You, My Love ...

Stand absolved

Behind your electric chair

Dance

Stand absolved

Behind your electric chair

Dancing 

Past the sound within the sound

The voice within the voice

Leave your office, run past your funeral

Leave your home, car, leave your pulpit

Join us in the streets where we

Don't belong

Here under the stars

Throwing light 

~Jeff Buckley- New Year's Prayer

While in year's past, the ringing in of the first day of the year is aways the symbolic new start, this promise of a clean slate in 2022 seems more fantasy than fact for many. But as we've done in the past two years, maybe some shifting of our old ways needs to happen. Call it self-preservation if you'd like, many have taken the turmoil of the last two years and started to Marie Kondo their lives: more life in the work-life balance, staying away from toxic relationships, tuning out from social media, becoming more involved in community, and setting and achieving new goals. Others see the new year as the gut check to assess and keep going on what they've built. 

All in all - be kind to yourself and to others. Don't forget to show yourself respect in addition to others. We've spent too many years trying to outdo one another and not paying any attention to ourselves as well as our loved ones. We've spent the last few years understanding the importance of togetherness and compassion - and that's something that needs to keep moving forward year in and year out. 

Musically, 2021 did give us back live music and some great new albums. Adele, Billie Elish, Nicole Atkins, Wolf Alice, and Robert Plant and Alison Kraus all used 2020 to work on new materials. And live shows also made a comeback. And being in that audience for the first time in so long was simply magic.        

And watching Get Back! was such a gifted highlight. Even if you're not a Beatles fan, what Peter Jackson did was allow us to peer into a part of music history in a special way, warts and all. 

And while there is a little flashback over the holidays, there is still promise of new shows and fresh new albums. The amount of creativity in our artists is paramount. These next few years will see them gifting us with what has been stirred within them over the past few years.

To quote my spiritual guru, George Harrison

Yesterday, today was tomorrow

And tomorrow, today will be yesterday 

May your New Year be what you desire it to be: a new beginning, just another day, or something else entirely. Have a happy, safe, healthy, and brave new year. 

My New Year's Eve Prayer by Jeff Buckley

performed live at Sin-é NYC 1996.

You my love are allowed to forget about the Christmas you just spent stressed out in your parents house

You my love are allowed to shed the weight of all the years before like bad disco clothes, save them for a night of dancing, stoned with you lover

You my love are allowed to let yourself drown every night in bottomless wild and naked symbolic dreams

You my love in sleep can unlock your youth and your most terrifying magic and dreaming is for the courageous

You my love are allowed to grab my guitar and sing me idiot love songs if
you lost your ability to speak, keep it down to two minutes

You my love are allowed to rot and to die and to live again more alive and incandescent than before

You my love are allowed to beat the shit out of your television, choke it's thoughts and corrupt its mind k*ll k*ll k*ll k*ll the motherf**ker before the song of zombiefied pain and panic and malaise and its narrow right winged vision and its cheap commercial gang rate becomes the white noise of the world (turn about is fair play)

You my love are allowed to forgive and love your television

You my love are allowed to speak in kisses to those around you and those up in heaven

You my love are allowed to show your babies how to dance full bodied, starry eyed, audacious, supernatural and glorified

You my love are allowed to suck in every single endeavor

You my love are allowed to be soaked like a lovers blanket in the New York summertime with the wonder of your own special gift

You my love are allowed to receive praise

You my love are allowed to have time

You my love are allowed to understand

You my love are allowed to love

Woman disobey

Little man believe

You my love are a rebellion 

 

Anticipating Nothing: When the Writing Answer Has Been There All Along

 

Okay ... so many of you are likely aware of the I've been writing this story. Said story started as a screenplay. Said story then began to take form of a longer than short story after I lived in Belfast. However, parts still aren't quite right. And the ending still eludes me. 

A few days ago - a song pops into my head when walking to the train. Nothing by Depeche Mode

What am I trying to do?

What am I trying to say?

I'm not trying to tell you anything

You didn't know when you woke up today

Sitting target

Sitting praying

God is saying

Nothing

Depeche Mode has inspired another story with their words (those characters got an ending, by the way. See Red Square Dawn for their story). Today, for whatever reason, this song made the synapses transmit a memory of this story to my neurons, which in turn said - you finally have the answer to that third scene. 

I needed character tension, some allusion to possible romantic feelings, and also the underlying feeling that there is an unspoken trust and bond between these two. 

If you'd like to continue - let me set the stage. Abbi Connolly is home in West Belfast after a very long evening at the emergency department where she works as a nurse. She is visited by her long-time best friend, Liam. I kept on trying to make them have this important and cryptic conversation about David, Abbi's husband. I could never find the words. 

*******************

It’s almost midnight as Abbi sits at the table in an almost dark kitchen trying to read about advances in spinal trauma. She squints, shakes her head, rubs her eyes, and flips back to the previous page of the article the head doctor of the emergency department gave all of the nurses to read. As she begins the first paragraph for the third time, she hears steps on the back porch. Two knocks and the door opens. Liam always appears to be in some state of dishevelment and always with a book in his hand. His black eyes and the wild mop of black hair suit the man who thankfully outgrew his shyness. 

            “Abigail,” he says to her quietly.

            “Liam,” Abbi greets him with a relaxed smile as she slides the article aside. 

            “Beer?” He asks as he’s already removed two cold bottles from the refrigerator and popped the caps onto the counter.

            Abbi shakes her head yes as Liam slides a chair closer to her, hands her the beer, and places his notebook on the table. “I knew David would be late tonight.”

            “What are you hearing? Are the peace talks fallin’ apart Liam?” Abbi rubs her eyes before taking a drink of beer. Today’s attack on the British soldiers is so far the pinnacle of tension between the Irish Republicans and the Loyalists.

            “Yer, askin’ me? Your own bloody husband is sittin’ in those secret talks I hear about on the BBC and yer askin’ me?” Liam gulps down his beer.

            “You know he doesn’t tell me a thing and apparently you don’t either, mister newspaper writer.” Abbi smiles before taking a drink. “You’re both bloody worthless.”  

            Liam puts his beer down and motions for Abbi to lean in towards him. Hesitantly, but also sarcastically, she leans towards Liam. 

            "Journalist," he whispers to her. 

            She laughs and whispers back. "A bloody worthless journalist."

            Bobby, who was in bed, patters into the kitchen. “Mommy,” he says quietly as climbs into Liam’s lap.

            “I thought you were sleeping little man.” Liam wraps his arms around his godson.

            “Do you want me to read you a story?” Abbi removes the single sock remaining on her son’s feet.

            He quietly says, “No. Liam,” and puts his head on Liam’s chest.

             Abbi smiles at both of them.

            Liam leans forward with Bobby. “How about a kiss for yer ma?”

            Bobby gives Abbi a kiss and a gentle pat on her face. Abbi gently takes his hand and gives it a kiss before Liam stands with his godson. They leave the room chatting about giants. 

            Abbi takes a long sip of her beer, stands, walks to the counter, and turns on the radio. She opens the refrigerator to look for something to snack on, tossing a few things in the garbage in the process. Her head lost in her thoughts and in the vegetable drawer, she doesn’t hear Liam come back downstairs until he turns up the radio.

            “Jesus,” she hits her head off a shelf.

            “Sorry. He’s sound asleep again.”

             “Hungry? How do you feel about leftover Chinese?” Before she turns around, she feels Liam’s presence very close to her. “Liam?" She turns to find see him standing directly behind her. He places his hand on her arm, letting it linger a few seconds before taking a step back.

             Abbi takes another two beers from the refrigerator, pops the caps off, and walks past Liam towards the table. When she sits, she takes a long drink of the beer as Liam makes his way to the other chair. He sits and slides his chair closer to Abbi.

            Abbi slides her shirt sleeves over her hands and then leans onto the table, crossing her arms. She tilts her head slightly. “What’s so important that it couldn’t wait until,” she pauses and looks at the clock before looking back at him, “six hours from now when you’re here having breakfast?”

            He runs his hand nervously through his unwieldy hair. “Em...nothing." He taps his knuckle on his ever-present book.

        She sits disappointed by her own anticipation. Bad news, a rumor, the need to pass along information, Abbi almost looks embarrassed as she holds back a bemused smile. Nervously, she starts to flip through the book Liam put on the table. 

            "Who is Ted Sorensen?" She sits back and begins to read some of the pages. 

           Liam excitedly smiles, "President Kennedy's advisor. I just sometimes need to read something other than ... well, about here." 

            Abbi's smile turns into a laugh as Liam goes on about Kennedy's advisor. She should be checking the doors, making sure Bobby is safe asleep, and headed to bed herself. But sometimes, nothing is better.