Enjoying Daylight Savings Time

In these dwindling hours before the change to Daylight Savings Time, I'm still contemplating my options for the future and the Hemingway Solution.

I saw Running from Crazy  which is Mariel Hemingway's look at her family and the tragedies that plagued her... But no insight... not really... In the end it was just about her...

There were wonderful glimpses of her grandfather. But those came more from Margeaux Hemingway and her unfinished quest to retrace and relive the path of her grandfather... She took her own life at 40.

There are these moments that confront us where the prongs of possibilities enable us to map acceptable pathways. But I suppose as we grow older, those options become less profuse, more limited, and then, perhaps, none at all.

I'm about to make decision which will change things forever for me. It is the only decision to be made for what is right and just, and yet, deep down there is something not quite right... It is political and controlled by much that has gone wrong in this modern age of human relations.

Yet, from my perspective, I have had four years of extended discovery that was unexpected and changed the direction of my life. There was a touching reaching into the emptiness of my despair. This touching launched my renaissance, my quest, my inspiration to create something new and meaningful... to create something worthwhile that might have lasting impact.

Such was the transformation stemming from four years ago when my hope was renewed. A close friend once remarked that without hope there is no reason for living.

It is difficult to make sense of the wilderness where I have wandered since stumbling so abruptly a few months ago. The world that seem so clear was suddenly clouded by the impediments of my own personal maya, my illusions and deep misunderstandings. So experience has been at a deeper level for me than the past encounters of despair and dilemma. I am joyful-sad, grateful-sorry,  inspired-empty...  I am at that great divide where I look at the terrain that defines the journey...

But it will be great to have the extra hour... I wish that hour could be the doorway to infinity. There is so much I would do... So much I would launch... Bring so much to closure... Discover new beauty which is always the truth about being... Start new projects never meant to come to closure, but just to be in the ecstasy of perpetual becoming...

I have this extra hour to reflect on knowing those who have touched my life and opened the wonder of who each of us is to each other... All incredibly connected...

But also sadly caught in the web of illusion where we seem alone and trapped by our own reflections and delusions...

If this extra hour could only bring us all together in the simple wonder of our beautiful beingness.... Wouldn't that be a moment of awareness worth celebrating forever?

Wasn't that what Fellini was saying in 8½ ? Come down out of that intellectual scaffolding and simply enjoy each other....

I do believe in forever ---despite all the dismal predictions of entropy and the so called dissipation of spiritual awareness.

Yes... Let's enjoy... EN-JOY.  Enjoy is to put joy into all that we experience.

I am putting all my joy into this extra hour... the joy of all those who touch my life and continue to sustain me through the vanishing moments of Time Remembered and Time Forgotten...

None

Crossroads...

New era, but no new me. 

How many renaissances can come in one lifetime?

How many loves come and go 
and still have that one muse that moves to miracles?
 
How many thoughts remain beneath the surface, waiting to erupt?

How many inspirations beyond the horizon?

How many sadnesses can one endure, how many disappointments?

How much longing goes unrequited and endures?

REMEMBERING LINDA

Linda first popped into my life when I had an office on the 6th floor of the Education Building and had just finished my stint as Chair of Music and Performing Arts and assumed directorship of the music education program. She struck me as buoyant and youthful, and reminded me of a bobbysoxer from the days of my past. She was a charming southern belle, and she was passionate about music. She had visited the musicology department in Arts and Sciences but did not feel at home there, so she decided to seek out the School of Education which is now called The Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development.

Right from the start I felt a rapport with Linda. I could sense her passion for music and her determination to continue to grow. She said little about her family life, except to say that her husband Greg was undergoing a crisis in his health and that she was devoted to caring for him and his well being. But she had a sense that music was calling her to explore new possibilities for herself. She wanted to know if NYU music education would provide her the freedom and support to do serious research. She pointed out she was a teacher, but she was also an organist with an enthusiasm for scholarly excellence. "Your experience will be what you make it,'' I said, "and you will find strong support and room to be original." She began her study as a part-time student with a true love for learning. She was an explorer and was constantly researching, writing, working for causes, and engaging her students in her personal and musical discoveries.

Her presence with her colleagues was uplifting, sustaining, and refreshing. She was constantly reassuring her fellow doctoral cohorts. She was critical but constructive, engaged in dialectical exchange, and most of all, a source of inspiration and encouragement. In everything she touched, there was a thirst for excellence and quality.

Her NYU odyssey began about seven years ago, and it has been a joy to be a witness to her inquiry and to help shape its direction. As she was entering the final stages of her research we made plans to meet in October, but then she sent a message that it was determined she was fighting cancer. I was optimistic that she would recover. As Christmas was approaching, she encouraged me to finish putting music to a Christmas poem I was writing. On November 24, she asked "How is the song coming?" Actually, I was so discouraged by her illness that I was struggling.

In replying to how the song was going, I wrote "Slowly... Trying to be traditional with a twist... Know what I need to do, but doesn't jell. Waiting in Favela Cubana for brunch with a friend ... Nice cold day with the promise of winter in the air..."

Linda wrote back: "Yeah, even looked like snow earlier.  Maybe that could be in the song, too.  I love it that you are such a Romantic, in addition, of course, to being a profound creator of new music!"

And so these lyrics came so fast:

"Maybe it is snowing
Christmas from above
Maybe winds are blowing
New Year hopes of love."

And these lines came as I thought of Linda and the extraordinary adventure we shared in music and her research and the ordeal she was facing:

"Fears disappear
And all that's here
Is all the Love of every year..
We see the truth of who we are
As bright as any Christmas star."

It was with great joy for me to learn that the music therapist at Sloan Kettering sang the song for her while Linda was able to follow the score with Greg's help.

Sadly, we lost Linda. Her husband Greg sent a message: "Following 2 weeks of Hospice care in our home, Linda died on Monday afternoon, January 28th.  Our daughter and I were with her, and our son joined us soon afterward. "

Her research was on the Third Chorale Prelude of Cesar Franck, his final composition which was not finished. Although fully notated, on the day he intended to put in the registration and interpretative markings he passed away, thus leaving a mystery concerning his intentions for the work. Linda's research is original, inquisitive, and inspiring. Almost in symmetry to her musical inspiration Franck, Linda had completed her research, transcribed the materials and needed only to add the finishing touches to her dissertation when she left us.

She was just beginning as a professor at NYU, mentoring M.A. students with their thesis requirements. I see her touches in the department everywhere. She continued to attend Proposal Seminar long after she had finished coursework to listen to our critiques and comments about the ongoing research. Her presence was such a source of inspiration. I see her still, sitting in the seminar, still inspiring students, still looking to me like a bobbysoxer in her pale blue sweater, wonderful smile, and buoyant optimism.

Discovering Digital Awareness

Sunday morning,
Sitting for breakfast
With world-wide strangers...
Across from me,
A young man connected
To the ethereal digital world
Scrolls among his multimedia:
His laptop, tablet, and smart phone...
Occasionally tapping keys
And smiling sardonically,
Reveling in revelations
Echoing across synthetic synapses
Of some emerging global awareness
Manifest in a solitary compression
Of infinite possibility.

Maybe There's A Christmas

Maybe it is snowing
Christmas from above
Maybe winds are blowing
New Year hopes of love.
Maybe there's a Christmas
Just for you and me.
Maybe we can make it
All it's meant to be...
More than gifts and deck the halls
More than trees and shopping malls
Fears disappear
And all that's here
Is all the Love of every year..
We see the truth of who we are
As bright as any Christmas star.
All the years keep passing,
Falling flakes of snow.
Each of them is different,
How sad to see them go.
Maybe there's a christmas
Deep inside our hearts
Maybe peace is coming
Maybe now it starts.
So it keeps on snowing
And the winds keep blowing,
And the year is going
Fading fast away
Maybe here's the Christmas
Everyone can see
Maybe we're the miracles
Always meant to be.
Maybe it is Christmas.
Surely this is Christmas,
Yes, it must be Christmas today.

Copyright December, 2012 
John Gilbert
All Rights Reserved

Still Singing

Two years ago I wrote about a poem from my Poet's Passage that was a challenge to myself: "I Still Have Songs to Sing." I have continued to sing, and now resume a project that is more challenging yet, but perhaps possessing some potential to create and bring something new into the world. Actually as I am writing this, I am listening to Lost Works, a short tone poem that was part of a series. As I listen to it, I find it totally new... hearing things I didn't know were there. When one visits the website of Poet's Passage, it plays automatically.

Time has passed, and I am a different poet now. I read the words of the past and listen to past inventions with a new ear. Time has dissolved my ties to past works. I hold no secrets to their emergence. I listen to Lost Works and wonder why I didn't do more works like this. The orchestration of new instruments is rich, and the textures are sometimes profound. I listen with wonder. "Did I do that..." I ask myself, words falling silent in an empty room.

In the emptiness of this chamber, I hear new sounds... my fingers wander over the keys as though guided by some inner force. I recognize some fragments, but they grow in different directions than the past, they find new pathways and diversions.

I realize I never knew who I was or even now who I am. I stand outside myself hearing the collective sounds that now define my identity, realizing that the filter of my mind transforms them into some mysterious substance of myself. Then I understand that we share this filtering. Each of us filters infinite possibilities into discrete realities that define us and define each other.

My voice is different now and yet the same. I am still searching and stumbling across neglected terrain and finding new miracles. But I am confronted by the hastening of Time. I see the constellations of my existence racing away from each other faster than the speed of light. I am confronted by sense of loss of the past and the lost presence of those who were fellow explorers who supported and inspired me. They have gone on to other feasts, and I still stumble in the accelerated debris rendezvousing at destinations yet unknown.

Too much distracted, I must remember to sing.