Art Therapy ~ Decorating Time 2023

Music makes my friend Shannon cry. I cried at the Boston Calling music festival on the Harvard Yard athletic field when Shane Hawkins, the late Taylor Hawkins' son, drummed "I'll Stick Around" with the Foo Fighters.

The whole concert was a holy dirge, a collective bouncing, a screaming exorcism, but when Shane lost himself in the drums he lured us into a hypnotic catharsis, the crescendo on a tribute filled set list, a raw intensity that reverberated through the at once silent and simultaneously exhaling mourners and revelers, a reminder that we are connected and alive while we chant in unison and alternately "I Don't Owe You Anything" and "I Never Want to Die!"

If visual art decorates our space, and music decorates our time, then Shane Hawkins painted the night with his palette of intensity, authenticity, and whiplash, a real teen badass. 

The moment when Dave Grohl turns to Shane Hawkins and guides him from a near loss of control to a complete out of control drum solo is a master training in energy direction. Watch at 3:05 when he brings him down and then sets him loose and watch again at 8:15 to see the unbridled release.

This rock and roll festival was a purging of pity and fear, a reminder to live with urgency.

And I wonder
When I sing along with you
If everything could ever feel this real forever
If anything could ever be this good again
The only thing I'll ever ask of you
You gotta promise not to stop when I say when

She said...

Good Friday

A student said to me after class yesterday,

"Cease to exist is a weird phrase because matter can't be created or destroyed"

I have no sense of how long I've been or how long I will be.

The mystery continues as I mark the fifteenth year since I first bore witness to a last breath.

That return to the source, the earth, the soil, the air. 

A recycling of our substance.

This swirling of air, our air, into the atmosphere. 

The temporary strengthening of whatever energy we left behind, in others, for others, 

traveling like mycelium to nourish all existence.

A mark in bent time, a whisper reminder, a moment of pause.

A portal to the Divine briefly opened if you can catch a glimpse through the fog.

I’ve been lonely for what was, for his understanding.

George marked my early adult life with a compassion that could only exist in someone who had been to the depths of a worse hell. 

I was the recipient of his grace and his fiction. 

And I loved it, the joy more than the tumult, but still I loved it. 

He was my practice field for forgiveness and mercy. 

He was my mentor for meditation and peace. 

He was my guide for the now and a warning of what is to come.

We remember people more fondly than they existed, but I’ve spent fifteen years detangling the web of my memory and tangling it again with new understanding.

I don’t forget the chaos or the gentleness, the waiting for the other shoe to fall or the solution for every problem. 

I don’t forget the constance, the patience, the affirmations, the encouragements, the extravagance, the smiles, the laughter. 

The children, what they lost was less complex and more beautiful. 

What they lost was more than I can hold. 

And in them I see the yin and the yang, the possibility and the reality. 

I’m fascinated by people’s last words. 

He said his to me the day before he died, “just love them.” 

Fifteen years. 

I see you death. 

I’m going to live with joy in this life and the next.