don't eat alone

The last two weeks, as Spring has finally come to Connecticut to stay, the lengthening light of the days has been matched by the growing weight of my depression. This time, thanks to the pandemic, it isn’t all to do with my mental illness but circumstances as well.

I find that I crave being outside. I take my computer out on the patio to write in the morning. When my mind shuts down in the afternoon, I dig in our flower beds or out in the church garden behind the barn. On the weekends there are four of five of us spread out across our 50 x 30 plot, talking through our masks, and working to raise food for whoever needs it.

This afternoon late I went out and moved some dirt for an expansion bed that we are getting ready for next year. As I went back and forth with the wheelbarrow, I started singing a song I learned as a kid but really came home to me one night at Club Passim in Boston. I was the volunteer running the sound board one night when Dave Mallett was performing. He wrote the song and I got to hear him sing it.

inch by inch, row by row, gonna make this garden grow
all it takes is a rake and a hoe and a piece of fertile ground
inch by inch, row by row, someone bless these seeds I sow
someone warm them from below, ’til the rain comes tumbling down

In New England we are a week or so away from even being able to plant our tomatoes, much less harvest them. Tomatoes in these parts are a late summer, early fall pleasure. Nonetheless, it’s never too early to sing along with Guy Clark.

homegrown tomatoes home grown tomatoes
wha’d life be without homegrown tomatoes
only two things money can’t buy
that’s true love and homegrown tomatoes

The Indigo Girls’ song “All That We Let In” isn’t so much about gardening or farming, but about everything we digest in life. Digging out in the garden for me is therapeutic in part, I think, because I’ve got my hands in the stuff I’m made of. I’m breathing in life in all kinds of ways. And even though I am the one who cooks dinner when I come in, I know how this verse feels.

I pass the cemetery, walk my dog down there
I read the names in stone and say a silent prayer
when I get home, you’re cooking supper on the stove
and the greatest gift of life is to know love

Lyle Lovett sings about leaving home and worrying that the one he is leaving behind will have significant culinary experiences without him. It’s not about growing food, but it sure is about who you eat with–“Pantry.”

don’t cheat on me with cornbread,
don’t cheat on me with beans
and don’t cheat on me with bacon,
cooked up with collard greens
don’t cheat on me with biscuits
with jelly sweet and blue
keep it in that place where
you know you will be true
keep it in your pantry . . .

One of my favorite John Denver songs tells the story of his uncle who lived with them on a farm in Oklahoma. “Matthew” is full of joy and family.

yes, and joy was just the thing that he was raised on
love is just the way to live and die
gold is just a windy Kansas wheat-field
and blue is just a Kansas summer sky

Rich Mullins’ “First Family” is another song about a family on a farm and paints a wonderful picture of how all that is ordinary is full of wonder.

talk about your miracles
talk about your faith
my dad he could make things grow
out of Indiana clay
Mom could make a gourmet meal
out of just cornbread and beans
and they worked to give faith hands and feet
and somehow gave it wings

I’ll finish tonight’s playlist with “Trouble in the Fields,” a song Nanci Griffith wrote about her relatives who were farmers during the Great Depression. Though I am far from working a full farm, something about digging in the dirt during these days finds resonance in her words.

and all this trouble in our fields
if this rain can fall, these wounds can heal
they’ll never take our native soil
but if we sell that new John Deere
and then we’ll work these crops with sweat and tears
you’ll be the mule I’ll be the plow
come harvest time we’ll work it out
there’s still a lot of love, here in these troubled fields

Take care, my friends. We will keep digging and singing together.

Peace,
Milton

One of the things that has surprised me about myself during these days of quiet isolation is growing disdain for Zoom. Part of it, I’m sure, is that I have to use Go to Meeting for work, which is its own special brand of hell, but there’s more to it than just that. I think it has to do with the disembodied nature of the whole experience: even when it’s in real time, it’s not live.

And live matters.

I was in the room at the Tarrant County Convention Center the night BB King came out for the encore and played “When Love Came to Town” with U2. When it was over, Bono turned to Edge and said, “For a minute I felt like a musician.” I saw BW Stevenson play at The Hop in Fort Worth on a night when only about ten people showed up. During the break, I went up to him and said, “i’ve been following you since college.”

“So you’re the guy,” he answered.

I’ve sat in seven or eight venues to hear Springsteen and wait for the change to sing “Show a little faith, there’s magic in the night. You ain’t a beauty, but, hey, you’re alright” and then cheered when he shouted, “You guys are gonna put me out of a job!”

My friend Ken and I heard Michael Martin Murphy play at East Dallas Community College in an auditorium that held about five hundred people and was so acoustically vibrant that he sang “Geronimo’s Cadillac” without amplification. (Oh, Lord, take me back . . .) Then there was the night, early in our dating life, when I took Ginger to see Linda Ronstadt and as Linda was belting out a song Ginger leaned over and said, “Is that all she’s going to do? She doesn’t dance?”

On our first date I took Ginger to see Lyle Lovett at the Caravan of Dreams in Fort Worth. We have seen him every year since. He sings the same songs and the evening is always fresh and new because none of us is the same person we were the last time we were together.

I heard Beth Wood play at Blue Rock in Wimberely, Texas and Nathan Brown play in the barn behind our house; I sat on the back row at Reunion Arena in Dallas with my friend Patty to see Fleetwood Mac and on the tenth row to watch Dan Fogelberg’s solo acoustic tour. And I have sat in more rooms that I can count for open mics or to hear bands I knew nothing about because it was live. The music became flesh and dwelt among us, within us, between us.

I understand why so many musicians are live-streaming. I am grateful that they are. I have heard some amazing performances. But it is not the same thing as being in the room. Watching James Taylor sing “You Can Close Your Eyes” on Fallon the other night was beautiful, but not the same as sitting in the bleachers at Fenway when he sang it with Bonnie Raitt.

Last night I was talking with my friend Kenny and he said, “You really miss worship, don’t you?” The question was pretty much rhetorical. He went on. “You love live music so much. Live anything. And that’s what you love about worship: being in the room when it happens.”

It’s good to have friends who know you.

I miss being in the room to hear the prayer requests, the celebrations, the moments when kids drop stuffed animals out of the balcony or someone misses a cue, the point in the sermon where I know Ginger has gone “off book” from the manuscript I read the night before and is speaking to what she feels in the moment, in the room. I miss leaning over to Chuck, whom I usually sit next to, and making side comments. I miss hugging the little kids who are unabashedly friendly.

Dave Grohl, the lead singer of the Foo Fighters among other things, has a great article in The Atlantic about not being able to play live and he closes it by saying,

In today’s world of fear and unease and social distancing, it’s hard to imagine sharing experiences like these ever again. I don’t know when it will be safe to return to singing arm in arm at the top of our lungs, hearts racing, bodies moving, souls bursting with life. But I do know that we will do it again, because we have to. It’s not a choice. We’re human. We need moments that reassure us that we are not alone. That we are understood. That we are imperfect. And, most important, that we need each other. I have shared my music, my words, my life with the people who come to our shows. And they have shared their voices with me. Without that audience—that screaming, sweating audience—my songs would only be sound. But together, we are instruments in a sonic cathedral, one that we build together night after night. And one that we will surely build again.

Some promoters are predicting it will be September 2021 before live concerts happen again. Others are saying that congregational singing will be one of the last things churches are able to do as they gather again in person. Till then, I suppose, we will continue to be creative about the ways we find to communicate our affection and connectedness, which matters but it does not measure up to what it means to be live–to be in the room together.

And I am not handling that well. Zoom leaves me feeling more alienated than hopeful, more isolated than included. I don’t completely understand why, I just know that is how it feels. The prospect that it may be the primary way we communicate for a long time is despairing for me.

I know. This should be the part of the post where I start to make the turn towards home and say something hopeful, but I am not hopeful right now. My depression has moved in with a vengeance over the past week and is not remote at all. I am working hard to be creative about my sleep habits and work schedule and how much I walk, trying to make sure I can still do my job and can do more than curl up in a ball in the middle of the bed. As always, I am grateful that the kitchen remains a depression-free zone. At least I can cook and find some relief. Ginger is live here with me, which is the best news I know.

I know I am not alone in my depression. I know I am loved and I am doing all I can to find ways to let people know I love them. But to not be in the room together means we are missing the best part of the show. And I am missing it. Badly.

Peace,
Milton