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.
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