do at this point? There is nothing more to investigate. The answer to my question seems to provide a mystery I will wonder on for some time, perhaps the rest of my days.

We are seafarers looking for safe harbor.

Well, aren't we all, really? Here we couch ourselves in distractions of safety; our homes, our families, our friends. All together now while on a planet who spins through the depths of space and dark. A moon posts on our doorstep, the dream light catching our nocturnal wonderings like moths, or an errant bug. We are alone, really, and safety is an illusion we create but don't deserve or possess.

We are astounded by your bravery.

Betty Buckley Story Songs

I think when you have a voice like Betty Buckley, and for me, she is singular in this aspect; I mean, no one, simply no one, has a voice like hers, that it must be both an enormous opportunity for giving and a burden of responsibility. I can only imagine.

I have tried to imagine so often over many years of listening closely, a metaphor for what it is I hear in her. Recently, I was given some incredible insights to life when I asked, "...in a world of illusions, what is real?," and the most profound answer was simply, "...breathing is real." Betty's voice is like this. It is like a breath set free as a skip above a vast ocean of water, where the rest of us are submerged. It shimmers across the surface reflecting the light of the sun, and as such is ephemeral and bright, translucent, and simply a mirror of something else, not hers entirely, and all of it also, purely herself, and that which she brought into this life as a person and artist at the same time.

I first heard Memory, from Cats, on vinyl, in the bedroom of my best friends house. We were both in junior high and beginning to become interested in musical theatre. Riveted, I am sure I had him play over and over this recording, of this one miraculous song, of this unbelievable voice, from this odd and mysterious show, Cats.

I was to see my first Broadway show, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, some years later. Of course in the lead role would be none other than Ms. Buckley herself, playing this boy, Edwin.

A few more years passed and I was a student in New York. Instead of purchasing materials for class projects at F.I.T., I spent what monies I had to see Betty perform at The Bottom Line. Numerous times did I see and hear her perform there. The Bottom Line offered a close proximity to the artist and this was a large part of the draw. The setting was intimate and rough, sexy and old school, with a touch of glimmer from its star studded history imbued into the walls. Betty adding to this.
She sang from Joni Mitchell, and offered me a first encounter to her work:

Oh I am a lonely painter

I live in a box of paints

I'm frightened by the devil

and I'm drawn to those ones that ain't afraid

Surely she was directing this right to me, as it described me immediately. The voice she gave to a lyric; the turn of a phrase, and the sound created with the musicians backing her, was place-changing for me. She took me into another space, creating new frames of reference with her artistry, informing and illustrating new ways to enter into life, and for me, see as a painter.

When her CD, Children Will Listen, was released in 1993 it brought me back to her performing at The Bottom Line. From then on in my studio in New York I played Betty's recordings. Over and over I listened to her within a small loop chorus consisting of Laurie Anderson, Kate Bush, Emmylou Harris, and Joni Mitchell to near exclusivity of other artists while I worked. My collection of her recordings grew over the years as she did, each new release offering access to her routinely, in turn giving me access to that small and young, trusting and open artist within.

Recently I met Ms. Buckley while working on a production of Grey Gardens. To meet one who has had such impact, while coordinating a fitting for costumes is always something I have to negotiate inside myself very carefully. My feelings of awe and deep respect filed away. I did my work, was friendly but kept to myself as I have learned to do over the many years working on Broadway, and in film, and television. What I have always considered my, "waiting tables so I can paint," job, which gratefully I have been extremely successful with.

As rehearsal moved along I would spend my days with Betty, along with of course the other actors, getting to know them as they shared. Often actors don't make themselves too available. They are working, and necessarily so, focused on the work they must perform on stage. Friendships are rare, let alone genuine friendliness, so I, as I have done for many years, was friendly in return but kept to myself. I am a professional. I know what my priorities are, where boundaries must be set. Betty was an example as a star of the show in her daily kindness and availability and this wasn't lost on me. I slowly shared with Betty my deep appreciation of her work, and how much I admired her. I could see she was a private person. Her sensitivity toward others around her as she worked was genuine and a new respect grew for her. I was always considerate of these things so when we became friendly, it was gentle and slow, over the weeks we all were together.

One beautiful summer night I was at the Hollywood Bowl where Sting and Peter Gabriel were performing. As Peter sang, "Don't Give Up," one of my favorite songs, I closed my eyes to take it all in, sensitive to where I was in my life, the joy of being there, the emotion of the music, and that incredible song. In my minds eyes I saw Betty singing "Don't Give Up," and thought how perfect it would be for her.

The following night at the show I mentioned this to Betty. She lit up and exclaimed what a great song that was, and then asked if I had any other songs to suggest, as she would like to consider them for a new show. I could read her sincerity in this invitation, and taking it seriously composed a list of 11 titles for her, from which she chose the Peter Gabriel song, and one by Emmylou Harris, "Prayer in Open D."

Many weeks later I went to see Betty at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in her show Story Songs. She had been performing this show in many cities, and this was one of the last stops on the tour. Friends in New York had been texting me when she performed at Joe's Pub, that she spoke of me during the evening. I was stunned, she spoke about me? I couldn't imagine this, and was curious what she was saying. I knew she was going to sing both songs I suggested within the context of the show, and realized this must be what she was sharing. So that evening as she presented, "Prayer in Open D," she spoke to the audience of our meeting and the list of songs I gave her; I couldn't help but feel shock and a kind of out of body, time travelling distance coalesce from all my visceral memories of her and her work, her voice, her performing, and ultimately now, herself, there looking at me from the stage. Tears brimmed my eyes as she sang the Emmylou song. I sat still as I could, but all the while nearly shaking inside, removed from the space and with her connecting spiritually to the words of the song.

There's a highway risin' from my dreams

Deep in the heart I know it gleams

Being an artist, a painter, a writer, I know from experience the road is long. I am not lonely though, my box of paints is quite full, and I am no longer scared of the devil. There are angels along the highway, showing and sharing the way. Betty is one such angel. Her new recording Story Songs is brilliant. Brilliant like a star one finds in the deep dark night sky, multi-pointed and twinkling from afar. It is much like herself; deep, resonant, spiritual, nuanced...and that voice. I will always have this to listen to; as I paint, drive, meditate, connecting to more than I am with her music, and now can personally share with her my love and appreciation as a friend and fellow artist, too.