The Blues

My dreams the last few nights have been full of missed trains, unreachable airplanes, and phone calls that ring endlessly but are never picked up. When Brent asked me how I was doing this morning I said, depressed. Then I said, I don’t mean clinically, I’m just sad. When he asked why, I said, just everything. The news, Suki, Forrest, my mom, my dad, my lack of direction, lack of purpose, the weather. All of it. It was good to say it all out loud. Turns out he’s feeling the same. It’s always nice when someone you love understands your funk even if their understanding means they’re feeling pretty crappy too.

Brent likes to find solutions to problems; I just like to talk about them. But this morning, we made a mutual decision to play more music in the house. Music not news, that is. He’s good at finding the right thing so I left the playlist up to him. Within a few minutes, the sound of New Orleans was coming through a speaker in the back of his office. I was making oatmeal in the kitchen fifteen feet away. It didn’t take long for me to be dancing. Those horns and those grooves get me every time. How is it that I forget the power of music when I make so much of it myself?

Over the weekend, I pulled out my guitar for the first time in ages. Whenever I do, I can’t believe I haven’t played it for so long. Like so many other things these days, I have no idea what will come of the music I play. If anyone will ever hear it. If I will ever finish another song. In the meantime, Brent reminds me that just playing brings me joy. And maybe that’s enough.

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There are a lot of new readers here in the last few weeks. Welcome. It’s always nice to see a new subscription come across my screen. I mentioned a couple of people above who you haven’t met yet but who you may hear me talk about in the future. Suki was/is a dear friend who died suddenly two months ago. Her absence is still surreal to me. Just can’t believe she’s gone. I miss her a lot. And Forrest was/is my son. He died a long time ago (coming up on 24 years) so I’m used to his absence, but every now and then I’m thrown for a loop (as my mom would say) and realize how much I lost when he left this planet. He was three-and-a-half when he died after living with cancer for 18 months. And then there’s my mom who died last Christmas. She was 95. I’m still processing her absence. It’s not a hole so much as a search. Not for her – her death makes sense in the scheme of things – but for the part of her that’s inside of me.

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I often post a picture here, search my recent photos to see if something resonates with whatever I’ve written. The first photo that came up this morning was this one. Perfect. Just what I needed, proving once again how important making things is, even if you don’t know if anyone will ever see it or hear it. (Artist unknown).

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