Remembering Nina

She was a modern day Miriam. Her timbrel had 88 keys and was somewhat less than portable, but every place she where she went and worked had at least one.

Life was all about music, meetings, collaborations and friendship. She lived the life of "music for awhile", where "awhile" meant all the time for her lifetime, and "music" meant any individual's sonorous contribution, from that person's level and heart. She loved community concerts, and led quite a few of them.

The twinkle in her eye was a gift from her mother. There was fabulous humor attached to that twinkle. But it was a quiet humor; sometimes meant to slide under the radar of the less adept listener.

Hers was a quiet revolution. Hacking into the community vibe with strands and strains and daisy chains of sounds from every era (even and especially new works), the magic that she worked was music, musical, and it was indeed viral. None of us who knew her will ever recover. And that is as it should be.

We, her many friends and colleagues, gathered on this cool morning, on a hill in the country. She was returned to the earth, and we helped to return her there, knowing that she has flown on to another realm, and that it is our own healing that will continue to require songs and stories, and even a little piano jazz, as salve for our loss. We received a heavenly gift in that the sun broke through the fog, bringing with it blue sky, light and warmth. Could that have been her smile, coming to us from another dimension?

The mother and the rabbi wondered that she had requested "Danny Boy" to be sung at her graveside. But, sung it was, by a large and familiar choir. When her mother heard the words, she understood completely.

I gave her mother a beautiful yellow winter rose from my garden, saying, "This flower is for you, because you brought to all of us a beautiful gift, who was your daughter. Thank you."

Nina was her name.

The Loneliness of Perfection

I know someone who can’t stand community concerts.

I think that is a darned shame.

Community concerts and theater are what community is all about. People sharing something loved and lived, like music and stagecraft, with people who want to receive the gift, whether they be friends, Romans or country folk.

This someone I know is all tangled up in perfection. Perfection is a really difficult place to live. There isn’t really a whole lot of wiggle-room where perfection is concerned. Dealing in perfection means dealing heavily in value judgment and criticism. I sometimes think that dealing in perfection means not having much of a good time.

When I participate in or attend a community event, I do my best to meet the event where it is. I find it tiring to go to such events and be handed commentary by others on what is wrong with it, or how it could be done better. I’d like to make up my own mind. And, if I am enjoying the event, I don’t particularly want to be talked out of it.

I mean, we all know it could be done better. But we would have to drive a long way to see it done to near perfection by professionals who get paid to do it and belong to unions and have salaries with benefits, wouldn’t we? That can be a very worthwhile experience, and it has its place. Everyone should set aside time and finances to invest in what promises to be a sublime experience. (Promises are no guarantee, but sublime experiences are out there, and they can be fabulous, uplifting, even life-altering. Sometimes, however, we discover that perfection is not sublime, but bland.)

At home, we might be able to walk to the event. At home, we might pay less or even nothing. At home, we would see and hear the results of people, even some with whom we are acquainted, putting their whole heart into their offering. At home, there would be a reception afterward with snacks and fellowship, kids running around under foot, and friendly conversation with friends and neighbors.

Art, music, theater—these modes of expression are explorations of what is possible. If perfection were the point of it all, no one would do anything.

People who are brave enough to give it a go deserve their shot at the limelight. Friends, family, and those few others of us that blunder in are waiting to see what the brave ones can do. Amazing things can happen here, also. The unexpected richness of a girl’s voice can reach out to you from the choral texture with a solo lick. You might discover the hidden instrumental talent of a young man whose parents you know. Small delights can rise from the texture and touch you.

Perfectionists may be outstanding in their respective fields—or they might just be frozen from doing anything because it would have to be perfect—but I expect that many of them stand in their fields alone.

I say, come join the group! So it won’t be perfect; life isn’t perfect, is it?

We’re all in it together, anyway, so why not make it a celebration of people giving it a go.

Black and White, or Grey?

Mind is like the void in which there is no confusion or evil, as when the sun wheels through it shining upon the four corners of the world. For, when the sun rises and illuminates the whole earth, the void gains not in brilliance; and when the sun sets, the void does not darken. The phenomenon of light and dark alternate with each other, but the nature of the void remains unchanged.

The Chün Chou Record of Huang Po *

It was grey this morning. I kind of liked having the morning be grey. Or, at least, I wasn’t bothered by it.

We seem to live in a world that worships black and white divisions of people and things. You must be this, and if you aren’t this, then you are that, and so forth. I have a feeling that the purpose of polar extremes is to diminish and separate people, rather than build them up and unite them. These days, spin can be spun in either direction, one way or the other, and the power behind the spin can flip-flop at will. If you don’t keep abreast with the current direction of the pole, you could find yourself off the map of the known world. The black and white discussions and arguments and ideologies and wars do not lend themselves to progress, or even regression—more often than not, they lead to paralysis.

We are not yet near the end of December, but the two faces of Janus are in our face, recording our doings as wishy-washy and indecisive. Stuck. Janus was not meant to symbolize being in a rut, however—this Roman god was all about beginnings and endings; about transitions, not paralysis.

Janus is the open door, not the closed mind. Janus is really all about the middle ground, what I call the grey area.

I prefer to enter and center myself in the grey area. The grey area seems more spacious, or at least pleasantly removed from all the one-sided black and white discussions, the flip-flops that go nowhere and the cultural paralysis that seems to plague our world just now.

The grey area seems very like the zen, described as void in the quote above. There is freedom there, and openness to possibility. Freedom to think, to judge, to move and act omni-directionally.

//

* Blofeld, John (translator). The Zen Teaching of Huang Po On the Transmission of Mind. Rider & Company, 1958. Page 31.

Here Now

—an homage to John Lennon

Only dimly aware of where you have been,

I really don’t know all the ins and outs,
but none of that matters now,
because you are here with me now.

You don’t know where I’ve been,
sometimes stuck in fears and doubts,
but none of that matters now,
because you are here with me now.

Coming of age from the children we’ve been,
we’re learning to sing by softening our shouts,
but none of that matters now,
because you are here with me now.

And Wow! Now is why we are here, then—
the now, the how and the why withouts;
simple, but not so that it matters,
because we are together here now.

Here is where we go from where we’ve been
to where we’ve never been, before or about,
and really nothing else much matters,
because on we go, together from here, now.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Message in a Bottle

        for Nina Shuman

A Love-O-Gram,

to put in the pram
of your thoughts
            as they billow thither,
full sail on the yacht
Unbound.

A Love-O-Gram
from where I am
to wherever you may be,
            and to where you see all
that sun and moon trace:
the revolution that is each day.

O, Love-O-Gram,
come only as I am
to your thoughts,
            speak only as I can speak,
with fullest of heart,
to toast the beauty of your art
and you.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Within the Embrace

Between sound and silence,

one kiss, one embrace,
one bed of contemplation.

Speculations as to
which one is holding the other?
—an irrelevant conversation.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

From a chapbook entitled “Brief Encounters With Fluidity” © 2008 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen, this poem and others from this collection have been set to music by composer Carson P. Cooman in his cycle for solo voice (unaccompanied) Brief Vibrations op. 870.

Indivisibility

Through now’s vast dreaming space,
light passes through and through the me I know as mine,
enlivening, crystallizing, enlightening, singing
--singing within me, singing through me, singing of me--
to every other facet of now as it passes through happening,
carrying my essence,
like a delicate thread,
to gently weave,
with all the others,
into a pulsing brocade of Being.

Light,
unseen while visible worker of miracles,
interleaving, interweaving, transporting, transforming
each uniqueness from simple melody into a symphony of life
by the mere whispering of each name through every other,
a subtle grafting of every loose end or fragment,
onto every complement that could ever be devised,
and some beyond imagining,
until all endings and all beginnings blur… blur… blur…
so that there are no more boundaries
and there is but a single name
carried on the head of the mystery called light:
an invocation of all-that-is, of all-that-could-be,
of all-that-shall-ever…

--One body streams
across the shadows of yet-to-be
unfolding into the awakening smile of now.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen