Portraits In Blue - Lucy

Going on tour is a great way to get away from it all. Everyday life, I don't know, just isn't for me. But if you don't play by road rules then being a secretary or a waitress is always waiting for you when you give up. Not that I have a problem with that career choice. It's just not for me.

Music is my lover. Without it "m kind of like an amputee with the phantom pain of a missing heart. Nobody's my boss. That's why I don't need to cook and keep house for "that special someone." Like I said, I like to move around. I don't mind setting up house, but I have got to have my freedom. Sit across the breakfast table and say, "Would you like more toast, dear? What time will you be home from work today,dear? Would you mind picking up the kids from school, dear? Can I get your slippers, dear?" That would bore the hell out of me. Now, lay down and make love, I can handle that. But only when I want to do it. I know all you women feel the same way I do. So, I've got plans for myself, I have ever since I was little. In the eyes of my family I might be no good, not good enough, not perfect, but I do now I got something going on. No ordinary life for me. I might not know what I'm looking for, but it's better than where I came from. When I finish the song and the crowd stomps and whistles and screams, that's when I know I'm doing what I need to do. You just get out of the way and let the song come thorough. Come through my heart. Ladies and Gentlemen, that's why I sing the blues.

Portraits in Blue - Krissi

The blues is beyond your control. When you want to sing them, you can't sing them; and when you don't want to sing them, you still have to sing them--or hum, or do something. And at the time that you want to sing and don't feel bad, you still want to sing...and you get to feelin' that everything is going so strong that the blues comes alive and just lives through you.

Wait a minute. Just wait a minute! Let me tell you what I'm trying to say here. I don't mess around when I sing. I just don't mess around. My style, you know, my voice, is I'm scraping my face on the cement, need everything right now, kind of voice. When I sing I go to that place right above my hair. And I guarantee I will make you cry. I never care much about the words. It's about how my voice moves, the range...It's about the abuse my throat can take night after night. Krissi MacGregor is a singing machine. I mean, one of my first gigs was with Leon Russell. He used to take me to the revival tents in the south, so that I could learn the right way. I've been around. I have a right to complain. I have to complain. I have to make it difficult.

What I feel is almost too much for me. Kind of like I'm missing a layer of skin. If I feel more intensely, I sing more intensely. So see, I have to complain. I have to make it difficult. It helps the pain, the blues. People should respect me for that, for surviving my unique pain. You can't object to all that . Being able to sing what breaks your heart No complainin' about that.

Portraits in Blue - Preacher of the Delta Blues

I dreamed I was in Heaven sitting down on a throne. And when I woke up, I just laid real still. And prayed to my Master that I would do His will. Jesus told me a long time ago that wheresoever I go, I won't have to make this journey all alone. Cause you see, King Jesus is my captain and He never have left me alone. In my dream I've got a telephone in my bosom, I can ring Him up from my heart. I can call Him on the air and get down on my knees in prayer, because I don't have to make this journey all alone. No reason to have the blues, because you is never alone. The women will wake up and them blue Devils will be hovering around their heads. Oh,they won't see them, but the women will surely feel their dark presence, drawn to the wailing tunes of the low spirits. The sisters won't be able to dial for their salvation because the feeling that everthing is so wrong will feel like the blues has come to live in their minds and it is bringing one thing after another, until they sing songs that they never thought of before. When that happens you just want to get on your knees and pray because you know you ain't too old for the Devil to get you. Hold up your hand and reach for God. All the Sisters will get is a feeling. A feeling that you can tell the truth with the blues. They'll reach for God and what they'll get is a song. Yes, Lord, what they will get is a song.

The Pugilist

I hadn't seen him for ten years. Not only avoiding him, but where I grew up and all the memories with it. We sat there in silence. He noticed me looking around, reading my silent opinions. Finally, the rough voice, "I work hard for everything I got". The cigarette smoke curling out from his fingers after lighting it. This would be the first of many. Like his women, he would have one smoldering in the ashtray as he lights another one.

I look around the bungalow - rundown, musty, built after World War Two. Outside the dining room window, through the paint peeled frames, apple trees hang heavy with over-due fruit. It all looks like an early 50's scene. Once a paradise but now worn out at the edges. Oh, how I can feel the Irish and the Hail Mary's. My brother, dad, me, we all worked hard. No taking shit from no one. We at least learned that.

My father smiles, his smashed up nose, creases, not crinkles...that nose. Oh Lord, it has been hit too many times - yeah, he's a former pugilist. An ex-Golden gloves champ. Fighting. In the ring, on the street corners, dance halls, in the bars. His eyes, red lines looking like road maps to the past. I could never look in his eyes. Too many lies between us. I stared at his nose, pot marked flat - flesh colored strawberry. Yeah, I could focus on that.

The deep rumbling in his chest started. Cigarettes. Pall Mall. I could hear the years of unfiltered smoke. Then "Your mother always wanted me to come back, you know." I nodded my head. It was one of the lies that we told each other. My mother never wanted to have anything to do with him, after finding out he slept with another woman in their bed while she was in the hospital having a hysterectomy. He could never understand why she would divorce him. The irony was that it was him that was dying from a broken heart.

I looked over at a picture of my father with his father. Switch-men on the railroad. In all kinds of weather. Before gortex and fleece and all that high end, keep you warm kind of clothing which easily protects us from the elements. These two old warriors were my family, my ancestral DNA that lives in everything I do. Maybe that's why I think no matter how hard I work, it's not hard enough. It seems no one in my generation really knows hard work. The kind of work that gets you dirty, gets you exhausted - demanding you drink beer and whiskey at the end of a long day.

"Nice House", I said. "You must be happy here." He glared for an instant then softened, "Yeah, I worked hard for it."

I smiled. "It's a really nice house."

Portraits in Blue - Inspire

And then the healing started.

As soon as the second-line beat, the same beat that has been the pulse of New Orleans, started up, I found myself drawn to the stage like a mosquito to the marshland. A moment before, he had looked like any other musician. But when the music of the bayou began to play, he became the wise man from the swamp. The rhythms brought the mysteries and secrets of the voodooist who embodied an ancient experience beyond memory. He understood these mysteries, and passed them on to us in a language we could hear and understand. His presence somehow was associated with first and primary things. I was mesmerized and at the same time, my body wouldn't stop moving. The music stoked the fires within the crowd, and and as they burned, the flames would entice the audience.

Come now, hold back nothing. Your longing is satiated. Your soul will delight in the body being fulfilled. If you hold back nothing, then nothing will be withheld. If you give all, all will be given. Our souls - a piece of the carnival from the swamp. The essence had not only brought music but knowing. If you give your body to the revel, you will open our spirit to the touch of revelation. This music was a process of a farewell to the flesh and an introduction to the spirit.

The musician's body moved in waves that seemed to bridge the invisible world to the living. As he shook his head, his eyes would gaze upward; the music like a letter from home. He moved across the stage with a catlike grace, squeezebox hanging down like a collapsible snake, waiting to be unwound, to strike, to be played. Through this music from the bayou, the spirits had found a point of entry as we all danced along, while our bodies left and the the dance remained.

I was enthralled. I had never seen anything like him. I knew that this was what I wanted to do. I realized for the first time, after twenty years, what music was really about.

We were there to inspire.

Memory

Memory is the human religion

The church of the subjective.

The vault and burial ground of the past upon which we perform the mutable ritual of scrutiny.

Perspective, a thing gained not by longing but by the simple, clear mark of time, grows by degrees until if we are lucky, it becomes the one thing central to memory, perception. And it is, then, memory and perception that hold the past as a pure distillate, a thing not of compromise and inevitable death, but what has truly formed us.

It is on the corporal plane, God.

Portraits in Blue - Son House

Roy always had a story brewing.

He stuck his thumbs in his belt, leaned back on his heels and started rocking back and forth - heel, toe, heel, toe, heel, toe. Like one of those big blow-up plastic clowns with huge feet, Roy's stomach centered him so he couldn't rock too far in either direction. As usual, Roy was taking on the tone of a tent-reviving evangelist. The boy could preach. Usually 'bout some Delta blues player. What it was like to see Son House live in 1969.

Roy took a deep breath. He knew, as I did, he was entering sacred territory.

"One night we went to one of these Saturday night fish fries, where Son House was playing. Muddy Waters was there. That's when he was using the bottleneck because most of the Delta people used the bottleneck-style thing. Muddy has been known to say that when he heard Son House, he should've broke his bottleneck. Son House played this place for about four weeks, and I was there every night. You couldn't get me out that corner, listening to him, to what he was doing. That guy could preach the blues by just sittin' down there and sing one thing after another like a man of the cloth. That show was the best I'd ever seen. Lord, the Son must've been ninety years old then. He'd be sitting on a chair all bent over, with an old weathered guitar on his lap, drawing on some ancestral spiritual strength. Then he would lift his head and start to sing the kind of singing you could only hear in the cotton fields 100 years ago, the kinda singing that is sure there ain't no way out. There ain't no other way than doing what they're doin'; yes, Lord and that be pickin' cotton. Oh, I got da blues, cause all I'm gonna do, is pick de' cotton for the man. Make no mistake Preacher man. The blues is the music of the Lord, Oh yes indeed. Let us not make that mistake. The kinda singin' that can only be sung by a man who have gone blind with music. May I get an Amen."

We were too stunned to say Amen. But Roy didn't mind. He had his story to continue.

"And them hands. those powerful hands. The same hands that plowed the fields and picked the thorny cotton off the vine, were the same hands clutching at chords from steel strings that were waiting to be ripped from the wood of the guitar."

Roy unhooked one of his thumbs so that he could wrap his fat hand around a shot glass full of Old Crow bourbon. He was just getting started.

He had our attention. I was forgetting to take a drag off of the cigarette I was holding. I was forgetting to flirt with the new janitor and I was forgetting not to cry. If we could have just been there--seen it for ourselves. Add it to the experience of the music I was playing every night.

Roy lit a cigarette. He had been fortified so it was time to continue.

"Brothers and Sisters, please open your Bibles to Psalm 78. We will now read from 'The maskil of Asaph'. O my people, hear my teaching; listen to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter hidden things, things from old--what we have heard and know, what our father have told us. We will not hide them from their children; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power, and the wonders he had done. Can I get an Amen"?

I smiled while Roy ranted and continued.

"The power of Son's presence and voice pinned us against our seats. The sweat was pourin' down his face. He was what he sang. There weren't no separtin' the two. The son's black body glistening from his sweat becoming a mirror for the lights. He was sitting on the stage, but his spirit was living down south, in the cotton field. As in the words of Booker "Bukka " White 'You want to know where the blues come from? The blues came from behind the mule. Well now, you can have the blues sitting at the table while you eat, but the foundation of the blues is walking behind a mule way back in slavery time'. You see, that's what the brother Son knew."

Ray took another drink.

"When Son would finish wailin', he'd collapse, exhausted. There he'd be, hunched over for two or three minutes, absolutely still. And then he'd slowly rise up pulling on the same spiritual chord and do it all over again. He would put himself through the same blues initiation song after song after song. Two soul-filled hours of the main man. Lord, I will never forget Son House. Let us pray for the still suffering."

I sat in quiet awe. I was a convert. Roy had preached me the Delta Blues.

Is it Worth the Vision?

Now that I am retired from the music business. Well, not completely retired so let me be a little more clear. I am retired as a performer, I do still write and record. Anyways, not performing has been a big change in the way I live my life. For example, not running around the country, or being cramped on either a plane or a car or a van. Of course, I certainly don't miss the highs and lows of being in "show biz". The extremes that come from playing in front of 20,000 people only to get off the stage to find a band member is stabbing you in the back. (It's usually the very band member that you have gone out of your way to help more than the others). Let's not forget the almost obsessive energy I used to pursue my career, whatever phase of it. No one made me do these things, they were of my choosing. I was not a victim but a willing participant.

As I reflect back I wonder, why did I bother? What was it all about? I mean it is only music, right? I wasn't saving any ones life and in the scheme of things, how fricking important was I and what I was doing? Was it worth all of the fights and enemies. Was it worth having my heart broken a multitude of times? Was it worth the lost relationships?

But recently, it has dawned on me how important it actually was. Because most of the time, it just wasn't about me. It was about the integrity of the artistic project. Once I got it in my head about what I wanted to do, I began molding the creative putty, while the next step would be revealed to me. When you get in a zone like that, it really is coming from somewhere above your hair. You become a very small part of it, even though you are the vision keeper. As the "creator" of the project, or maybe "conduit" is a better word, you are less and less important. Actually, people used to often tell me that I didn't give myself enough credit. But I always understood, that I was just a cog in the wheel. Well, maybe not the cog, I should give myself a little more credit than that. I was the hub of the wheel.

What is important about a creative journey is that it changes you and everyone around you. It is supposed to teach us that we are here to serve the vision. Now, this does not happen to everyone and it happens least with musicians than any other artist types for reasons I won't go into here. So therein lies the struggle. Some of the people involved totally get that it is about the art and others don't have a clue.

Almost out of the gate, back when I was 18, I began to have strong ideas about sounds, concepts, people I wanted to work with, direction to go in - you name it. This could be looked at as a gift or a curse. If you are the one in charge, you are the one making the decisions. Right off the bat you will not be the most popular egg in the carton.

After many years of being in the music business, I took a break and began taking acting lessons. In one of my acting classes, I believe it was some sort of monologue workshop intensive (I always respond well to the word intensive), my instructor said something to me that put me in a context that I never included myself. She said, “You know, Kate, you are a vision keeper. You have vision and very few people have that. Embrace it and don’t apologize for it”. At the time I loved how it sounded, but it took 10 years, maybe more, for me to truly understand what it takes to embrace this important piece of my personality, soul and artistic psyche. Along with that was my responsibility to others in the wake of these pursuits.

The hard part or practice if you will, of being the vision-keeper is that your job is to protect the vision with compassion. But compassion or not, it is almost impossible not to make enemies. Hell, Gandhi, was one of the great visionaries as was Martin Luther King, oh, and don’t forget Jesus – they all had tremendous compassion/love and all had their enemies. Of course, I am not in that league, but protecting a vision, is protecting a vision, no matter how small. Frankly, when it comes to the artistic pursuit, I think it is incredibly important to protect your vision with integrity and soul. So it seems almost impossible to do this successfully and be everyone’s friend while being a vision keeper.

I teach the CEO of the Tiger's daughter. When this guy makes a decision, the entire world knows it. Every player he trades, fires, hires, all of his decisions, they all end up on the radio, TV, Internet and the newspapers. He is thought of as one of the best at what he does and yet he gets hate mail on a daily basis. Again, no matter how wonderful you are at your job and willing to keep and protect your vision, you are going to make enemies. - lots of them. It comes with the territory because most people do not hold the integrity of the vision. And why should they? It is yours - all of your lonesome self. That and a fact I realized almost from the beginning - there are three types of people; 1. The complainers/detractors. 2. The fence sitters 3. The active participants. Often, I would think, okay, which one are you going to be?

I can’t control the past and how I lived it, I am an artist through and through and proud of it. In the present however, what I have been able to change, is to meet these opponents with a less fear-filled heart and not let the trivial spats get in the way of a much needed and difficult loving individual transformation of the self and therefore the vision. And besides all of that, because I did take responsibility, I was the one that benefited from the rewards the most. That was the payoff, the paycheck, the rocket on my back, the big hurrah.

While we continue to pursue our dreams, vision keepers to followers to cynics to detractors, all anyone of us wants is respect. No one is any different from anyone else. Ultimately, we need to love each other, look into each other’s eyes, recognizing ourselves, sensing each other’s fears, and struggles. Like the Beatles said, "I am you and you are me and we are all together".

Has it been worth it? You bet.

Sidetracked In The Middle of Life

Is it mid-life when you are 58? If so, that would mean that I will live until I’m 116. I don’t know if I find that so appealing. I know that most people want to live forever, putting off death until the last possible minute. But honestly, if things get too uncomfortable, I just don’t see the point. With my belief system, I believe that this is just one of many space suits that we put on and that what is inside comes back to find itself in another spacesuit. Who knows? We might move from galaxy to galaxy, planet to planet, continent to continent, human to non-human, family to family, race to race, male to female, straight to gay, fat to skinny, famous to infamous…there may be no end to it. Each time the shift occurs we move slowly up the spiritual ladder, remembering why and what we are here to do….but I digress…as usual.

I find myself in a place where I am re-examining how I want to finish out my life on this wonderful planet. I do have a lot of options. Continue to write songs and record. Have the garden and community garden as a full-time commitment. Teach and develop workshops, investigating how sound can heal ourselves, each other and the planet. Write poetry, plays and books until my heart is content. Pursue acting again, as I miss it terribly. And in there somewhere, try to be of service to the planet and the people around me. See what I mean?

To move forward, I have to ask myself, who am I? What makes me tick? How did I get here? Who’s influence is influencing me?

I'll start with my parents. My father was unique, charming, a womanizer, ran around and broke my mother's heart. My mother was sickly, very sensitive, highly intelligent and after she and my father parted became an astrologer and a real thinker. My mother left my father for another man, who remained by her side until she died. They never married. He was a married man, but his wife was always in the Middle East with a daughter that was a very well known singer. I came to think of him as a second father....though, he too was a bit detached like my father was.

My father's role in my life was (he passed away last year) a potent and ambivalent one. A feeling of alienation colored my relationship with him - because of physical separation and his personality which was too detached and unresponsive to allow me to get close to him. He did encourage me and attended all of my gigs. When I got older everyone would tell me how much he loved me. Though that sounded good, it never settled in my heart. The statement would always bounce off my forehead never penetrating my psychic pores. But he was a tough Irish ex-boxer who had problems with the whole feminine thing. His lack of regard for ordinary things like expression of love, exercised a powerful unconscious influence on my own values. Though this was very difficult for me when I was young, the way that it played out later in my life was truly a gift. Because of my experience with him, the aloof and idealistic father image lies within me offering considerable vision and originality.

I do always need to be careful not to identify with my father's high ideals to the point where I become ashamed of being human, of occasionally failing, or of expressing emotional needs which my father might have found uncomfortable -- not because of my unworthiness, but because of his own fears. My love of the clear, broad world of creative thought has taken me far in life, and has given me the capacity for a detached and objective observation of life and insight into human behavior. The creative potential of this cool, brilliant father-image within me is great; but it does need to be contained within my own individual human values. In addition, my experience of an absent father offered many creative dimensions to my personality, particularly the opening of the life of the spirit and the imagination, for my longing to reclaim that which I had lost eventually led me into the trans personal world which is the domain of the divine father - my own spiritual values. Because of this struggle, it has given my life great depth and meaning, so that ultimately my early sacrifice could lead to something greater.

My mother's influence is more complicated and I think not totally resolved. Because of my mother's nature/illness/upbringing, she could not express her dynamic will adequately during my childhood. Within my mother there was a spirit of great courage and indomitably, coupled with considerable ambition and a craving to be first. But she could not pursue her goals through any kind of profession and hoped her children might some day. She has represented a potent force which has worked within me to drive me unconsciously into achieving what she could not. My own competitiveness and need for recognition have had a slightly compulsive quality, a "workaholic: flavor, which I have got to look at more closely so that I do not undervalue or neglect my more personal needs in order to succeed in the eyes of the world. The positive qualities of leadership, independence and strength of will are my inheritance from my mother, and they have taken me far in my professional life. I always need to be challenged and I always have aimed high, striving to have authority and freedom to express my own original ideas. I have run the risk of exhausting myself in pursuits which may it seems are not a true reflection of my own individuality and then again some have. I have always needed to face my deep fear of competition and aggression from others, as my mother's inability to unleash her own powerful spirit, made her envious of mine and she would become passive aggressive.

As a result I am frightened when exposed to the envy and competitiveness of others and of my own feeling of aggression. I know that this indomitable spirit that belongs to my inner image of my mother can be a great asset to me if I can learn to be comfortable with it and truly understand that I need to achieve the success she could not; but make sure it is in my own way. I have been more than half successful of this.

After my mother died in the late 70's, I felt compelled to become who I was meant to be, not who my friends, relatives and family, thought I was. This was a very important step. I didn't know it then, but my family background, in particular, my father, was disappointing. He was not the sole cause of my need to retreat from him and find a higher kind of father. In fact it is really the other way around: My need for contact with some eternal spiritual source has made me unusually sensitive to the imperfections of the actual parent whom I met in childhood.

I met Joe doing service work in 1992, married in 1993. Eight years ago, we moved back to Detroit, well, actually we were on our way to Florida but got things happened and now here we are. Joe and I moved to the island over a year ago. I began to prepare having a huge organic garden, learning to cook (remember I toured and was a blues singer forever), making my own bread, canning and so on.

Living on the island gives me an opportunity to explore my quieter side. While being incredibly social, the paradox is that I have always withdrawn into an inner world, even in early life when such words meant nothing to me; and the instability of my childhood served a constructive purpose, for it has stirred my need for a more intangible family in whose embrace I can rest and replenish myself. There seems to be a pattern behind everything I do. My natural mysticism, which expresses itself as a longing toward some divine presence in life, combines with my inherently optimistic spirit, so that I bounce back from misfortune and gradually accrue what can best be described as true wisdom.

Currently, I don't know if I feel sidetracked, overwhelmed or if this journey is now in stagnation.

Maybe I feel like this all of the time, since, for me the condition of human life is an expulsion from Paradise, a dark experience full of aloneness and mortality; and it is just this condition which I seek to escape or transcend through my highly active fantasy life, through immersion in creative work and in the arms of another. I do not want to be a separate individual. I want to be one with all life, free of burdens and cares. This highly mystical perception gives me a gift of sensing what others feel and need, for I sometimes am truly a part of the larger whole. But my craving for absolute oneness is so great that I tend to place enormous hidden expectations on ones I love and myself I also tend to place the same expectations on my work, hoping that it will provide the key to inner fulfillment, and feeling let down when I must get on with ordinary tasks. There is a deep longing in me to become connected to my real beloved, God, the Divine, Art - merging something greater and more transcendent than myself - a union with someone or something which can enfold so absolutely that I no longer need to suffer aloneness, conflict of separateness. Like the waters of the womb, this someone or something promise home at the end of the journey - an invisible reality from which my physical life has rendered me an outcast. I always feel like I have just been thrown out of Eden and constantly wonder how I can get back again.

Though my history and dreams are key, I think too, maybe it is time or me to be quiet and write as much as possible. Within the solitude and the written word is where I usually find my answers. That quiet place where art, nature and God join hands holding the keys to all that really matters. If I am lucky, the locked doors, may be opened with a key of the divine. I can only hope.