Up until now I’d only ever visited my friends Missy and Joe at the height of summer – in the blazing sunny glory of late June or early July – so to make the pretty drive to Connecticut in October was a new, and lovely, fall experience. On the way, I took a detour down to New Canaan, where I stopped by our friend Carl’s store for a quick visit and a gift for Joe. It was an auspicious beginning for a weekend of fun, a musical labor of love, and a reunion with people have become more like family than friends.
My summer trip earlier this year began with a stormy arrival at the tail-end of a hurricane, which was pretty much how the entire summer went, but autumn has granted us a reprieve in the weather department, and that summer visit provided its own enchantments, overcast days be damned. No such gray skies clouded this trip, and I arrived to find a sunny backyard in the throes of autumnal splendor. Joe greeted me as Missy was at work and the kids were at school, and we wasted no time in getting right into the making of the Halloween song.
The work, documented fully here, was fun and exciting, and it was a thrill to see someone take the most rudimentary of musical ideas and turn it into a full-fledged song. He added guitar, a bass line and a drum track, culling and coalescing all the visions I had into aural form. We worked downstairs near the guitar garden and the meditation pond, then moved upstairs to the keyboard and recording room (actually Julian’s bedroom). The hours passed quickly, as much for the enjoyment of the labor as for the enjoyment of the company, and soon it was time for dinner. Missy and the kids joined us to prepare dinner, then Missy had to take Julian to a cello lesson, so Joe continued working on the song a bit more.
The night grew pleasantly cooler – a fine fall evening in Connecticut – ideal for slumber and talking with dear friends. The next day dawned in even sunnier splendor, and Doug and Julio were going us for dinner. Missy put together a delicious feast and we enjoyed a gathering of people that go back to my childhood. By that time we had completed the framework of the song and just needed someone to sing it – and Doug was gracious enough to oblige. It came together as the evening closed, and by the next day Joe had finished it completely.
Creating art together may be one of my favorite ways of getting closer to a friend. Spending time with Missy, who has known me since we were kids attending Suzie’s birthday parties, is always a balm for my heart. And getting to feel like part of their family is something that makes me feel better about all the other things going on in my life and in the world.
Fall is definitely a mood, and a rather moody one at that. It’s all drama, all change, all thrills and literal chills. It’s a cozy candle-lit dinner with a few close friends with some vaguely sentimental music playing in the background, some wistful remembrance of a time gone by, or a time not yet here, and the head is fuzzy and the night is hazy and you’re not sure whether it’s warm or chilly, so you lean into the flickering light from the candles and lose yourself a little.
It’s this musical mashup by Milt Jackson, with its undertones of melancholy, its sweetness of melody. It’s a curling tendril of smoke from the tip of a cigarette or the end of a candle’s life. It’s a resinous, amber streak of cologne. It’s a furry vest and a cup of hot tea held by fingerless gloves. It’s comfort food and roasted vegetables and bowls of steaming soup. It’s firelight and smoldering embers.
It’s a Wednesday night at home on the couch, listening to music in the dim light, and calling bedtime a bit early because so much of the week has already gone, and so much of it hasn’t.
Every now and then you have to trick the brain into happiness by leading with the body. In this case it’s the simple act of forcing a smile when it’s the last thing you may want to do. I’ve read that merely making yourself smile instills a bit of joy into the moment, and it makes complete sense. It’s sort of a back-end way into an emotion.
If a smile or laugh is the result of happiness or joy, and our bodies have been conditioned over decades to associate that physical sensation with the emotional state that caused it, why wouldn’t doing it backwards have at least a bit of the same effect?
Over the years, I’ve found myself inadvertently employing such a technique – mostly in the form of laughing out of sheer exasperation at life and the typical way it shits on us. And invariably I feel just the slightest bit better.
So on this day, and from this point forward, I will lead with a smile. Start the day with a laugh. And do a little dance to fake it until I make it real.
Sooner or later we all come home for Halloween. Whether it’s where we start off as kids, exploding onto the sidewalks through the crunch of leaves, tripping on our costumes and finding our way through masks at a time before they were an everyday accoutrement, or where we return after a night of trick-or-treating, spent and happily exhausted, but not enough to run to bed before a few hits of candy, home is where Halloween ends and begins. When we get older, it’s where we station ourselves to give back to the next generation of costume-clad children, opening our door and doling out candy from the other side of the scene in a time-honored tradition that forms the first peak of the fall season, and ushering in the earliest part of the holidays to come.
That idea of being home for Halloween – in whatever form home may take these days – informed the lyrics to this year’s Halloween song – our first in ten years. When the inspiration hit me, I was already tucked in bed for the night, but the Halloween spirits whispered and nudged and impelled me to the computer, where I groggily typed out these lyrics in a mixture of possession and mad delight. At the same time, a melody emerged to go with the chorus, and writing music is something that I don’t usually do. Having matriculated at the School of Madonna, which is by all accounts hardly a proper School of Music, I knew little to nothing about writing the musical part of a song, but I made a quick recording of what I was hearing in my head (in sad, pitiful voice) and stored it away to sing to the real music men later. Texting the lyrics off to Joe, I got a reply almost immediately that he was up for working on our Halloween song again – a reunion that had been ten years in the making.
No one talks about the way we all come home for Halloween
No one wants to be that weeping, screaming, mellow drama queen
No one knows the freedom some of us have found behind the mask
No one dares to be the brave soul, only one of whom will ask
The day I drove to Connecticut to visit Missy and Joe and their kids, Julian and Cameron, it was sunny and idyllic – the perfect fall day to inspire a new Halloween song. Within minutes of my arrival, Joe and I sat down beside his guitar garden and began pounding out the basic bones and structure of the song. I sang my little melody for the chorus, and an embarrassingly-rough verse, both of which he took and made into something beautiful and truly melodic. He recorded the basic notes, plotted the chord progressions, and the primitive blueprint began to take shape as an actual piece of music.
There’s a fright, there’s a cut, there’s a knife,
there’s a wicked way of making it through the night.
There’s a dream, there’s a scream, make a scene,
it’s a scary scheme for finding your way to the light.
We moved upstairs to where the keyboard and computer and real recording equipment was set up – in Julian’s Cozy Fall Studio – warmed by apple and pumpkin scented candles, seasonal gourds and garlands, and the warm glow of an afternoon sun moving deeper into the horizon. Joe masterfully pounded out the framework of the chorus, and then, to my surprise and delight, came up with the first jewel of the song: the pre-chorus above that is absolutely my favorite part of the whole song.
{Chorus}: Halloween, Halloween, will you answer, tell me why?
All the goblins, all the witches, all the children going by
Halloween, Halloween, will you treat before you trick?
Halloween, oh Halloween, I hear your tock, I hear your tick.
The next day we worked on finishing the basic structure and fitting the lyrics in, then the second jewel arrived in the form of Julian and his gorgeous cello stylings, which added just the right element to the second pre-chorus, as well as backing the breakdown of the chorus near the end. It lended a grounding beauty to the cheesy, over-the-top feel we were originally intending, and immediately made this song into something more than I initially thought possible.
Here we are now at the front door, giving candy to the kids
On the flip side of adulthood, trying not to flip our lids
Was it more fun on the outside? Oh that funny twist of fate
Still we sing this to the phantom and the pumpkin oh-so-great
That afternoon Doug and Julio arrived to join us for dinner and, to Doug’s surprise, to sing on the song. My singing abilities are solely for the car or the shower, in other words I have a voice that was made for isolation, with a tone and pitch that can only be compared to that of a howler monkey. Joe has a fine voice but since I’d already tasked him with just about everything else, it was left to Doug to step up and give his vocal talents to the project at hand. And step up he did – not only nailing every note and cadence, but adding the third jewel to this song in the form of those luscious melodies you hear in the second verse and the ending chorus.
There’s a fright, there’s a cut, there’s a knife,
there’s a wicked way of making it through the night (through the night!)
There’s a dream, there’s a scream, make a scene,
it’s a scary scheme for finding your way to the light (to the light!)
One of the absolute highlights of my year was simply being allowed in the same room as these two musical masters while they crafted and worked through the singing of a song I had a hand in writing. While they spoke in musical terms that went far beyond my barely-recalled memories of the Empire State Youth Orchestra, I was content to sit quietly in the corner and suggest we change the word ‘still’ to ‘so’. It was an honor just to be in the proximity of them as they worked and the song took flight.
{Chorus}: Halloween, Halloween, will you answer, tell me why?
All the goblins, all the witches, all the children going by
Halloween, Halloween, will you treat before you trick?
Halloween, oh Halloween, I hear your tock, I hear your tick.
While Julio and Missy toiled and troubled with the kids downstairs, we laid down all the tracks to get what we needed for the final mixing the next morning. It was one of the most fun nights of the year, and the good spirit and bonhomie bled into a song that I hope everyone loves as much as I do.
{Chorus}: Halloween, Halloween, will you answer, tell me why?
All the goblins, all the witches, all the children going by
Halloween, Halloween, will you treat before you trick?
Halloween, oh Halloween, I hear your tock, I hear your tick.
Many thanks to all of these great friends, who each contributed in their own way:
Joseph Abramo – For the musical prowess, the guitar garden, the skills and knowledge to make it all come together, and especially for the chance to do it all again.
Julian Abramo – For the magnificent cello work and use of the Cozy Fall Recording Studio.
Douglas Coates – For the vocals and those dreamy, creamy Carpenter harmonies.
Julio Vazquez – For the heartfelt talk and driving Doug home.
Cameron Abramo – For the fashion, the ferocity and the spider-walk.
With more advanced degrees than I can count, Dr. Joseph Abramo is an Associate Professor of Music Education at the University of Connecticut, and while such an impressive body of education is more than enough to merit the Dazzler of the Day, it’s his personal side that truly puts him into Dazzler territory. While he was originally just the younger guy who swooped in and married my high school sweetheart, he’s since grown into a friend in his own right, and I’ve known him for longer than I’ve known my own husband. In that time, I’ve been lucky and privileged enough to work with him on some Halloween songs – with a new one directly on the way later today – and in that process I got to glimpse the genius and musical talents that solidify his Dazzler status.
A mostly unremarkable anniversary occurs today, as this marks two years since I had a drink of alcohol. I say unremarkable not for its nature – not drinking, particularly in the midst of a pandemic, is a pretty impressive feat – but for its relative unimportance in my life. As my parents get older, and I see more people closer to my age pass away, it just seems like not drinking is rather a minor thing compared to all the other awful stuff happening. That said, I’ve been told this is something to honor, and so I’m taking this time to give a brief description of what worked for me in case anyone else is looking for ways to try out a booze-free lifestyle.
First, there was the desire. I had to want to change my drinking habits and lifestyle, and after a few years of not getting the same thrill or effect from alcohol, it was time. No one else can do that for you.
Second, I had to discover why I was drinking in the first place, and for me it went back to social anxiety and self-medicating during the uncomfortable moments. I needed a therapist to bring out such realizations, and then I had to dig into my own past to figure that out.
Third, I had to find something to occupy my time and thoughts in the first few weeks when not drinking felt somewhat foreign. For that, I took a free Yale course on happiness, which gave me something to do on the weekends and evenings, and I also began my meditation practice every day.
It was a system that kept me engaged and occupied, taking my mind off of drinking while addressing the root cause of it. (Suzie also remarked that I was a bit of an anomaly for being able to do it rather easily, so I can’t say that this will work for everyone or anyone for that matter – it was just what worked for me.)
And so, on the start of my third year of sobriety, I’m taking this moment to honor what has become a simple part of my life. (I’m also happy to talk about any of it in more detail, so don’t be shy in reaching out if you want to try it.)
PS – Old cocktail glasses and bottles can make charming little vases for seasonal floral beauty.
In times of artistic doubt and uncertainty, sometimes it is best to simply sit and wait.
Sometimes it will come to you the next day.
Sometimes it takes ten years.
Ten years ago was the last time that my friend Joe and I crafted a Halloween song. Up until then we’d made it a late summer/early fall tradition to create a song for Halloween, following a few years in which he wrote some on his own. In this last decade, a lot has happened – in both of our lives – and for various reasons we never quite got it together to come up with another Halloween song. I think we were both fine with that, but I also think something was missing, and this year we found our way back to a place that fulfilled our creative expression and fostered our friendship.
After capping a few Halloween songs with an elaborate (for my limited capability) video in 2011, we may have both feared trying to top something that for us felt like a peak. There were other things at work too – parenthood and jobs and the way life throws one obstacle after another at us until we either turn bitter or jaded or entirely apathetic to the world at large. That’s not a good place to produce anything that might move people.
While I cannot speak for Joe, I can say that at various times in the last ten years I’ve felt like I lost my way a bit, and feeling lost is scary emotional territory. It’s often too frightening to exorcize through writing or artistic expression, and so we dive into the mundane details of life, merely going through the motions and trying to find ourselves in what society says we should be doing.
That rarely works.
All the goblins and the witches don’t disappear just because you close your eyes and pretend they’re not there. We may have stopped making Halloween music but that didn’t silence the demons that lurked far beyond Halloween, and only when I started delving into that and working on things I hadn’t addressed since childhood did I find my own way back to our tradition.
When Joe posted a few Facebook memories of the songs we’d done before, I watched and remembered. Those were such happy times, and it wasn’t because we were making great art or the perfect song – we were just creating and having fun and enjoying the way that making something together binds two friends closer in a manner that almost nothing else approaches. When I realized that, I also realized it was time to do it again.
That night a melody for a chorus snuck into my head, the lyrics poured out of me onto the computer screen, and I shot off a text to Joe with the idea. He wrote back that he was game, and our collaboration had begun. The video snippet above is just a sneak peek of our Halloween song for 2021: ‘Home for Halloween’. The full story, and song, complete with some special guest collaborators, is coming this week.
No one talks about the way we all come home for Halloween…
Looks like we’re due for a rainy week ahead, so I’m taking the residual glow from a sunny, song-making weekend in Connecticut and holding it near and dear for as long as possible. That means indulging in our Monday morning quarterback trick of recapping what went on the week before. Here we go…
Night and day, and all the extremes of Mercury in retrograde continued on my second day in Boston. The day dawned in brilliant and sunny form – a rare gift in the midst of a few months when the only weekend weather seemed to be rain. The condo was flooded with morning light, and it was the kind of fall morning where you take a few extra minutes in your bathrobe to simply exist, to inhabit the moment and contemplate the day.
Outside, the fountain trickled its watery melody, and I put on a little Cole Porter to start the day. The sunlight was strong, and the crisp chill of fall looked to make for a beautiful day.
I took advantage of the weather and ventured downtown for some shopping. In keeping with the kookiness that this weekend was highlighting, an enormous turkey was trotting about Downtown Crossing – which is probably the section of Boston that would appear most inhospitable to, well, wild turkeys, but there it was, bobbing its head among the manicured landscaping of mums and crotons.
Shoo, you fool beast! Thanksgiving is coming soon. You in danger. And when you find yourself talking to a turkey in the middle of Downtown Crossing, it’s time to check your sanity at the door. I walked toward Government Center, to scope out where Oceanaire was located. I was having dinner there that evening with a friend from high school, Paula, who had gotten in touch earlier this year.
Unsure of how things would go (I was, in her words and my own estimation, a bit of a terror back in high school) I walked in expecting the worst and the best, and while she was armed and ready to cuss me out for previous transgressions, we had one of the best dinners I’ve had in a long time, complete with revelatory conversation, rekindled memories, and a new understanding of the past, and hopefully the future.
As we said our goodbyes with a promise to do this again, the feeling that I was in a novel came over me again, and I recalled a November evening many years ago when I unexpectedly happened upon a guy I had been seeing and he dumped me on the spot. That’s a story I’m not sure I’ve ever fully told – and while that’s basically it, I’ll try to flush it out more fully later this fall. For now, I took the long way home for the second Boston night in a row, thrilled to be back in the city, happy to have found that I still get along swimmingly with an old friend, and somehow haunted for all that had happened that evening, and all the evenings so long ago.
As I walked back along cobblestone streets, and the increasingly quiet air of a city that was still slumbering in many ways, I opened myself up to the ghosts that seemed to be all around me. Who was it that so haunted Boston here? Which people from my past were whispering to me on this night wind? They felt so real, so tangible, so present… and yet I couldn’t quite make them out. They were familiar and so close and still tantalizingly out of reach. As I made my way back into the South End, to the streets where I first sought a home for myself, I finally realized who the ghosts were.
All of the ghosts who had been haunting me there for all these years had only been previous versions of myself. That’s why I could never fully see or place them, and why whenever I got close the image was distorted and blurry, like some funhouse mirror. I didn’t want to face them, until tonight. And once I did – once I saw them for who and what they were – once I understood that it was just me haunting the night and prowling the Boston streets – suddenly they dissipated and evaporated. By acknowledging my ghosts, I let them go, and felt the weight of years suddenly depart.
Mercury was pure madness in retrograde when I ventured into Boston a couple of weekends ago. I hadn’t planned for, or known that it would be, the weekend that the Red Sox were heading to the playoffs, nor had I been made aware that the Boston Marathon was following on that Monday. The city was alive and full of energy not seen since pre-COVID times. None of it appealed to me, so I laid low with a few friendly visits and down-time at the condo. Still, the city would swirl me into its electric maelstrom whether or not I wanted it, like the leaves that were starting to fall. In many ways, Boston felt eerily like Savannah – haunted and enchanted and at its most beautiful when night fell.
The fountain in the middle of Braddock Park was still running, and I would leave the windows open to listen to it through the night. For some reason, it is more of a comfort at this time of the year than any other – maybe because it means the air is still warm enough for water to run. Holding onto that somewhat-unseasonal warmth made it easier to celebrate fall. The falling leaves felt less sad.
After an early-bird dinner (because I’m old now) I found myself drawn to the Boston Public Garden, and as I headed in that direction I remembered my friend Kira, who was probably getting ready to finish her shift for the day. Shooting off a quick text to see if she wanted to say hello, I felt, and not for the first time the weekend, as if I were part of some Edith Wharton novel, where people from the past were re-populating the present moment. Kira wrote back she was ending her work day in an hour or so and would stop to say hello.
It had been a few months since I’d last seen her, and that time was brief and bothersome. I hoped we were both in different places, and that we could start hanging out again. Forgiveness seems hard for both of us. Talking things out does too, but there’s no other way to forge a friendship. The night teased with a warm breeze. Drama was in the air. And Mercury remained stubbornly in retrograde motion. It would either be a really good meeting, or a really bad one, and I couldn’t be sure which way the wind would take us.
We decided to meet up in the lobby of the Liberty Hotel, where we’d spent some happy holiday strolls, and which seemed like an auspicious way to rekindle what we once had. I arrived early, and settled in with a sparking water and lime, while a wedding party bustled about the space. Kira appeared shortly after, and we sat down to talk. It was just like no time had passed, the way two friends – if the friendship is pure and true – can simply pick up a year or two or ten later and nothing has really changed.
We were enjoying each other’s company so much that she decided to take a later train. I offered to walk her to the station to extend our time together. Now that everyone was vaccinated, we’d be able to do this again in time for the holidays. We’d missed out on that last year when the world lost its way.
We walked through the Boston night, with all its requisite magic and mayhem, and everything felt old and new and comforting and exciting all over again. We also made tentative plans for a Friendsgiving weekend in a few weeks. At South Station, she showed me where her train would depart from and we shared a quick hug – our first in almost two years.
Instead of taking the T back to a station near the condo, I walked the whole way, passing the preparations for the Boston Marathon, and all the places we once frequented. A new/old friend was in the city as well, and we had a dinner planned for the next day. The drama had just begun…
Pulled down by the wind and rain, most of the maple’s leaves had been deposited on the walkway before us, where they were further tamped down by the footfalls of humans. It seemed like such an ignoble ending to what had been a lovely journey, yet this very act of destruction and degradation was all a part of the process. From the decay and disintegration came a covering that would once again become one with the soil, nourishing the next crop of leaves that were waiting to bud and unfurl in chartreuse glory come spring.
On the edge of a forest, where a stream maintains its gentle flow even when it rains, this bed of leaves is a blanket that will ultimately provide sustenance and support to the very tree from which it came. To some it is a sad sight – the embodiment of summer’s end and ruin – to others it is a happy sign of a cozy slumber to come, and the chance to rejuvenate and rest for the next year.
It was her scene-stealing performance in ‘Promising Young Woman’ that turned me into a Laverne Cox fan, and resulted in this Dazzler of the Day feature. She’s been carving an unprecedented career in Hollywood, from her star-making contribution in ‘Orange is the New Black’ to her too-long-to-mention lists of firsts as a transgender trailblazer.
Lately I’ve found some tranquility and solace in the work of Sophie Hutchings and her exquisite piano pieces, such as this one titled ‘Living Light’. It is lovely meditative music for before or after a meditation session. Returning to meditation has been one of the gifts I’ve given myself during this fall. It seems necessary when the season turns, and will hopefully guide me through the winter. When the world feels heavy, and the wind starts to chill, it’s time to take a little more self-care.
Searching the sky is a practice to induce peace, even when the sky is of turbulent nature, churning and swirling with storms like ocean swells in the air. What we seek is solace. Maybe the more violent the air, the less tumult we feel in our hearts. Or maybe we seek to match the somersaulting of the heart with a complementary tumbling of the sky. Everyone finds their own path to their own idea of calm.
It brings to mind a wickedly wonderful quote from Gregory Maguire: “When the times are a crucible, when the air is full of crisis, those who are the most themselves are the victims.“
Maybe that’s darker than this post was intended to be, but in darkness there may be serenity as well. Sometimes darkness carries a deeper beauty, running like an undercurrent beneath clear, still water. It’s a sort of beauty that can’t fully be seen, only felt.
Shangela stormed onto RuPaul’s Drag Race in one of the early seasons I happened to watch, and left all too early, only to be brought back. And brought back again. And again, until she conquered with her indefatigable spirit and refusal to be anything but a survivor. Such resilience and defiance, coupled with the tenacious spirit to get back up after every fall and carry on, is why she earns this Dazzler of the Day honor. Nowadays she is starring in the powerful and poignant ‘We’re Here’ on HBO, empowering others to join in her journey, and branching off to things like her very own Shanitizer product in these dangerous days.
These luscious asters have been everywhere this season – from Maine to Manchester – and they have brightened the darkening fall days, somehow sensing how badly we needed beauty right now. Their centers ripen from bright yellow to a gorgeous shade of rust then almost into a deep maroon, as if each one were a little encapsulation of a sunrise and sunset – a single day’s sun-journey for each set of lavender radials. The flowers seen here are all at different stages of the journey, something that adds another layer of enchantment to the presentation.
