Deep Inside and Over the Moonbow
On Saturday, the 13th of June, The Flare Players will gather again in Lithia Park and we will play through out growing repertoire with one new addition: the piece I call “ Deep Inside and Over The Moonbow”.
My friend, Ila Cantor, will sing for the children again at 10 am, and we will start our “open rehearsal” at 11 am and play until 12 pm.
By that time it will probably be too hot for more music and we will pack up and go.
But I am going to tell you the story of this piece, because it is one of my favorites and I have been working on the arrangement of it for the Flare Players for over a year now, modifying and improving, trying to come as close to the feeling of the original as I can. So here is the story…
A long time ago, in the Fall of 2010, I traveled around the country in a GMC Safari van I called “Van Gogh”. I had embarked on a quest which I called “The Irrational Quest For Beauty”, an attempt to play my music in people’s homes all over the country, as well as to share some of my favorite poetry.
By that time I had begun to compose “musical portraits”, pieces of music commissioned by individuals who heard me play and had a particular inspiration for the creation, whether a gift to a loved one or to celebrate a particular life passage.
For three years I traveled, performing in 200 homes over that time. I would meet someone at a house concert, they would commission a musical portrait and then somehow I had to find a place to land long enough to set up my recording equipment, a rather heavy keyboard I was carrying around, laptop and microphone, so I could compose the piece.
Often, what I would give them was a finished piece on a CD with the photo of the person who was the inspiration for the piece screen printed on it. Sometimes, it was just an mp3 file I sent them via email. Other times, I was circling back around to where they lived and I could perform the piece for them “live”.
It was probably sometime in 2011 that I landed in Ft. Collins, CO, to stay with my friend, June, long enough to work on the piece that a woman named Laurie had commissioned when I had performed in her hometown of Charlotte, NC. When I played at her friend, Martha’s home there, Laurie had sat to my left, with an amazing smile on her face pretty much the whole way through. A smile like moonlight. When she told me she wanted a piece to mark her new life after the passing of her husband, my process was to schedule a call to learn more about her and her intentions for the music.
It was not only difficult to schedule this call, but when I did finally talk to her, her answers were ephemeral. I couldn’t quite make out what she wanted, even though she expressed it with a lot of self-knowing and confidence in my ability to do the job. After talking to one of her friends, I began to understand how closely connected to the moon this woman was. I envisioned somehow that she needed mountains in the music and the rest would be moonlight.
One of the gifts of those days was being so completely on the edge, close to the bone, barely surviving, but clearly surviving on grace. It made making music so direct and consequential. All of everything was about the music.
So when I went about recording this piece it was pretty rapid. It took shape quickly and it was very, very beautiful as it took shape. When it was done, I sent an mp3 to Laurie, which woud have arrived for her after midnight because of the time change. As it happened, a full moon. She got right back to me, saying how much she loved the piece. The next day, I sat in my van in a parking lot, shaded by trees, and listened to the piece, over and over. Crying, for all kinds of reasons. Mostly because I couldn’t believe it was so beautiful, that I had made this thing. Maybe partly because I was realizing I shared this ephemeral thing with Laurie, that my life is about the moon, too. Also, because I knew I was well and truly lost, not lost in the sense that I didn’t know where I was or what I was doing but alone and maybe alone for a long time. I didn’t know how long.
Life has changed so much since then. I certainly don’t feel lost in that same way any more. But this piece reminds me about something in me that will always be there - a little moonlight. So it will be good to play this new arrangement of it on Saturday. I look forward to that.