Terri Windling's Blog, page 224

Tunes for a Monday Morning

Today, music from the east coast of the U.S. (during my last few days here): 

Above: Chris Thile (of New York's The Punch Brothers), Aoife O'Donovan (of Boston's Crooked Still), Edgar Meyer, Stuart Duncan, and Yo-Yo Ma perform "Here and Heaven," a very beautiful song from the Goat Rodeo Sessions CD.

Below: Aoife O'Donovan's band,  Crooked Still, performs "Look On and Cry."

And one more song and band from the lively nu-folk/alt-bluegrass scene here in the U.S.:

The Carolina Chocolate Drops, out of North Carolina, performs "Hit 'Em Up Style." To learn more about their music, there's an interesting little video here.

Good news at last:The situation I came to New York to...

Good news at last:

The situation I came to New York to attend to has reached a successful conclusion, and I'll be heading home soon. I feel like I should have something more mythic and eloquent to say about it here, but after six months of having our lives dominated by this fearful, time-consuming, and costly ordeal, its resolution has left me somewhat stupefied with relief. I'm so very grateful to everyone who organized, contributed to, and participated in the auction last December, which gave us the financial resources to seek the expert help that has made this outcome possible. It's been a long journey, but the end is in sight now. The sun is shining. I'm going home.

The gorgeous song above comes from the much-anticipated new Mumford & Sons album (due out later in the year). It's called "Home," and although the lyrics as a whole don't relate to my own situation, the last lines of the song do, and have been running through my head all morning....

One of my favorite places in New York: the gardens surr...

One of my favorite places in New York: the gardens surrounding The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, on Amsterdam between W. 110th & 112th. Although hemmed in by tall apartment buildings and the noise and bustle of Amsterdam, when you step into the gardens the surrounding city seems to magically disappear (as it did quite literally in these photos, snapped on a misty morning). It's a timeless, sacred space that welcomes all...no matter what your spiritual beliefs may be.

I used to live just around the corner from St. John's, many years ago, when Ellen Kushner and I shared an old apartment in a gargoyle-bedecked building on W. 110th. Ellen was working on her first novel, Swordspoint, at the time; I was busy with projects like the "Fairy Tales" series; and we were writing Borderland stories together. In our thoroughly urban lives, it was a blessing to have this enchanted green space to steal away to when needed...particularly as the area was a whole lot rougher then: a colorful, lively, but run down neighborhood with an edge of danger.

Coming here now, I can almost see the ghosts of the young women we were back then,  sitting on benches tucked away in hidden corners of the gardens as we plotted out our stories, puzzled out our lives, poured out our hearts over various love affairs....

I suspect if I met that younger self now, I'd be proud of her and embarrassed by her in equal measure. She made a lot of mistakes. But she made some good choices too...particularly in her friendships.

And that's what matters most. That's what lasts. That's what makes everything else possible.

The Peace Fountain is by Greg Wyatt, 1985.

Something about what happens when we talk

The last time I saw Lucinda Williams in concert was exactly six years ago, with Howard, at the old Rialto Theater in Tucson. I send this song over the ocean to him this morning. He'll know why.

The High Line

I finally got to see New York's High Line Park, after hearing so much about its creation -- and boy, I sure wasn't disappointed. In the picture above (from the High Line's Picture Gallery ) you can see this remarkable ribbon of urban green-space snaking through the buildings of lower Manhattan, built on the bones of a crumbling elevated railway track that had been slated for demolition.

Untouched for many years, the track had self-seeded and turned into a meadow full of wildflowers and fauna. Two neighborhood activists created the group that lobbied successfully to turn the space into a city park -- choosing a design inspired by its former wild state. (Alas, in order to make the track strong enough to support the park, the soil had to be completely removed, then restored and planted anew. If you want to know what the track used to look like, check out Joe Sternfeld's photographs here.)

March is not the best time to see the High Line, but even with its meadows turned to winter straw, its wildflowers sleeping and  its birch trees bare, it's a beautiful, cleverly rendered space...reminding me a bit of Bordertown in its unusual mix of the urban and the wild. I fell for it hard, envy those who live nearby, and look forward to returning in greener seasons.

"New York remains what it has always been : a city of ebb and flow, a city of constant shifts of population and economics, a city of virtually no rest. It is harsh, dirty, and dangerous, it is whimsical and fanciful, it is beautiful and soaring - it is not one or another of these things but all of them, all at once, and to fail to accept this paradox is to deny the reality of city existence." - Paul Goldberger

New York moments...

A bunny on the Bryant Park carousel.

Fresh flowers for a Hungarian hero.

The Flatiron Building (where I used to work) against a clear blue sky.

Graffiti art on the lower west side.

A small newspaper carrier on W. 28th Street.

The Riverside dog park. The canine politics involved as dogs enter the park, congregate, play, and leave again are fascinating and hilarious.

"New York is the biggest collection of villages in the world." - Alistair Cooke

Tunes for a Monday Morning

Above: Kate Rusby sings "Cruel," a beautiful Anglo/Scots folksong on the theme of love, exile, and parental perfidy. The performance was filmed in 2008 (and the other musicians are uncredited, alas).

Below: Martin Simpson sings "Never Any Good," a very moving song about his father. Filmed last autumn at the Cambridge Folk Festival, Simpson is backed up here by an all-star cast: Andy Cutting on concertina, Danny Thompson on double bass, and Kate Rusby on vocals. It's a lovely song and a lovely performance.

Missing the ones back home

"Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small,
it enkindles the great." - Roger de Rabutin

 

Click on the audio bar below to hear the "Homesickness" episode of Ellen Kusher's
Sound & Spirit radio progam (WGBH/Public Radio International).

 

And to end with today, a poem from Jane Yolen (shared with her permission), inspired by the photograph at the top of this post...although it is, she says, as much about her husband David (who died six years ago) as it is about my photo of Howard and Tilly. Art is like that.

 

Longing for Home

I see you from behind,
walking the familiar path,
the twisting, winding road
that goes through the hills,
and long to be going home
to twine you in my arms,
to make a nest in our bed,
to call in the dog from the hearth,
and be there in our home.
The wind is at my back
when I want it in my face.
If I call, will you answer
or just keep walking on?

- Jane Yolen

 

"Longing for Home" copyright 2012 by Jane Yolen. The poem may not be reproduced in any form without the author's permission.

Life and art...

"Is being burnt a requisite for the making of art? Personally, I don't think it is. But art is poultice for a burn. It is a privilege to have, somewhere within you, a capacity for making something speak from your own seared experience."  - Molly Peacock (The Paper Garden)

I like the way this quote addresses the pernicious idea that artists must suffer to make great art. Like Peacock, I heartily disagree with this, for I always work best when life is quiet and calm. But everyone suffers at some point in life. (Ellen Kushner quotes Alan Weisman expressing this more poetically: "Everyone does time in the Book of Job.") As artists, we've been blessed with the ability to turn to our work at such a time: for solace, or for catharsis, or simply to make sense of our experience...and although we do this for ourselves, it's a double blessing when such work speaks to others as well.

Fiirst image above: Self-portrait (age 40) by the Russian artist Zinaida Serebriakova (1884-1967). There's an excellent post about her life, and more examples of her exquisite work, on the Illustration Art blog (via Midori Snyder).

Second image: Botanical art by Mary Delany (1700-1788), the subject of Molly Peacock's book The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany Begins her Life's Work at 72 .

"Is being burnt a requisite for the making of art? Per...

"Is being burnt a requisite for the making of art? Personally, I don't think it is. But art is poultice for a burn. It is a privilege to have, somewhere within you, a capacity for making something speak from your own seared experience." 

- Molly Peacock (from The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany Begins her Life's Work at 72 )

Fiirst image above: Self-portrait (age 40) by the Russian artist Zinaida Serebriakova (1884-1967). There's an excellent post about her life, and more examples of her exquisite work,. on the Illustration Art blog (via Midori Snyder).

Second image: English botanical art by Mary Delany (1700-1788) .