What I can say is that ever since we met, nearly 27 years ago, nothing has been more important to me than to do whatever I can to make this process possible. Confident in my own aptitudes, I put the fruits of my labor in service of the eternal, unknowable, glorious mystery of making music.
Sometimes just living with a working artist is work. Yes, he's neurotic, moody, sensitive and particular. No need to glorify the hard parts of this work. We both know that the only way this union could have worked and worked well was that we got started when I was in my late 30's and he was in his late 40's. We'd both been around the block. And how.
As with most of this blog so far, I'm just putting it out there. A day will arrive (and I can hope you'll notice, dear reader, when it does) that I switch gears and begin to write carefully well-edited posts. But for now, here's my flow.
For instance, just now, sitting opposite him across this sunlit room, watching him watch something musical and wonderful on his iPad, I wrote this imperfect gesture of a poem:
Piano strings you strike with all your might,
Then over and again the same refrain.
You cannot cease until you get it right,
Your phrases' recreation slow, then gain.
All afternoon your alchemy goes on;
How you'll emerge is anybody's guess,
For time and circumstance both count upon
The Muses' moods and yours with them no less.
Yet when the sun begins to sink away,
My sunshine bursts forth as you start to play.
After 20+ years of me being off at work for ten-to-twelve hours a day, we have these past four years been able to share most days, in work and in play. It took some getting used to. And I'm ready to jump back into the workforce when I can. But oh, how precious are these times together. We're reading another beautiful book aloud to each other. We're going on bike rides. He continues to compose as I continue to learn to write. Peace.
I shall leave you today with this, the first of four songs in Alva's Edna St. Vincent Millay song cycle. Stay tuned for the others.
Love Is Not All
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.
Edna St. Vincent Millay