FAWM #7: Save A Tree

I have written all 14 songs, but now I have to record them and somehow present them here. Some are more challenging to do this with than others. Here is a co-write with my three and a half year old daughter.

FAWM #6: Hammurabi

FAWM #5 Henry the VIII of England

Henry the eighth was a Renaissance man
He brandished a chicken leg in his hand
He had 6 wives-why? “Because I can!”
Said Henry the 8th of England

You might think that’s enough to know
(Having six wives is unusual)
But I’m here to say “Not so!
There’s more to learn at Nields School.”

Henry fell in love with Ann Bolyn
Because her beauty was unsurpassed
So he tried to fire his first wife Catherine
The Catholic church said Not so fast

Said Henry to the Pope, Dear vecegerent
I have no use for your command
I declare myself (without your consent)
Defender of the Faith of the new Church of England
Or Inventor of the Church of England

You might think that’s enough to know
(Inventing a religion is unusual)
But I’m here to say “Not so!
There’s more to learn at Nields School.”

So Catherine he divorced though before he did
She gave birth to Mary, his first little kid
And Ann was mother to Elizabeth
Which should have been enough to prevent her death

But Henry really wanted a son
To make his surname last forevermore
He said to Ann Bolyn, You’re done!
And married poor jane Seymour

You might think that’s enough to know
(Beheading your wife is unusual)
But I’m here to say “Not so!
There’s more to learn at Nields School.”

Jane gave birth to weak little Edward
But then she died.
This got to Henry and his heart so hard
So he cried.

Then he married Anne from Germany
HE referred to her as the Flanders Mare
He married young Kathryn who was just nineteen
But for his old self she did not care.

She was beheaded like Ann Bolyn
Henry picked another Katherine
This time his wife outlived him
And married his brother-in-law.
Nerissa Nields Feb. 9, 2010

FAWM #4: I Just Want to Spend the Day with You

Wrote this on the plane coming home from Florida after we spent a lovely couple of days there with my parents. This song is supposed to be from the POV of grandparents. I recorded the video in the dressing room of the Me& Thee Coffeehouse in Marblehead MA. Guitar is c/o Seth Glier. I'd done the thing I've joked I'd do since giving birth to my first child: I remembered the breast pump and forgot the guitar.
Each verse is supposed to begin with "Bow Bow Bow" which is Jay's favorite part of the song, but I forgot to do that in the video.


Bow bow bow We go to the beach
Where the tide is red
Sandwiches to eat
We eat sand instead
I don’t care at all
Red tide can’t make me blue
I just want to spend the day with you

We go to the zoo
On a rainy day
See a kinkajoo
The tiger is hiding away
I don’t care at all
If the monkeys are hiding too
I just want to spend the day with you.

It’s not like everyday we get together
Talking on the phone or getting a letter
Is really great, but holding you is better
So who cares about a little thing like the weather?

We go to the park
Ride the Merry go round
Storm clouds make it dark
Too soon we’re homeward bound
I don’t care at all
No matter what we do
I just want to spend the day with you.


We go to the museum
To see the lilies by Monet
But no one’s there to see ‘em
We came on a quiet Monday
I don’t care at all
It the TV is all we view
I just want to spend the day with you.

Nerissa Nields
Feb. 17, 2010

FAWM #3: Monday Moonday

Monday Moonday let's hope it's a sunny day
Everything begins on Monday

Tuesday Mars Day, red hot in the stars day
Maybe I will play with Lars today

Wednesday is the day we talk no matter what the weather
Thursday is HooteNanny when we sing together

Friday, a busy day, move so fast I'm dizzy day
Saturday the biggies go out for date night

And Sunday is when
We see all our friends
Stand on our heads
And put our plans to bed
And start all over again.

FAWM #2: Crazy Rider

This is "Ride a Cock Horse" meets the B-52s. The trick is to hold the child's feet as you bounce him/her so as to approximate a bucking bronco-type ride.

Feb Album Writing Month First Song

I wrote this on Feb. 1 as the kids and I walked home from pre-school. Elle's contribution was to have one of the fingers represent the element of Milk. I'd just learned that morning in my yoga training that each of the five elements corresponds to one of the fingers. Also, the first four chakras correspond to the fingers and the last three to the thumb.

Full Catastrophe Rehearsal

This is from our January 12 session with Zak Trojano. We are showing him how "Full Catastrophe" goes.

Recording Day 6 & 7

Two weeks ago, we recorded three tracks ("Full Catastrophe," "Last Train Home," "Back at the Fruit Tree") with a new drummer, Zak Trojano. He plays with Peter Mulvey, among others, which is how we met him.



Check out how he plays an old suitcase as a kick drum!

Today, I played Dave and Katryna a new song I just wrote called "FInd What We Were Missing." Also, Amelia, aged 8, played her father's new Hofner bass and showed us that she can give Paul Kochanski a run for his money on the bass part to "Goin' To Boston." I slammed down some guitar and vocals for "Back at the Fruit Tree," and it was so much fun that I begged Dave to put the Hofner on right away so that we'd have one track pretty much finished. We need Katryna's vocal now, but the "illustrated" version is done. We're also going to have Keith from Stephen Kellogg's band do some piano on this. Yum yum yum. I love layering background vocals almost more than anything in life. It's like painting.

Also worked on today: my vocals for "Full Catastrophe" which Katryna will ultimately sing most of the lead on. Also, my final lead vocal on "Which Side Are You On" and demos for "Find What We Were Missing." Then Dave had a cool idea: me playing my very primitive piano on "Fear The Gap," a la "After the Gold Rush." It ended up being my favorite thing we worked on today.

I still want to write another song for this CD, even though we now have 13. Maybe because we have 13. Who wants a 13 song album? Katryna started a song called "Ten Year Tin" and I have some ideas for that. This week I will write it. After all, it's February Album Writing Month, and though my priority has to be our book, I can't resist a challenge and a deadline.

Tomorrow: two radio interviews and our show at Stone Soup in Providence. Meanwhile, Elle has pink-eye and Jay has a mysterious rash. He sings the ABC song all the time now, and also "Go Go Go Go for G." Elle sounded out the letters to "S-T-A-R-B-U-C-K-S." We may rot in hell for this.

About Our Church

At 5:30am Sunday someone driving up Route 9 saw our church on fire and called the fire department. By the time the firefighters got there, the church was beyond saving. Our minister Stephen Philbrick who came over soon after the call came in described the sight as not unlike one of our local tobacco barns during the harvesting period, when the slats open up to dry the tobacco. Only this time the fire presaged the smoking: orange flames flew heavenward, taking with them everything that the 170-year-old building contained, including our prized grand piano which we'd fundraised for, parishioners buying individual keys of the 88 needed; Our healing quilt that Annie Kner made for the auction of 2008, a quilt deemed too beautiful for any one person to own. We decided to purchase it for the church to act as our stained glass window, our cross, our credo. When a member of the congregation needed healing, we sent the quilt out to wrap that person in. Arnold Westwood, our beloved 88-year-old friend, died wrapped in the quilt.

Katryna said it was fitting that our church had a quilt instead of a cross, as ours is an extraordinarily ecumenical place, where the scripture is as likely to be taken from the Tao or the Baseball Book of Wisdom as it is from the Bible. We are a congregation of anti-church people: recovering Catholics, Unitarian Jews, Buddhists, Pagans, and yes, a few Congregationalists (our official denomination). Steve Philbrick did not go to any institutional seminary, but rather learned in the pulpit and from mentors. Before becoming our minister, he was a shepherd and a poet. (He remains both.)

Tom and I met in December 2003. What drew us to each other immediately was our shared curiosity about God and spirituality: what made people tick, what it meant to live fully and consciously. In February 2004 he held a brunch at his condo in Haydenville, inviting his "spiritual" friends for a conversation about our various faith paths. I loved meeting his friends, and our discussion was lively and full of friendliness and curiosity. I was sitting next to a woman named Fran Henry, and when I asked her where she went to church, she told me, "Oh, this little place in West Cummington where the minister is a poet and a shepherd."

I said, "We should take a field trip there."

A month later, we did. We entered the little one room building with the tin roof and no bathroom and found a seat in the second pew from the front. A woman whom I later learned was Penny Schultz, co-founder of Earthdance and the Hilltown Charter School, began playing an upright piano and singing along, very softly and gently, in the sweetest most familiar soprano. It seemed as though she was making up her melody in the moment; it sounded like prayer.

Then Steve began to preach. He talked about the questions more than the solutions, and he had such compassion for questioners. His Jesus was the one I recognized from my own sojourns: the advocate for the poor, for justice, but also the koan-creator, the fully human, hot-blooded realist, the one who told Martha that Mary had the better part. The one who recommended we all consider the lilies of the field and stop our ceaseless useless worrying.

On our way up to church a few months later, on a warm May morning, Tom said, "I hope someday we get married in this church." A year later we did.



Eighteen months after that, we baptized our daughter, and a couple of years after that, we baptized our son.

We laughed our heads off as auctioneers at the yearly auction. I played new songs as preludes and offertories and learned about the magic of Village Harmony, and got to witness the full potential of what kinds of choral miracles are possible through watching Penny Schultz's Hilltown Choruses each year at the Christmas service. Katryna and I performed there every year on the second Saturday in July. It was my favorite gig. My parents came up and worshiped with us, my father leading the congregation in "Lord of the Dance." Tom and I both preached sermons there, and week after week had our hearts broken open by the honesty of Steve's preaching and the sincerity of the congregation in responding to him.

It's our home. Our bodies are in Northampton, but our hearts are in West Cummington.

When I heard the news, I dropped the phone and keened as if someone had died. Tom picked it up and followed through on our phone tree duties while I sat on the couch and sobbed. Then I called my parents. They said, "You are going to be amazed at how both the congregation and the community respond." My father added, "Maybe when they build the new church, it will have a bathroom."

A few minutes later, Steve's wife Connie called. "Steve said, 'We're really going to need music this afternoon.' Can you come with your guitar?"

I had been scheduled to teach a workshop at Smith College that afternoon. I called the professor who had booked me and explained the situation, asking if I could start 40 minutes early so I could make it up for the 3pm service. Ironically, the exercise I had planned to give the Smith students, all seniors working on a narrative, was to look at how the thing in their life they most cherish now almost certainly is in their life today because of some supposedly bad thing that had happened to them in the past. Though this exercise comes from Martha Beck, it's always been my basic teaching. "Your job is to figure out how this is this the best thing that ever happened to you," a wise friend once told me, long ago when I was experiencing a devastating loss. (It was––the best thing, that is.)

As Tom and I made the trek up, him for the second time that day, he said, "You'd better brace yourself." My eyes had been dry for most of the day, after my initial deluge. I had snapped into coping mode and poured my grief into cleaning the house, going for a run and hugging my kids, trying to explain to them what had happened. "I can be a good helping builder of the new church," said Elle. "But tell them to make it pink next time. That's prettier than white."

As we drove past the little Church Road, we could see the remains. The very front of the church was still standing, blackened and broken. It reminded me of the ice storms last year that demolished so many branches of the trees up in these hills. The canopy is gone. So much of what we take for granted as eternal really isn't. In the Dhammapada, the Buddha says, "Anyone who understands impermanence ceases to be contentious." I wouldn't say I'm there yet (I can be plenty contentious), but these lessons in impermanence help. And anyway, how do I know something better isn't around the corner?

I got out of the car at the same time that Penny got out of hers. Steve came striding towards both of us, his arms open to embrace us. "The music is here!" he said. We hugged, and he looked me in the eye. "This is horrid. And we will rebuild." Then. as we entered the Parish house, the building down the road from our church where we hold meetings, fellowship time and "kids church" he said to Hal, who was in charge of the collection box, "We're doing that second basket for Haiti. Because we have to keep things in perspective here, people. We've lost practically nothing. They've lost everything."

And looking around the room, it was obvious that this was true. Here was my church. Everyone was in the room; it was packed to the rafters with old friends, newcomers, supporters, members of other churches. The Village Church down the road had brought up hymnals. Penny and I led songs. Steve led us in prayer, and we all stood up individually to share stories. I offered our Annie Kner quilt as a temporary replacement for the healing quilt that had burned, but John Eisenhaur did me one better by actually bringing his. "It has tulips on it," he said, unfolding it at the front of the room. "Which seems appropriate." And I thought of the five acts of Shiva, the last two being Concealment and Revelation. Though all acts were present in that moment: Creation, Sustaining, Dissolution all danced together in that space. We sang, hugged, cried, laughed, held hands in a circle and vowed to rebuild. As Tom and I left to return to our kids, I felt as whole as I've ever felt. I'd been healed.

What had we lost? Not a soul had died. No one had even been injured. We weren't even homeless; the Parish house was plenty big to contain us. And it has a bathroom.

Well, this. Fran Henry, the woman who introduced us to the church, rose and quoted Mary Oliver's poem "The Oak Tree at the Entrance to Blackwater Pond" in which she compares the dead tree to a lost friend:

Every day
on my way to the pond
I pass the lightening-felled,
chesty,
hundred-fingered, black oat
which, summers ago,
swam forward when the storm

laid one lean yellow want against it, smoking it open
to its rosy heart.
It dropped down
in a veil of rain,
in a cloud of sap and fire,
and became what it has been ever since––
a black boat
floating
in the tossing leaves of summer,

like the coffin of Osiris
descending
upon the cloudy Nile.
But, listen, I'm tired of that brazen promise:
death and resurrection.
I'm tired of hearing how the nitrogens will return
to the earth again,
through the hinterland of patience––
how the mushrooms and the yeasts
will arrive in the wind––
how they'll anchor the pearls of their bodies and begin
to gnaw through the darkness,
like wolves at bones––

what I loved, I mean, was that tree––
tree of the moment––tree of my own sad, mortal heart––
and I don't want to sing anymore of the way

Osiris came home at last, on a clean
and powerful ship, over
the dangerous sea, as a tall
and beautiful stranger.

I know we will rebuild, Fran was saying. But we all need a moment––or many––to grieve what we've lost. We will never again sit on the funky, weird throne-like chairs that stood in the corner where Tom and I sat while Steve preached his wedding sermon for us. I will (probably) never again dip out the back door to pee in the bushes. I will never look out that window at the falling snow. I will never sit in that pew. I won't lean with my kids against that step while Tom does Children's Time. I will not be in the space in the same way again. The atoms will reorganize differently. The light will shine in the new building in a new way. The building will not have the same 170-year-old smell. We won't be, as Steve mentioned, holding the old old hymnals or the new old hymnals, or the binders full of new new songs Penny put together last year.

And we will never see the quilt again.



But as 12-year-old Jacob stood up said, "Energy can't be burned up in a fire." The love we have, the faith, the memories, the emotions, the good will, the bits of poetry and theology and philosophy, the hugs, the songs, the communion––those remain.

And how we love to be generous when there is a tragedy! How we love to be of service! I believe the human heart yearns for these opportunities to be useful. So Jacob is right; energy cannot be destroyed, it can only shift around, and the energy in that church came right back to all of us in a fervor to rebuild. The energy of the earthquake in Haiti comes back in a longing in our hearts to help, to give, to go down there, to be of service.

The worst part of the story––by far the worst––is the encroaching thought: "Someone did this." The worst is the virus of fear and blame that creeps in. That there might be a copycat arsonist who got bitten by the bug in Northampton, and acted recklessly, fecklessly, maliciously. Every time this thought comes up, I gently say to it, "I don't need to believe that now. Until proven otherwise, I am going to believe that this was an accident."

In fact, I don't think it was an accident. I think Arnold did it. Arnold was a lifelong Unitarian minister, known for "growing" churches. He had huge hopes and dreams for our West Cummington church, and I think he was constantly frustrated by our reluctance to push it up a notch. I don't know this for sure, but this is what I do know: as I've mentioned about five times here, our church didn't have a bathroom. In order to grow, we kind of need a bathroom, more facilities for kids and families, a bigger parking lot, more space period. But no one wanted to touch that little antique church nestled so perfectly and eternally in the hills. It was, in a way, a sacred cow. We're not an ambitious congregation. We want to raise money for the Goshen Food Pantry. We want to listen to our wise preacher read his poetry, follow the tendrils of his faith journey, meet in small groups to talk about why the book of Genesis has caused our current environmental crisis, nurture our men so they don't become bullies, meet for soup potlucks and Vipassana meditation.

And maybe we're meant to do more. I have no idea what that looks like, but when a building goes up in flames the way ours did, it certainly raises the question, to paraphrase Rumi (who is oft quoted in West Cummington) as to whether we've been "cleared out for some new delight."

So if this is Arnold's way of shaking us up, pushing us to serve in a bigger way, I will do my best to grieve our loss, raise money for the new building, advocate for pink clapboards (maybe just one, hidden in the back), do a concert at the Village Church in lieu of our scheduled West Cummington show, love my congregation, support my pastor and try as hard as I can not to be contentious with What Is by embracing impermanence.

And remember.

Thank you, little jewel of a church. Requiescat in pace.

Jon Stewart Honors Bruce Springsteen

Thanks to my sister Abigail and my friend Kris McCue for this. What an inspiration!

"Vowels are Important Letters"

"I think Jay is crying."

"Really? I don't hear him." I pause. I press the tiny button on the side of my Timex. 4:28am. Tom and I are both on our bellies, our heads lifted in a pose I I believe to be called shalabasana, but I am hardly in the mood to practice yoga right now. I've been exhausted recently, and I was so hoping for a good 8 hours.

We wait. We listen. Nothing. Except a bump downstairs. Probably George Harrison. Or the arsonist.

"He's not crying."

"OK."

We both get up to pee. The room is freezing. We hunker back in under about four or five quilts. Maybe Jay is cold. Maybe he shook off his blankets. Now I don't hear him. Maybe he froze! But the space heater will turn on if it gets too cold. Maybe the space heater will start a fire! Maybe the arsonist will start a fire! I wish we had a fire ladder propped up against our house. But then maybe a thief would climb it and get in!

These are the thoughts of an anxious mind, AKA "2-5 am Mind." Go back to sleep. I try all my tricks: I imagine the space between my eyes and pretend I'm a peaceful docile herbivore instead of a searching prowling carnivore. I imagine gravity pulling my body down to the earth. I relax my tongue.

I have a headache. I ignore it and try to space out. I imagine I hear Jay crying. I begin to wish he would cry just so I could get up and cuddle him. And not have to work so hard trying to fall back to sleep.

Tom lifts his head. "Did you hear that?"

I get out of bed. I go to the door. The crying is unmistakable. I tiptoe down the hall passing Elle's room. Jay's room is ice cold. He is whimpering on top of his blankets, my poor little babe! I scoop him up, furious at Tom who always sets the thermostat too low. I turn on the space heater to heat up the room, hoping to eventually put Jay back and reclaim an hour or so more of sleep. I come back to our room.

"It was freezing in his room," I hiss, as Jay settles in by my side to nurse. My back is to Tom. "He is ice cold!"

"Huh?" says Tom, still dozy. "Who put him down?"

"YOU did!" I whisper.

"I did?"

"Yes!"

I think back to the night before. I had a writing group. I never put the kids down when I have a writing group.

Except last night I put Jay down.

"Oh," I say. "You're right. I did. I'm sorry."

Tom chuckles. Fortunately, I am married to a man who would chuckle at my bad behavior. Fortunately I learned the hard way that it's really better to apologize right away and not try to weasel out of it, or worse take the opportunity when one is enraged and in a blaming mood to blame the innocent for some other long-ago crime.

I nurse Jay for a half-hour and then he pokes his head up, wanting to play. This is Tom's cue to bring him back to bed. Jay howls as he is taken from me, and I bury my face in the pillow, full of guilt and remorse. I wish he could stay. I wish he WOULD stay the way he did when he was younger. Now he pretends to want to stay, but what he really wants is to pull Tom's hair and say, "DA da!" and giggle maniacally.

I hear howls all the way down the hall. Then I hear a truly horrible sound. Two sets of howls happening at the same time. Then just one howl. A different howl.

Tom comes back with Elle. "I have a new customer for you," he says, handing me my three-year-old.

"OK, Elle, you know the rules," I say. "No talking, and lie completely still." She snuggles up next to me and I put my arms around her, secretly delighted. But sleep does not return to any of us. Elle mouth-breathes in my face and whacks Tom in the head multiple times.

"Elle!" I hiss. Again with the hissing. "Lie still!"

"I'm just trying to get comfortable!" she says, wiggling around to bring her eyes right up to mine. She grins and her eyes turn into upside down crescents.

"You know, she got woken up, too," mumbles Tom. Which is true and fair enough.

"I'm sorry, sweetie," I say. "I shouldn't be so mad. I'm just tired. Mommies and daddies really like to sleep."

So we lay in bed and breathed together, her with her mouth-breathing morning breath, I with my attempts at pranayama, and eventually around 6am I got up and she popped up too. "I want a piggy back," she said and climbed aboard. I made tea for me and poured her a glass of milk and we settled down to watch They Might Be Giants Here Come the ABCs. We both sang along to "Vowels Are Important Letters" which we agreed was the prettiest song on the DVD. A friend who knows I am awake at this time called and commiserated about the profound surrender of one's time to parenthood. I told her I'd just heard the yoga philoposher Douglas Brooks say that the word "sacrifice" is a cognate of "sacred." By sacrificing, we make sacred. I was also reminded of Thich Nhat Hanh's great line about how we never appreciate our not having a toothache. Another friend recently said, "I need new tires! And I have money for new tires! What a great happy problem to have!"

Yes. These are sweet problems to have. My friend said, "Every morning I wake up and our house hasn't burned to the ground I am happy." Thank you, Arsonist, for that.

The arsonist, by the way, may be caught. I feel so sorry for him, by the way. I know he did a terrible thing (if in fact this person is the arsonist, which we do not at all know yet.) What an awful thing to know that you killed someone.

In my yoga teacher training, I am reading the yoga sutras. There are four parts, and I just finished part one. The text speaks of the purpose of yoga as the stilling of the mind the way the lake can be stilled to reflect back the sky. We still our minds, our consciousness, in order to reflect back pure awareness. But, says my teacher who follows a Tantric path which differs from the classical teachings of yoga in some significant ways, it's much more important to learn to be with what is than it is to actually still the mind--which is of course next to impossible.

So as I sat on the couch with my droopy daughter and my droopy self, a line from Jack Kornfield came to me, and I paraphrase: how can I meet this situation with friendliness? How can I be like my father and my great Uncle George and my Aunt Elizabeth who always seem to smile, genuinely, no matter how annoying the situation seems to be for others?

Sometimes it's as easy as smiling. Sometimes not. This morning, that's all it took.

Thus began my day, and now that it's almost over, I can honestly say that i was no worse for the lack of my two lost hours of sleep. Plus, I got to start my day with cuddles from both my kids and music from They Might Be Giants. And I don't have a toothache and my house did not burn down. I want for nothing.

The Fires

Our family spent last weekend in New York visiting my relatives, including my 102 year old grandmother. At the breakfast table, we heard about the attempt to bring down the flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day. "Now they're not going to let people get up to go to the bathroom or have anything on their laps on international flights," commented my cousin, worried because his wife's family was schedule to visit from Central America later this month. I was reminded of a Saturday Night Live sketch from the early 90s called "We Ruined It For The Rest Of You," featuring, among others, the Guy Who Left the Fuel Pump Running So Now They Have To Disable All the Hold-Open Locks.

"Hold my hand tight, sweetie," I said to Elle as we navigated the city streets on the upper East Side. "The rules are different in New York."

An hour or so later, we were driving out of town on the FDR. I checked my email and found "Fire Alert" as the header from a neighbor I don't know well. That's how I learned about the strange rash of arson that hit our small town around three in the morning of last Sunday. The rules are different in Northampton now.

For those of you who don't know, eleven fires were lit in a time frame of under an hour and a half. Some of the fires were in homes within a half-mile radius, and some were in cars. Two people died, and several houses burned to the ground. Two car fires were in our neighborhood, just three blocks from here.

Our town has come together in a powerful way. We are connecting with each other through the internet (there's a Facebook page devoted to the topic, as well as regular emails circulating) but also in the old-fashioned ways: town meetings and the natural manner people connect around a shared tragedy. We're collecting clothes, food and the like for the victims, and a benefit concert is happening on Jan. 7--a tribute to Tom Petty. Meanwhile, we are keeping our porch lights on and listening in the night for strange sounds. Our neighbors' dogs, whose barks are not always so welcome, are standing vigilant along with George Harrison, alerting us to every passer by.

I don't like to live in fear. I don't like to have an enemy either, and when I shake off the fear thoughts, I remember that this person or persons who set these fires is or are sick; that they were and are someone's babies, loved the way my sweet babies are loved. I still want them caught so that they will stop hurting themselves and other people, but I stop hating them.

I was reminded today that one of the great evolutions in human thought is the understanding that, all evidence to the contrary, the world is round. We don't live in a flat world with two diametrically opposed sides. There is no good and bad in a round world; just perspective and dimensions. "And" is a much more helpful word that "but" or "or," and also more true. I hate the fires and I love the arsonist, and I hate the arsonist's behavior and I'm scared and I want to preserve my faith in humankind and a higher power. In a round world, with the word "and" as a highway, there's room for all those feelings. Fires destroy. Fires also warm and save lives at this coldest point in the year. Nothing can take the place of essential human goodness, the piece inside each of us that refrains from harm. It's part of the deal Prometheus made with us when he (illegally) gave us fire to begin with.

But I have a lot of questions, especially at two in the morning when the dogs wake me up and my heart is in my mouth and I listen for the breathing of my babies down the hall. Where is the line the arsonist crossed from impulse control to homicide? When does teenagers-having-fun turn deadly? When do you stop them? When do you take the car keys away? For that matter, where are the lines in the sand about free speech and racist thoughts? I am still troubled by the "White Power" graffiti mostly spray-painted over but still somewhat visible in my park. I run over it every day and think, "I'm going to sneak into the park one night and spray-paint over everything that's left!" only to pull back--it's illegal to spray paint anything at all, so I won't do it. But what about my dear relative who watches Fox News and repeats some of their racist nonsense about Barack Obama and Tiger Woods? That stuff is subtle and insidious and probably more damaging than the graffiti.

I keep coming back to love as the answer: keep softening the heart, even at 2am when I am sure that I heard a bump on the porch and am trying to figure out whether it would be better or worse to set up an escape ladder out of my daughter's window, which has bars on it so that she won't tumble out. We can't see beyond the flat world right now. All our energy is concentrated here, on our friends, children, neighbors. Someday more will be revealed, but for now we have to go on faith and trust. So I am going to ask to play in the tribute concert, we are going to bring over our bags of clothes and send in our donations and stop in the market and on the streets to connect with our neighbors and remind each other why we chose this dear town as our home. I choose it again.

Recording Day 5

Dec. 18. 2009
Dave Hower got here around 10:45 and set up his drums while I ate lunch and printed out the lyrics to "Good Times Are Here" and "Between Friends." Played through "Good Times" while sitting on my old amp and DH played along on his kit. He'd played it at Falcon Ridge last July, so it wasn't entirely new to him, but we reworked a few things. Decided to add a guitar solo. We got the song in 2 takes! We might even have a keeper vocal from Katryna. It's worked really well in the past to record with me on acoustic in one room, Dave H in the main room and Katryna in the vocal booth. Dave Chalfant said, through the talk-back, "We should be a rock band!"

Moving on to "Between Friends." It took 3 takes to get the feel right. Dave H, K and I all played at the same time again. I get to play on the futon in the control room which I love! All the yoga I've been doing is helping my shoulders not to tighten up when I'm hunched over the guitar. Come to think of it, my alignment is more conscious, so I'm not hunching as much.

We did "Which Side Are You On?" really easily, changing up DH's drums to muffle the bass. Added 8 measures for our surfer vocal extravaganza which we are plotting. Then Katryna left to pick up her kids. Dave H stayed to play on his knees with twigs for "More Than Enough."

Last we did "Can I Love You Too Much," which DH played fairly straight. All that song needs is bass and it is finished! Only four more basic tracks to go, but we won't get to them until 2010.

*******

It's the winter solstice. I love this day so much. I am glad it's sunny. I have had very little sleep, which is a shame, since everything in my being wants to curl up and hibernate these days. Jay woke me up at 2am and I had the worst insomnia after he went back to sleep. Then Elle woke us both up at 5:45, though having my kids cuddling in bed with me is hardly something to complain about. So I won't.

What I did when I couldn't sleep was count my blessings. I am grateful that the weird hiccup in my heart turned out to be something benign. I am grateful that we have a Christmas tree that Jay hasn't (yet) pulled over onto himself. I am grateful that we get to make this CD, I love this time of year, and my body has finally adjusted to the cold. On Saturday, we went to see Amelia in A Christmas Carol at the Academy of Music. She was sensational as Belinda Cratchett, and the whole play was beautiful to behold. Tom and I guessed there would be a 20% chance that Elle would want to stay for the entire hour and twenty minutes of it, mid-afternoon without a nap, but she sat on my lap commenting on "the grouchy guy" and "the princess ghost" the entire time. She keeps making us tell and re-tell the story.

I am also working on our music book, All Together Singing in the Kitchen: the Musical Family. Today I was writing that for some of us (me) context and community is everything. I fell in love with the Beatles when I was nine years old, deeply, madly and permanently, but I will never know for sure how much of my love came from a pure affection for the music and how much came from the experience of listening to them with my best friend Leila Corcoran whom I adored and admired. Her enthusiasm for the Beatles was so huge and contagious, and it was so much fun loving them along with her. How much does my love of Pete Seeger and the Revels, and for that matter, my choice to be a folk musician, derive from the bond my parents forged with me as a baby onward through that shared love of a kind of music?

Speaking of music, I am so glad we get to sing Christmas carols. It's the best part of the whole event, if you ask me. Saturday morning, I pulled out my guitar and played "Here We Come A Wassailing," "Gloustershire Wassail" and "Jingle Bells for Elle and Jay who held hands and danced all over the music room. Jay can now sing "Twinkle Twinkle" perfectly on key, though his lyrics are "Dee do dee do dee doo DAH!" Tomorrow my aunt Elizabeth and her son, my cousin John Colonna who is at Berklee in Boston are coming for dinner, along with my parents, Katryna, Dave and their kids. We are having roast duck, yams, brussels sprouts with Tom's homemade biscotti dipped in hot chocolate for dessert. John C is an a amazing pianist, the best kind, meaning the kind who can play any Christmas Carol in any key and doesn't even mind.

Thank you.

Service Dogs Rule

Tearjerker of the day. Thanks to Martha Beck for passing this along!

Day 4 in Sackamusic

We've been here all day. Recording starts with Dave playing basic acoustic for "Can I Love You Too Much." I was late; negotiating snowpants and snowboots for the kids, and my own lost checkbook without which I couldn't pay the babysitter. Duncan Donuts has espresso shots, which is very unfortunate for those of us who want to eschew big corporations. But as Dave said, "At least now you are supporting an honestly compromised corporation instead of a hypocritical one."

We record two versions of "Can I Love You": the second slightly slower than the first. Katryna trying for a keeper voc. This is the easiest, most natural first go-round I've ever heard her do.

I am obsessed with Neutral Milk Hotel. Bought the entire CD (In the Aeroplane Over the Sea) last night on iTunes and listened to it on my run and commute. It's scary and sad and amazing: based on a loose idea that Anne Frank gets reincarnated and united with the singer. Somehow there's a two-headed boy involved as well. I still can't figure out how we never crossed paths in the 90s. I'm haunted by the fact that they were in the same scene as we were; and Jeff Mangus is haunted by Anne Frank.



Jay woke up at 3:40am.I nursed him back to sleep in our bed, but after about 90 minutes he woke up playful. I am tired.

Dave is getting Katryna to do several excellent versions of her lead vocal. This reminds me of recording at Ardent Studios in Memphis with John Hampton in 1995 and his 4 vocal takes. I have to check with Katryna and Dave; did he merge the vocal? Or did we just pick one?

Tomorrow we're going to Christamas Revels.

Katryna changed "Give this child roots" to "give the child roots."

I keep thinking about the the article in the NYTimes about marriage. Elizabeth Weil invoked Nikos Kasantzakas's "full catastrophe" phrase. She was brave to write that piece, but I kept thinking she should question her thoughts. This album's all about marriage, family, these choices we make at some point that create a demarcation in our lives; a place after which there is no return.

Katryna and Dave finished their parts and we broke for lunch. Meredith sent me a list of bands to check out. ("Neutral Milk Hotel is so, like 1999...") which I did, or started to. I like Imogen Heap. Not so keen on Sufjian Stevens, though Dave is. I also don't love Rilo Kiley, but I probably need more evidence. Like the rest of the zeitgeist, I am apparently shamelessly song driven. Someone said I must have a thing of nasal caterwauling. Well, I DO! But not just any nasal caterwauling.

I love Gillian Welch. Maybe she has something new.

Now back to "Can I Love You..." which is more Nashville, less indie rock. I did my lead voc on chorus and the bg vox. Now K is dong her bg on chorus. It feels so good to be finishing a track~
Sweet sweet harmonies. We're singing with a lot of sincerity which fits. After all, this is a song to our kids.
On to "Hakatai." Dave sets up the drums and gets sounds while I play "Ball & Biscuit" by the White Stripes on my iPhone speakers, Katryna says, "I find this chord progressions depressing and sad."

"Yes," I say. "It's the blues."

Then I play her "16 Military Wives" and "Sons and Daughters." She wants me to make her a mix and stop subjecting her to my crappy little iPhone speakers. Dave and Katryna and I do what's supposed to be an experiment--all of us playing at once, live-- but we like it so much we decide to keep the take and build on it. I punch out a spot where Dave wants to redo the drums. Katryna perfects a vocal. I want to hear how the bass will sound. (Also, I read David Pogues' NYTimes peice on Dragon Diction. I download it and send Tom an email.)

Katryna writes: I love singing in that vocal booth. The trees outside are swaying int he crazy freezing wind and they evoke just the right feeling for "Hakatai." Nerissa's singing the low vocal right now. I love love love how her voice sounds down there. It's like rich chocolate soup.

The hardest part is always lining our voices up exactly. It's also the coolest part. When it finally happens, if feels like magnets finding each other.

Day 3 in the Recording Studio

We record at Sackamusic in Conway, MA. This studio belongs to my brother-in-law, Katryna's husband Dave Chalfant. He is amazing, and unlike Katryna and me, not at all ADD. He has the ability to sit still and concentrate for hours at a time. His attention is exquisite. When I am meditating, or just generally trying to calm down, it is he I evoke.

Conway is beautiful, as you can see from the pictures of the snowfall I took in the last post. It is quiet, and at night, one can see a billion stars if it isn't cloudy. This evening, I drove away when Venus or maybe Jupiter was out, and the last quarter of the moon. I have missed the moon since becoming a parent; I find myself indoors when it is visible.

Today we just had two hours to work. We recorded my guitar for "More than Enough" and a scratch vocal. Then we explored "Can I Love You Too Much" in terms of an arrangement. And we listened to Neutral Milk Hotel's "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea." This is my current favorite song, suggested to me on Facebook by my cousin's wife Courtney Nields. I am blown away. Also, apparently this band existed for the exact amount of time as the five piece incarnation of the Nields: roughly the decade of the 90s. NMH broke up in 1998. What do you know about them? l visited their website and it was like visiting a ghost town. Anyway, Dave and Katryna liked the song as much as I did, and I hope it will inform our entire recording. (Though we will abstain from the use of the theramin.) Tomorrow, maybe there will be drums.

Day 2 in the Studio

First snowfall of the year, en route to Conway.


Day two in the studio. In between sessions, Massachusetts had its first snow of the season. Katryna and her kids went to the circus in NYC, the Nields-Duffys had the distinction of coming in dead last in Northampton's Hot Chocolate Run, and also bought a Christmas tree.

We also went to church. "There is only one story," said Steve Philbrick. "The story of the year. It begins as a tender young thing; then becomes fruitful. It dies, is buried, goes underground. But Life does not die. It comes back to life in the spring again."

I can't decide whom to vote for in the election tomorrow. I initially loved Alan Khazei; then Mike Capuano because of his view on the health care bill. But it's awfully tempting to go with Coakley and have another woman in the Senate. We in MA are so lucky to have such great candidates. I will vote tomorrow. That much I know. And it won't be for the Boston Celtics owner.

I love the Robert Plant/Alison Krauss CD Raising Sand so much it hurts. Also, I have decided I like Journey. I know readers of How to Be an Adult will be shocked to hear this. I just realized life is too short to hold grudges. And "Don't Stop Believing" is just plain fun.

Elle and Jay have broken many of our Christmas tree ornaments already, and we haven't even started decorating the tree. Oh, dear.

Thank you for your music recommendations! One more question: Should I get Pandora or Rhapsody?

Here is a video of my attempt to record the guitar to the song "I Choose This Era." Though we ended up using a subsequent take, this officially documents the beginning of the recording of our new CD which we are tentatively calling "The Full Catastrophe," at the risk of getting some smug and mean reviews a la "Shark Sandwich/ Sh*t Sandwich."

Day One in the Studio

Driving up to Conway, I was filled with a momentary dread. These songs stink! I have no voice! I will be forced to be awake midday which is almost impossible for me to do without huge amounts of caffeine which will burn a hole in my stomach. Turn Back, O Woman!

Then I remembered: it's always like this. This is just resistance.

Today was pre-production: We played through all the songs and did some loose arrangements. "Full Catastrophe" got a new groove and some harmonies. "Back at the Fruit Tree" got a Beatles-esque "Getting Better" treatment; "Fear the Gap" got a new last verse, and we agreed to carry Tracy Grammer up the studio steps if need be to get her promised background vox on the tune ("Gap, gap, gap, gap, gap...") and perhaps some crazed fiddle, too, if she's willing. There are a couple of environmental tunes that I am excited about, songs I wrote two years ago that I'd almost forgotten about: "Hakatai," which is a sort of "Clementine" rip-off, a la Sister Holler, and "Last Train Home," which is the song I am the most excited about of all, at least for this five minutes. "I Am Half My Mother's Age" is pretty much ready to go, and I think we'll start with that one when we enter the studio on Sunday. (Today we only made it as far as Katryna's and Dave's music room; we decided to save the gas and not turn on the heat in the studio and instead record our experiments on Garage Band. What a great invention!)

I love love love love my band. I was saying to Katryna and Dave, "We are organic now. Back in the 90s, we were five people trying to compromise. Now we're just in service of the song and of that elusive person who is meant to hear it and have it mean something to him or her."

And we don't get to know who that person is. We could go all market driven on our audience and try to write and produce songs they will love and want, but that seems somewhat soul-killing. As much as I hated it when my artists took directions I didn't love when I was a passionate young music fan, I now get that artists have to follow the muse, not the dollars. Besides, following the dollars doesn't always work. I won't name names.

The point is to love what you do, what you sing, what you play. We are making this CD for ourselves and for the audience that will organically come to it. I hope that will spark a dialogue; I hope the songs will spark dialogues, inside and outside. I hope someone will see his or her journey and feel less alone, the way I did when I heard Joni Mitchell's "Case of You" when I was a miserably-in-love 21-year-old.

Also, I love to sing background vocals, to layer vocals, and that's the one musical direction I feel sure about on this CD. Lots and lots of vocals, please!

I bought the Robert Plant/ Alison Krauss CD. Delicious. This is more my speed than the White Stripes, though I am also enjoying Elephant. Also, the Decemberists' "16 Military Wives" and everything from Picaesque. YUM!!!! There's so much good music out there! Who knew? And it's so easy to get! I love iTunes! Keep on suggesting stuff to me, friends. I am loving it.

I am reading Sylvia Boorstein recently. I can't recommend her highly enough. She's a Buddhist meditation teacher and she writes anecdotally, short pieces perfect for before bedtime. I am also reading Kevin Henkes a lot. Elle prefers "Chrysanthemum." Jay likes "Moo Baa La La La." Tonight when I pulled it out pre-bedtime, he cackled and went, "La La La!"

New Music

Katryna says we need to listen to some new music to get inspired for our recording (starting tomorrow, Friday, Dec. 4!!!!) the way Aimee Mann listened to The Zombies for Whatever (one of our all time faves.) So to that end, I bought The White Stripes Elephant and the Decemberists' Picaresque. I like both so far, but especially the latter band. What a drummer! I might have to buy more of their CDs. One of my writers suggested both bands recently (thanks, Melissa!) and another asked me to figure out the chords for "Eli the Barrow Boy" in 2004 or something. I should've gotten wise back then.

Please send me suggestions of artists and bands I might like! I am looking for good lyrics, rich acoustic sounds, post 2000.

This new song has nothing to do with these new sounds. It's just something I wrote for my kids.

Fear The Gap
Every evening about 6 o’clock
I fit the puzzle pieces, I organize the blocks
I put all the books back on the shelf
I lie down with you and we say:
All will be well, all will be well, all will be well

Some would say that it’s all about the seasons
There are times for amusement and teasing out the reasons
There are times when the fields
Are refusing to yield
And you feel like there’s no one to blame
There’s no one who feels the same
You fear the gap
You fear the gap
You fear the gap
You fear the gap

Every morning about 6 o’clock
You run down the hallway and I pick you up
You curl up and say, “What are we doing today?”
You seem like you’ve grown up overnight.
I fear the gap
I fear the gap
I fear the gap
I fear the gap

And one day I’ll be convinced it’s true
I’m alone with me, and you’re alone with you.

Every day at some point, I refuse to look
I get my hands busy, stick my face in a book
There’s somebody out there I don’t want to see
Someone needs my help, but there is not enough for me
I fortify excuses I toss them in the fire
I think of all the good I’ll do the day after I retire
And so it’s up to me to do it all
And instead of omnipotence
I feel so small.
I feel the gap x 4
Don’t fear the gap x 8


Nerissa Nields
Nov. 30-Dec. 3, 2009