I just posted the following to our sf_folk list and, rather than reinvent the wheel, I'm reprising it here:
A Bazillion Thanks to Dave Cambest for being the first to put together a backyard house concert that more than satisfied two of the things I've most missed these last 14 months: live music and hugs... :-)Who better to "break the pandemic" (as someone tonight said) than local treasures Jennings & Keller (Laurie and Dana)? So many tears (of joy) and an equal number of smiles (of ecstasy, familiarity, comfort, serenity, gratitude, grace (as Laurie reminded us many times) and, most especially, love... for the music, for each other, for the idea of being that much closer to whatever "normal" looks like on the other side of COVID.All of us in the audience had been vaccinated, and the emotion was palpable... friends greeting friends after a too-long absence. Many of J&K's songs spoke to that, from their opening cover of Richard Thompson's Keep Your Distance to their closing song of Robert Vincent's The Ending... to so many new originals we were treated to (Like No Other, Your Smiling Face, High School Play) to some old favorites (Hold Fast the Wheel, Your Heart Holds the Truth) to The Byrds' Tulsa County and Joni's Little Green. Laurie's voice was as gorgeous as ever, and Dana's dobro was, to transpose a cliche, a sound for sore ears... 💖Laurie thanked the audience for being there, and we reciprocated by applauding warmly and enthusiastically, an energy most performers have greatly missed during this strange time. The evening was a magical and soul-filling watershed, as those who were there can attest. Here's/cheers to the first of many safe, loving gatherings, musical and otherwise... <3
SONG: Your Smiling Face by Jennings & Keller [flip side/bonus song: Wear a Mask, a Beauty and The Beast parody... 😄 ]
POEM: Relic by Russell Brakefield
years from now I dislodge a mask
kneeling in a gas station parking lot
to suck crumbs from the consoles
half in and half out the passenger seat
I dislodge a mask from the floormat
flattened and streaked, folded on itself
like a wounded bird but still
retaining its feather-blue tint
ear straps flung aside like broken wings
its sunken breast smudged
where I once pressed my mouth
the downy screen through which
I filtered my life, where my words were
wrung out and carried off as on a soft wind
a dirty plume that held prayers
and songs and desperate transactions
where I said even I love you
in a muffled tone, where I said even
I’m home! standing in the doorway
forgetting, for a brief moment, which
were the safer parts of the world
[Russell Brakefield: “As we encounter positive news about vaccines and look forward to a new administration’s response to the pandemic, I’ve been turning my mind to a post-Covid world, thinking about how we will live and interact with this time in history in the years to come.”]
Fatigue by Jill Kandel
I’m on the Day with No
Groceries day of the two-week cycle
which means I’m off to buy veggies and
you’d think I’d be used to my long-mandated mask
which makes it hard for me to understand what others
are saying and also sticks to my face as my breath gradually
fogs up my glasses already smeared from putting on and taking off
this, my handsewn slightly crooked mask, all the while trying to retain some semblance
of put-together-ness which went out the window some time ago and belongs
in the land of long forgotten things like hugs and real-life visits
and shared smiles that can actually be seen, dimple
to dimple, but what’s a person supposed to do
except cry, cry for my sweet friend battling
brain cancer and I can’t go visit him, his
systems shrouded in compromise
and Covid
restricting visits even from his
wife—depending on the hospital the clinic
the treatment the day and the hour—from going inside
with him and sitting beside him in his pain and his confusion, his veiled
hope and pallid suffering, and my other friend who just happens to live in the same city,
who placed her mother into a nursing home for people with dementia
the day before the nursing home shut to outside visitors, daughters included,
even daughters of newly admitted mothers who will go on to catch
Covid and die in that brand-new shining facility blanketed
with so much hope just two months earlier,
so even though I want to harangue
and childishly rage
joining in
the chorus of people
on Facebook and Twitter who hate
this politician and that party, smugly promoting
one cover-up or another, the wearing of masks (#MaskUpMN #WearADamnMask)
or not wearing of masks (#IwillNOTComply #NoMaskSelfie) I can’t join
in because it’s not that I’m really angry or mad or feel rant-ish,
it’s that it just keeps going on and on and on and on
into a future that predicts more and longer and still
here tomorrow and into the fall
and even the winter, and
I’m tired,
tired of being heartsore,
tired of listening to my friend
a hospice nurse who can’t hold her dying
patients’ hands and is trying to Zoom into their lives
as if she’s real, as if she’s there when in reality she could be a thousand
miles away, a woman on a screen and some days a screen is just not enough
to wrap around our sorrow and that’s what screams out to me, the grief, the longing,
the loss of what I used to know, the loss of who I used to be, and more
than that, the disappearance of who we used to be, how we
used to walk so carefree, so bold and vibrant
through this our now curtained
and weary world.
[Jill Kandel: “CNN carried a story on September 27 that the US cases have surpassed 7 million, and we can still expect to see an explosion of Covid-19 this fall and winter. I wanted to write beneath the surface of the pandemic, the veneer of daily frustrations, and into the heart of our sorrows.”]
QUOTE: “Each one of us has lived through some devastation, some loneliness, some weather superstorm or spiritual superstorm, when we look at each other we must say, I understand. I understand how you feel because I have been there myself. We must support each other and empathize with each other because each of us is more alike than we are unalike.” ~ Maya Angelou
