MichFest
The days of August are upon us...I just finished a phone interview with a woman in Berlin, Germany...she was born a year after The Changer was delivered into this world, and today, we spoke , among other things, of its impact upon her life. 30 years ago, and still that music rolls through people's lives in some important way!
Thinking back on it now, I'm glad I was so naive. I think if I'd shown more intent there, some over-inflated sense of my own importance back then, that music would not have had such pure impact for so many years. It was love for Beauty that drove me then and it is love for Beauty that drives me now. It is a continuum, a river flowing beautifully through lives, then as now, as above so below... At the end of the interview, over the wires, thousands of miles away, I heard two voices singing:..."lean on me, I am your Sister, believe on me, I am your friend..." Wow.
I went out to get the paper this morning and found that one of the wild turkey mamas had not made it across the road-that-knows-no-mercy. I saw her body a short way up the road, saw a flurry of feathers here and there. No good news in the paper either. Hoofed it up to the barn to feed the horses, and aw the turkey baby, calling in vain for its mama. I'd seen them around, the two of them. and tossed them seed at my bird feeders. Her baby whistled over and over for her, so plaintive a call that I swear it broke my heart. Sometimes life is just hard, and you have to accept it without knowing why. These are the times when faith comes into play -- not ever needed when it's easy, but always when it's hard. Death on the road, hit by a moving mass of metal, hard iron in a hard rush. Flesh and feathers give way. I moved her body off the unforgiving road and under cover of the tangled brush, recalling a Barry Lopez account of moving road-kill off the road and into decent burial on a journey from Oregon to somewhere back East. He arrived very, very late, having buried so many creatures on the way. I've never forgotten this and do it when I can.
Heading for the Festival in Michigan this week to see what's up, to give a listen, to sing my songs again, to be a part of this great gathering of women, by women, and for women. It makes a girl proud to have played my part in it all, and to still be included. The continuum rolls on... .