There are some things that arrive to you with more certainty than others- although not always guaranteed. If things remain steady, you will go to your job, and do it, and come home. You will arrive at school and your child will be there waiting, unharmed and armed, perhaps with a tidbit or two about American history that you have forgotten. You might open the fridge, and scrap together a meal (even if all that is in there is apples, yogurt and laughing cow cheese, and half a cucumber).

Music is not this way. At least for me. If I am to produce new work, then there are times when I must absorb other things in order to interpret the new information. Listening, and watching, quietly, without interruption are important parts of being a musician, I am learning. So, I guess what I am trying to convey is, I may have hit a period of dormancy. It frightens me to be dormant, but I now see it as an integral part of my musicianship, a time of rest where ideas, colors, sonic changes and words can gather in a sort of fetal mass, and grow into new works.

Singing is also not this way. In order to sing well, your breathing and sinuses, and throat and diaphragm must all be in perfect condition. But pollen, and dust and years old wallpaper glue made from wheat, and dogwoods, and panic and sadness, and fear, all these things physiologically affect the voice, and it’s qualities. Even the cold, the winter, sometimes can constrict the lungs.

Rehabbing an old house and a non-working furnace do nothing to further the cause.

Ans also, sometimes when your heart aches, for no other reason than feeling the grief of others, it is difficult too.

I have had many dreams lately, of giving birth to new babies, all in startlingly graphic detail. These are just dream babies, they will never really be born, they don’t exist. I am facing the end of a certain type of motherhood, the physically demanding motherhood of small children. It is replaced by a different sort of motherhood, the nebulous, emotionally demanding motherhood of older children.

Shoes get tied and teeth get brushed. Keys and phones are employed deftly. The ability to program the RCN remote, the expression of large abstract concepts (the contagiousness of laughter, discussions about difficult concepts- abortion, assassination, theology and unsolvable math problems).

I miss the physically demanding motherhood- it was tiring, but had resolution. This new stuff, it’s frightening and unclear.

When the music comes back, when my head empties a little and I can start to sort this all out, I wonder what will come of it. It feels like it may be slower and more quiet. I don’t know- we shall see.

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