Love is all around -

A little (Valentine’s) music — the version that most cheers!

“All good art is political. Great art is political and entertaining,” writes Bob Mould, of Hüsker Dü. “Let’s hope her [Mary Tyler Moore] legacy will live on, especially in these oppressive days.”

(from: https://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2017/01/26/511670497/bob-mould-on-husker-d-s-cover-of-the-mary-tyler-moore-show-theme)

I had all sorts of ideas for this week’s post. Then realized it’s the 14th.

And for days now, I’ve been thinking… No, I’m not going to finish that sentence. These have been strange weeks.

Let’s let Mould’s words about political and entertaining be enough; I won’t add to them. But we’re due for a February 14.

Some suggest we ignore it—it’s too commercial. But sometimes “it’s too commercial” is laziness. It takes effort to create meaning. (Weak genre fiction vs one-more-time-with- meaning? Genre fiction can do it, too.)

Others suggest we include everyone—give cards and chocolates and cookies to those who might be most surprised. Good idea.

I know one thing: after I became a widow, I was shocked by how few pieces of Valentine’s Day I was left with. Less than a half dozen cards, with less written in them as almost thirty years went by. Though I shouldn’t have been shocked at all: we were part of that group of folks who say, “it’s too commercial.”

Only after the fact did I realize that doesn’t have to be.

I swear we all have our inner punk rocker who can build a little meaning in a couple of minutes of making noise!

Mary Tyler Moore said that the day they shot the film for the opening of her show it was January and cold, cold, cold… Miserably cold, though you wouldn’t know to see her smile.

I watched the show regularly on a little cube of black and white, a television so small it perched on the arm of my Salvation Army thrift couch, at the end of a long workday in the early 80s. The moment of the hat flying into the air—you know it. But mostly I loved the way Moore moved through the city—there should be a word for walking like that, confident. Purposeful. With a note of joy. The Guru Granth Sahib—the sacred book of the Sikh people—speaks of children walking with their arms swinging! Beautiful words.

What a mix those times of that show were. There were freedoms—seemingly—for women. But Vietnam was still happening. It was post-advent of pill. Pre-AIDS. For many it was a time of having more paths. More open gates. Still brick walls though.

But if you had it in you—or found or made it—you could throw your hat in the air or pick up a guitar.

The challenge in life is to live with seemingly opposing thoughts, urges, ideas, realities. I awake in the night at times, and recognize a feeling, try to pin it down and attach words to it so I can understand. It’s a raw thing, never complete; it’s those irreconcilable pieces.

When I wrote my memoir, I grappled with the Biblical sisters of Mary and Martha, the dreamer and the doer. I grappled with how when we see everything as opposing we are constantly in this state—of that raw thing haunting. I had to come to a place in caregiving that understood the shifting balance of Mary and Martha, the necessity for their inversion, the sister-ness of them. Somewhere I read the thought recently that Mary—if she’d chosen to cook and serve—would have been better at it than Martha; something in me balked at that. Martha DID what was needed. She acted.

But there is the thought that without Mary-ness, Martha’s actions don’t have the weight, the meaning.

Some laugh when I say that if I don’t slow when I make my pizza, if I’m not thoughtful in how I place the olives, the feta, the whatever’s-going-on-it-tonight, it just tastes different. Not as good. I believe this. For anything to taste good (read well) some love and meaning has to make its way in.

In this life-race and world-race, compassion is straining in the rear, and those of us madly dashing along might let it catch up. Might even pick it up and carry it over the finish line. We can take a day to think about.

As an artist, I need this in my work. We need it for our selves, to strengthen for the task, both the task of writing and creating story, image, idea, as well as for the lives we live from which the stories/images/ideas emerge. They don’t come out of elsewhere.

And really, maybe we most need this emotion—from deep compassion to active concern—to layer in meaning to connect the disparate pieces in our lives and in real stories. In a world that’s showing ugly seams.

Can we talk about this without being sentimental? This would be the punk part. Punk is a way of being in the world. It’s DIY. Helping friends. Stepping outside the mess of politics, and simultaneously having an activist heart—just in how you live. (And write.) It means that you can try things without having to be taught by someone; it’s about verve and pluck.

Pluck rock. We need that. Power to the people.

I was going to wax on further about things here, but I’m not. This is enough. Leave thoughts.

An archive piece that fits: