October 16, 2014 - Anchorage, Alaska. It has been 42 years from this day that my Father's plane disappeared - it is an anniversary that we remember, but without celebration. An irony perhaps that seven months has passed and the last entry was also about a passing, a connected passing, that of Gene Kennedy, my Father's best friend. But that was the past and remembrance is a funny thing. Time distorts memory, memory fades and the present consumes us. Now in the midst of my Brother's fight for his political life, I'm caught in a kind of stasis - suspended imagination - as I watch the crumbling walls of democracy and find I have little will to imagine it different. Perhaps it is the night - quiet with the edge of winter cutting in - that sets me this melancholy tone. Or perhaps it is just this battle between memory and moment that leaves me torn in reflection. I'm not sure.
But, really, I should be elated. Earlier this year Tim Mason and I finished and released our live Bone Collector's CD - the crazy mixing of poetry and music that we do to create "soems" or "pongs". Seven songs that I'll post in the music and poetry section soon... We first released the new CD at the Old Songs Festival in Albany, New York in June and then had a bit of a formal release here in Alaska in September. It was well-received and sold a bit. One of the trifecta of projects I wanted to get done these past few years. "Six Truths" was another of those three.
But now for the third of those. I am but two weeks away from releasing "Traveling Through", the final title of the long awaited fifth CD (if by anyone, it was long-awaited by me!) I ought to be celebrating, but I'm drawn down by these other thoughts and this presence of loss. I suspect it will pass soon enough. Already I sense a bit of the momentum changing. Yesterday I commuted to LA for a visit to Bernie Grundman with Dennis Lind (the co-Producer on this project) for our mastering session. Bernie is the guy who mastered the best-selling album of all time ("Thriller") and whose shop just mastered the new U2 project (the bane of many an I phone 6 user). Charming? Yes. Talented? Absolutely. And the project? Better than I could have imagined. It has been a labor of love this work, but, with Catherine Curtis' superb artwork complete, it is now just up to shipping and handling to get me to the November 1 CD release at Side Street Espresso here in Anchorage.
And yet, I still have this feeling. Perhaps more than I should really write here. But, for now, it is enough. We burn so ever briefly on this globe in this vast unknown we call home.