Full Circle
Posted on November 4, 2009 with 0 comments
It was late October and I was in headphones when the boxes arrived, bumping down from a UPS truck onto the plank floor of the woodshed. No doubt rain clattered atop the corrugated plastic roofing as the brown suited driver scribbled in ballpoint on his clipboard. But I wouldn’t hear it – like the good hermit I can be, I was lost in a world of sound - a new song just recorded. And so when towards dinnertime I pulled up on the wooden latch and stepped out my front door into the dusky evening, it was almost a surprise to see 1,000 copies of Bow Thayer’s new CD “Shooting Arrows at the Moon” amidst the bark and the wood chips.
Now weeks later the hills outside my window are bare and the luminous days of Tunbridge World’s Fair time have gone by. Once brilliant and extraordinary, the leaves of autumn lie browning and shunted to wayside places. The feeling of sap slowing in the veins of trees is palpable and so my life should be winding into a lower gear, but this November seems to be thriving on chaos and my desk is a mess. I’m wrestling already though I’ve hardly finished my first cup of coffee: with bills I can’t pay and salaries I have to, and a certain creditor who’s been calling three of our phones five times a day. By noon I’ve moved upstairs to the studio, and I’m setting up microphones to record narration under skylights where cluster flies procreate by the thousands; while down at the console error messages are flying from what had been the only sane computer in the house. By four p.m. I’m in conference with Amelia, my new guitar student, who vividly describes what it’s like to be considered a freak and an oddball in her 7th grade class in a conservative village school not well suited to her wildly original way of thinking or dressing; in the spirit of the day, I’m enthusiastically rallying to support her rebellion and ignoring the ringing phone which is my husband trying to reach me from the auto repair shop because my car’s rear end is about to fall off. A fitting conclusion to this awkward day, as my cats circle the house, pilot-less little drones trying to get in and pee on anything that looks halfway decent.
The months certainly have flown by since last spring when Bow first chugged up the road and we stumbled into what was to become a series of recording sessions. My habit has been rapid motion, my lack of stillness leaving me hardly aware that the months moved with me. Part restless soul lamenting and dwelling in unrequited desires and efforts to drive myself harder; part simple laborer working gardens in rain and sun. Months of whole days spent staring at computer screens, brain tethered like an ox to red pens, pencils, Sharpies and dry erase markers, manic perhaps but always able to keep a step ahead of an unwieldy creativity. Striding and tossing like a horse, the moments and steps of each day going east down the road, scanning ecstatic ridges of sunrise through maple trees, washing clear the grooves of the mind’s dark alleys, sometimes depression or exaggerated fears for the futures of my children and the world. Months of sometimes happiness and complete fulfillment of my dreams.
Now weeks later the hills outside my window are bare and the luminous days of Tunbridge World’s Fair time have gone by. Once brilliant and extraordinary, the leaves of autumn lie browning and shunted to wayside places. The feeling of sap slowing in the veins of trees is palpable and so my life should be winding into a lower gear, but this November seems to be thriving on chaos and my desk is a mess. I’m wrestling already though I’ve hardly finished my first cup of coffee: with bills I can’t pay and salaries I have to, and a certain creditor who’s been calling three of our phones five times a day. By noon I’ve moved upstairs to the studio, and I’m setting up microphones to record narration under skylights where cluster flies procreate by the thousands; while down at the console error messages are flying from what had been the only sane computer in the house. By four p.m. I’m in conference with Amelia, my new guitar student, who vividly describes what it’s like to be considered a freak and an oddball in her 7th grade class in a conservative village school not well suited to her wildly original way of thinking or dressing; in the spirit of the day, I’m enthusiastically rallying to support her rebellion and ignoring the ringing phone which is my husband trying to reach me from the auto repair shop because my car’s rear end is about to fall off. A fitting conclusion to this awkward day, as my cats circle the house, pilot-less little drones trying to get in and pee on anything that looks halfway decent.
The months certainly have flown by since last spring when Bow first chugged up the road and we stumbled into what was to become a series of recording sessions. My habit has been rapid motion, my lack of stillness leaving me hardly aware that the months moved with me. Part restless soul lamenting and dwelling in unrequited desires and efforts to drive myself harder; part simple laborer working gardens in rain and sun. Months of whole days spent staring at computer screens, brain tethered like an ox to red pens, pencils, Sharpies and dry erase markers, manic perhaps but always able to keep a step ahead of an unwieldy creativity. Striding and tossing like a horse, the moments and steps of each day going east down the road, scanning ecstatic ridges of sunrise through maple trees, washing clear the grooves of the mind’s dark alleys, sometimes depression or exaggerated fears for the futures of my children and the world. Months of sometimes happiness and complete fulfillment of my dreams.