Tag Archives: healing

HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN: 10 Principles for Reclaiming Your Spirit

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“With gentle encouragement vs. harsh directives, sharing rather than simply instructing,
Angela nudges us to play with practices that are deep in their simplicity.”
— Michael McMorrow, D.D.

Friends, I’ve written a new book! And it’s a book that’s a very different turn for me. I guess you could say it’s the way I know how best to contribute something of value and urgency to this American life we’re presently living.

Navigating the murky waters of life is a job with tenure. All the money and station in the world won’t reprieve us from the task. From living through the pandemic to being thrust into a present-day American culture whose democracy and basic humanity are being threatened, we are experiencing a life that has become more surreal, more unpredictable, and more challenging every day. What tools do we have to cope with the uncertainty of these anxious times?  How the Light Gets In offers a practical guide of 10 principles to aid in taking care of our spirits, keeping sanity, serenity, and joy in our daily toolbox, living with greater authenticity, and staving off the harmful effects of the “fight or flight” mechanism of a sympathetic nervous system in hyperdrive. This little book does not propose we shut our eyes on the world we live in, but that we cultivate stronger, more lasting practices with which to sanely take on our world, while maintaining crucial emotional and spiritual wellness through self-reflection and personal application.

In addition to spending my life as a writer, musician, and artist, I’ve also spent pretty much half that life in the study or practice of Buddhism, Taoism, metaphysics, yoga, meditation, and many other inward-turning disciplines, each of which has contributed to the formulation of this 10-pt practice for rejuvenation of the spirit.

Other than the purchase of this book, there is no further money asked of you, no miracle potions to buy for younger skin or longer life, no ongoing prescription that takes money out of your bank account every month, no predatory pitch at the end of a long “free” video. This path-to-wellness idea is contained solely within this little book for anyone who wants it, and all it costs is the desire it takes to put these principles into practice.

How the Light Gets In is suitable for readers new to wellness topics. I will, of course, greatly appreciate your support, but even more importantly I believe this book and its principles can be a valuable augmentation to your radiant life already in progress.

And as always:

Create — even if you’re not an artist.
Support artists — especially the independents.
Live well — doesn’t take money to do it.
And be whole.

Love & Wellness,
ACB

To Buy This Book

Cotton Candy

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in my mamas bosom

i would bury my eyes

wet with salty seas

and talk about how

rodney jones snatched

my cotton candy and

buried it in the sand today and

miss adams didnt

even do a thing like

make him sit in the

corner the way she

would do me when id

hit somebody and andy

white kissed me when i

wasnt even lookin and

mama would rock me

close with a rhythm

i knew well

and hum one of those

old familiar gospels

and read me an appropriate

passage from the scriptures

that i never quite

understood and when those salty

seas dried and trails of crust

decorated my face my

mama would wet her finger in her

mouth and cleanse me

again and that warm

silky moistness

would make me forget my lament and id

attach an extra thank

you at the close of my

prayers for the gift of

my mama

From the Black Church to New Thought

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As spoken at Unity Southeast in Kansas City’s Black History Month commemoration, entitled “From the Black Church to New Thought” on February 1, 2024.  An evening filled with music and attestations.

I grew up in the Black church. It’s almost a label — “Black Church” — as it doesn’t merely describe a church peopled with Black folk, but instead regards an institution uniquely of its own creation. Packed with history, much of which is trauma-generated, the Black Church has come to symbolize a kind of spiritual ablution & healing of the ancestral painbody, demonstrated in the exhortations, the dancing and shouting, and the speaking in tongues. My dear mother used to call it “gittin’ happy.” The Black Church is an unparalleled experience to behold. I was baptized at age 10, at Trinity Baptist Church in Los Angeles, under the ministry of the Reverend Elliott Mason. My siblings and I all sang in the Youth & Young Adult choir. For a brief time, as a teen, I was even the choir accompanist, as our choir director also happened to be my piano teacher, the Reverend Carl Johnson, and he believed in giving his students opportunities for growth and grown-up responsibilities, because in the Black Church you weren’t just raised by your parents; you were raised by the village. And to this day, Carl remains a force in my life. My maternal grandfather, the Reverend Felix Shepard, was a Baptist minister in St. Louis. My paternal grandfather, Prentiss Brown, had been a deacon at our church in L.A. My roots in the Black Church run deep. 

There came a point in my early adulthood when I graduated away from the church; not only the walls of Trinity, but the church as an institution. Because I had questions. About everything.  I questioned what I considered to be the fire & brimstone aesthetic. I questioned the very idea of a patriarchal deity, and an iron-handed one at that. I had questions. And my own personal experience was that you don’t have questions. You adhere. So I drifted away. And for a good decade or two after that, I lived with no relationship whatsoever to a church community.

Then Eastern Thought came into my life. The ancient Buddhist principles of the 8-fold path. The wisdoms of the Tao. Yogic practices of turning inward. Meditation. I joined retreats and dharma sits, led by Thai Buddhist monk, Thanissaro Bikkhu, of the Metta Forest Monastery in San Diego. I found great resonance with those practices. Still do, and always will. And it was during that time that I was invited by a friend to sing at my first Unity Church, Unity of Pasadena, under the helm of the Reverend Marilyn Roth, who singlehandedly brought my early church upbringing back into my personal fold in such a loving and beautifully metaphysical way that my heart began to expand in even newer and greater unfoldments. And what stood her out from the many is that though she blessedly didn’t sell the story of fear, as many Christian churches do, she also understood that rather than a reliance on feel-good salves for fragile souls, without the crucial first steps in any authentic spiritual work of courting the caves for exploration and excavation, the practice becomes precious rather than revolutionary. I loved her for that.

And before I knew it, I was singing and communing with the many Science of Mind and Unity communities around L.A. In addition to Unity of Pasadena, two other churches I also call home are the Center for Spiritual Living Granada Hills, under the Reverend Michael McMorrow, and the Center for Spiritual Living Simi Valley, under the Reverend Stephen Rambo, who both entrusted me with their choirs, and who have lifted me up always. And what all three of those churches have in common is that they are New Thought. New Thought has this tiny gem of an idea that God isn’t outside of us, and only reachable through a prism of dogma. God is the power within every cell and every molecule, living and demonstrating through every thing and every one.

I was chatting with a friend not long ago, and I mentioned my involvement with New Thought, and he, a very devout Christian traditionalist, reacted to the term, which he had never heard before, with “New Thought, huh? Like, as opposed to the Old Thought?” And his question betrayed a concern that his religious beliefs were now considered old and dusty. And my response to him was: “No. Not as opposed to. There is space for all of the voices out here trying to make sense of this baffling world we live in, and the immense responsibility we have, to wear these flesh uniforms and do our duty of making our connections with each other. And toward that goal, one size doesn’t fit all.” 

We are all connected, not separated. Not by religious labels, the color of our garments, the flag we wave. And for me, this is what New Thought holds as its essence. A welcoming of the mighty forces, many, for us to ponder, consider, examine. Even question. What New Thought has actually done for me is allow me to draw my childhood church experience back into my embrace, after all of the years away, and to think of that puberty in my life with a new set of eyes. When I examine my life today, and the Black Church in which I was raised, I realize I never truly left it, as I have taken with me into the rest of my life its uniquely roof-raising music. Its impenetrable sense of community. And I have taken its Christ Consciousness with me into the rest of my life, to sit right alongside the Buddha Consciousness. The Tao Consciousness. The Abrahamic Consciousness. The Pagan Consciousness. For the first time in my life, this past holiday season, I actually commemorated the 7 days of Kwanzaa. It just spoke to me to do so, out of the blue, and was a deeply meaningful experience. This is how Spirit, or Source, or God, works. It integrates. Not segregates. 

Three years ago I moved to Kansas City, where I had no family, and knew no one. It happened right at the beginning of global lockdown. And after a few months here, getting my footing, finding a job, and all in a locked-down environment, I decided to try and find the New Thought here. I actually just Googled it, and started calling numbers. And everything was closed. Except for Unity Southeast in Kansas City, under the helm of the Reverend Randy Fikki. It was still open, though with the strictest policies of temperature tests at the door, mask mandates, social-distance seating, and hand-sanitizer everywhere you turned. But it was still operating, I came to learn, because of its unwavering ministry to the houseless community, which didn’t stop needing help just because a pandemic had arrived. In that instant, I kind of fell in love. And I was welcomed in, embraced so fully and so instantly. And I knew I was home. One of many.

Part of writing this has been to recognize the importance of roll-calling all of the spiritual leaders who have been pivotal and vital to my life and personal growth. That’s why the litany of names and shout-outs to the Pastors, the Monks, the Teachers, who have shaped me, lit a fire under me, tempered my pain, and still aid me in finding my way in this world. Because — again — this is how the majesty of it works. It integrates. Not segregates.

Threnody for a Leap Year

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As we are mere days away from another leap year, I thought I would re-post a poem of mine that reflects on our last leap year. Perhaps the world’s most infamous. Thanks for reading.

Before 2020 even arrived
I claimed for all to hear that it was going to be an auspicious year
One for the books
This is my modern habit
Claim it and it becomes truth
Or as the proponents of this idea say
It’s already truth and just awaiting your agreement
Clever that one
Whenever I am at the end of my tether
I cling to clever mystical ideas
One-One-Twenty-Twenty
A milestone birthday
I had just turned the same age as the year I was born
and a leap year to boot
A virtual bonanza of numerological magic

too luscious not to play with
Life has felt stifled for so long that
I’ve taken to making ridiculous claims
Not even certain I believe
but more than willing to be loud
A coming move
A new town
Resuscitation
Breathing room to be artful
to recover health and spirit
Say it loud and the world is yours
An unapologetic child’s belief in magic
where not much else matters
but my own contentment

And then an entire planet folded in on itself

A dying star in the midst of my own brilliantly sketched intersection of stars
I found myself positing with spit that the only use for a Klan hood
was to operate as a medical mask
A snark not nearly so absurdly cutting once I read of
a man in San Diego who did just that
For years I felt alien to my own race
A terrible affliction
Suddenly I was thrusting fist into air and shouting about Black Lives
Couldn’t NOT see my siblings’ necks under that knee
blood seeping from tear ducts like plastic Jesus tchotchkes
On the corner for $1.89 but you can always bargain
The threat of extinction nearer than the sun bleeding through
raggy human-stained ozone threads
When the phalanx of law enforcement swarmed protestors
and I watched from the anxiety-disordered safety of my flat screen
and was more fixated on who was social distancing and masking up
than on the power of protest
my brain seized the way a computer freezes and needs a moment to untangle
When death came and came and kept on coming
A party crasher who WOULD NOT LEAVE
Breaking the furniture and pissing on the carpets
When the pulverized bones of Black Lives, Asian Lives, Trans Lives
by lynch mobs and those enlisted To Protect and To Serve
When the pulverized lungs of those who did not survive ventilators
were blown by a restless wind
and the powder gusted and gathered
as airborne as this virus
dusting like topsoil the heads of a system committed to its status quo
because we led  (as we always seem to)  with privilege and hubris
and a baffling new war was declared: “to mask or not to mask”
a ghost town was erected in the place where
equitable society tried in futility to exist

And as pandemic-age babies were born
from mothers who risked safety to be in hospitals
and fathers not even allowed in delivery rooms
As they came into this life    into this collective terror of a country
that went and made itself pariah to the rest of the world
these babies were anointed with the ancestral coding to one day
thrust arms wide and take hold this earth
wresting it from a generation
that did not deserve it
Their wild infant hearts will one day make whole again
soil and sky and oxygen and humanity
They will claim it audaciously
An unapologetic child’s belief in magic

All I wanted to do was hit sixty and be fabulous
Party a little too hard and do the next-morning walk of shame
with the straps of my resale Steve Maddens in my teeth
Instead I keep skimming back over this hope
of the consecrated newborn
taking over this world
but have found it hard to find its pulse
without losing breath
And that very thought
feels an insult to the memory
of George and Breonna and Elijah
but I gear up     strap on     start my way
through an untilled jungle
ready to be one in the revolution
even leaning in just a bit for the rending of thorns
against bare arms
The tiniest symbol of atonement
for all my self-absorbed days
A flash of grace from a tubercular year

Is Bigger Actually Better? (art + adamance)

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When did the value of a piece of art get determined by the hours logged?  Is it me, or does that idea seem counterintuitive to the very spirit of art? That spirit is, among other conceptions, that which reflects something more than the surface thing it is made of, and that “something” has the power to entertain, enlighten, challenge, tickle, anger, transform, and the oh, so many other splendid eruptions of the human heart that art can accomplish. And to clarify “more than the surface thing it is made of” I mean that a canvas, some paint, and a brush don’t make the thing art. What makes it art is how it speaks. If it speaks. Of course, that idea is so very subjective and abstract that anything can be called art.  And, personally, I think that’s the very beauty of it.  

I had a conversation maybe 6 or 8 months ago with a woman who’d come to an art show that a couple of my alcohol ink pieces were in. She didn’t have a thing to say about my pieces (I knew right away that my small abstracts were not her thing; and that was a-okay with me), but she did go on and on about a piece she had flipped out over. She had been interested in buying it but was stopped by the price tag. In a nutshell, it was a painted cello; I mean an actual cello that was painted, and the imagery painted on there was abstract, but not like the large, sensuous brushstrokes of O’Keeffe, or the random splatters of Pollock. They were squiggles and lines and shapes, geometric, detailed, and meticulous. It sort of resembled code, and even a bit of hypergraphia. It was colorful, every color under the sun, it seemed. I really liked it. It hearkened to me aspects of Basquiat, Haring, Kandinsky, and even Schnabel, as there were also bits and pieces of found objects glued on, and which gave the whole thing a very New Orleans vibe, or a voodoo vibe, or a creole vibe, and I may or may not be saying redundant things. It was a compelling piece. Since the canvas was the wooden instrument itself, I figured it must have a meaning related to music, but it was such an abstract concept that I didn’t linger too long on what that might be, because when it comes to abstract art, I give up everything to the piece, my need to make sense of it, or to create some kind of order. 

In any case, while I liked the piece, this woman loved it. But she was indeed bugged by the price tag. It was selling for $8000. I didn’t blink an eye, except in the knowledge that I can’t buy a piece of art for $8000 and may never be in a position to do so. So, it was a non-issue for me. If the artist believes the value of his work is $8000, and can get that, then it’s worth $8000. (For the record, I never pursued finding out if the piece ever sold, or if the artist took his piece back home with him and re-thought his price tag). The value of a thing is self-evident, as it really is determined by two things: The decision of the artist to put the piece’s value at X. And if the market bears that.

The woman begged to differ with me, and proceeded to break down what she felt the worth of the piece should be based on the number of hours at the task of creating it. She took a guess on how long it might’ve taken. And then broke down that number into dollars. I can’t even remember what the number was, because in all frankness even THAT is an abstract, since neither of us had a clue how long it took this artist to create the piece. But let’s say she came up with $1000 per hour. Is the artist worth that wage? was the bottom line for her. And the fact that she looked at it in terms of a wage was fascinating to me. I happen to believe that what goes into any artistic endeavor, from painting, to composing music, to playing an instrument, to writing a poem or a novel, to directing a play, to acting, to dancing, to choreographing, to photographing, to sculpting…..is more than the rudimentary, physical manifestations: Telling an actor to move here, take a beat there; affixing the paint onto its canvas with the stroke of a brush; mastering the physical constraints of a pirouette, typing words onto a manuscript. And it’s more than the amassing of hundreds of hours on a timesheet. First, there is the quite crucial element of the thing birthed, forming, growing inside one’s brain, then on the canvas, staff paper, dance floor, typewriter, etc., conceptualizing, determining what message or non-message this creation is. Artists are often in search of healing, which is customarily why they’ve been led to an art form to begin with. A way to offload trauma. Which means, there is the inner resonance. What is it speaking to?

The measurement of a piece: it’s size, girth, length of time it took to create, tells us little of its emotional, spiritual, cosmic impact. Really, it all comes down to one question: What does it do for your soul? The rest doesn’t matter. 

That’s MY bias, of course. This woman, an art lover herself, had a different set of criteria for what something was worth, and was definitely coming from that left-brain, linear hemisphere in her assertion. Which I realized does have its place, because the deeper into the debate we got, the more I could begin to see a bit of both assertions. As there is also the Emperor’s New Clothes Syndrome. Modern legend has it that Picasso scribbled on a napkin for a waiter, as his tip for the service. And the first thought on anyone’s mind who knows this bit of modern lore is, “Get thee to an appraiser!” It’s Picasso, for God’s sake. His name alone, at a certain point in his meteoric ascent, became the thing that defined his worth. The legitimacy of that phenomenon is a whole other conversation, a more cynical, less pure one. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe this was exactly the woman’s point about the value of a thing. If Pablo had merely spat on the napkin, it probably would still have been canonized as “a Picasso.” And so, the game is played. She was challenging this artist of the cello piece to qualify his ownership of his worth. I don’t mean to say that she actually approached him at the art opening, armed with gall and too many glasses of free champagne. It was merely a whispered aside to me, posing the question: what gives him the nerve? with, of course, the inference of it’s not like his name is Picasso.

I think about my own artwork. The medium I’m presently working in is small (9″x12″). Alcohol ink on Yupo. I keep being told, “go bigger!” And honestly, at present I’m not inclined to. The reason I even qualify the size of my pieces is because this woman asked me, during this debate about worth and value, how long it takes me to finish one of my “little trifles.” I’m pretty sure she meant that as “like a sweet confection.” Nonetheless, it came off as belittling (pun intended), and I got the feeling she’s probably someone damned artful at passive-aggression, for she never lost the warmth. I responded, “anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours.” She never said a thing beyond that, but her reaction clearly betrayed, if it only takes you a few minutes to create, how are you rationalizing $100 for your pieces? I didn’t answer that question, because she didn’t actually ask it. But I did sell both my inks that evening for the price asked, and I have to admit the tiniest tinge of schadenfreude at letting her know my good news.

My alcohol inks are all abstracts, at least so far on this journey. I’m partial to abstracts. So, when a friend bought one of my pieces a few years ago, she took it to a workshop she was conducting, where she asked her attendees what they saw in the painting. She was kind enough to share with me the varied responses. Something I will treasure forever:

“Beauty in the un-manifest, infinite possibilities.”
“Core of darkness reaching out to be brought to light.”
“Nature and the outdoors.”
“Underwater world.”
“Mermaid fairy with a flower.”
“Hummingbird with the spirit of a dragon.”
and quite possibly my favorite…
“A gathering of monks.”

These answers not only moved me beyond words, but also affirmed for me what I believe is most powerful about the abstract realm—art of any realm, for that matter—that we each glean from a piece what shows up for us; what we need in the moment. And that makes something worth whatever the art lover is willing and able to pay to take it home and be moved by it every day.

The experience of art is far more than just a surface observation of: Nice colors! Nice notes! They’re in tune! Stellar spin! She must have really strong muscles! He uses pretty words! That’s gonna just about cover my giant wall and match my sofa! So how can it be quantified? The very experience of art is an intangible abstract. It can open us wide open. Give us what we need in that moment.

Or it doesn’t, and we move on. 

There’s also absolutely nothing wrong with admiring a pitch-perfect note, a gorgeously rich hue, someone’s logic-defying technique or prowess. It’s just, there’s so much more experience that can be had if we don’t allow ourselves to be contained by mere surface. Surface has nice things to offer. But beneath it? Can you imagine what you might be missing if you stopped just short? Perhaps a magnificent rebirth. And therefore, again, what is that worth?

If something isn’t grueling or doesn’t take a chunk of flesh from us to create, or doesn’t take months and years to finish, or doesn’t require a vast studio space in which to contain its girth, does that mean its value is less? Or can’t have impact? Because impact is the endgame. If a work of art collides with someone, and the explosion from that collision is life-altering, or even a tiny shimmy, art has done its job.

Some of the most compelling art I’ve ever experienced is from Japanese minimalist artists known for line drawing. Matisse and Picasso did incredibly compelling line drawings. These are not the intricate layer after layer of exploding color and texture and brush skill in replicating a figurative image, which is what Picasso was known for in one of his many eras. This is the use of pen or pencil, and drawing single lines. And these “trifles” can be quite startling. Or how about: a brilliant haiku packs no less a punch than a brilliant novel. Does Blind Willie Johnson’s simple guitar and warbled voice on Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground connect less to struggle and pain than Penderecki’s Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima? For some, there is no difference in the connection to pain. And for someone else, hell yes, there’s a difference. Which is perfectly valid. Except the difference won’t be because the Penderecki has about 10 billion notes and a riot of tone clusters and 52 stringed instruments and is a discordant behemoth, and Blind Willie’s is merely a precious, tiny, single voice and 6 strings on an old bottleneck slide guitar. Deep, exquisite pain is felt every time I have listened to either of these heart-wrenching, power-packed pieces of music.

Size really does kind of lose its meaning when we dare to probe deeper. So, then, if it isn’t size, what is it that makes a work of art worth something? Is it, after all, the amount of labor invested and hours logged? Is it education and an MFA vs. being self-taught? Is it something completely intangible that only the person colliding with the piece can experience, because their experience will be funneled through and informed by their own history, and what speaks to them will not be replicated by any other person’s collision with the same work of art?

It is a random concept, the worth and value of a thing. So random as to be, actually, a kind of silly debate. I realize that. But thank you anyway, woman I argued with. There’s nothing more enjoyable than to exercise the critical thinking mechanism in the splash pool of wonderment. The value of a work of art is whatever the market will bear. Plain and simple. And yes, there is some wicked capitalism and sleight-of-hand opportunism often involved. I wrote a microfiction once called Supernova that I’ve offered below. It speaks to that very abstract idea of value, and just how unstable, unquantifiable, and exploitable it actually is. Enjoy my dark little trifle, and—if you even care about such things—ask yourself what you think makes a work of art worth anything. 

Or just relax with a glass of wine, and stay away from us pontificators. You’re surely better off.

Supernova

He sold the painted canvas on the street for $1, a striking abstract created by his own homeless hands. Years later it sold at a gallery for $800. The original purchaser, an artist himself, had put his own name on it. By the time many more years passed, and it sold at Sotheby’s for a million (as the artist/thief eventually enjoyed astronomical fame), the homeless man, who never thought of his painting again beyond that corner sell, had long ago died, impoverished. The art thief did not fear God. He did, however, feel the dread of ghosts now and again. 

— from the 100-word story collection Aleatory on the Radio

Your Package Has Been Delivered

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The Rockies were even more majestic than I had imagined. The Kansas Prairie, as stark as I’d expected but I hadn’t made room in my brain for the smell of cow patties for miles. The storms of Utah scared me so profoundly I knew I’d never make this trip back by car, ever again.

Of course, the first stop was Vegas, where I’d been a thousand times, and the 118 degree temps that did something weird to my car engine didn’t surprise me in the least. Thankfully, it was temporary, as I continued east and gradually north, making this move I never remotely had in my plans for my life.

I’d managed to amass 60 years on this planet without ever living anywhere other than Los Angeles, and now I was moving to Kansas City, Missouri, the heartland, the prairie, the home of tornadoes and Charlie Parker, a red state but a blue town, artful and socially progressive, even though it was here that I was called the N word for the first time ever … at least that I’ve known about. Seriously, I may just be the most sheltered Black person on the planet.

I am trying to find my identity in this new place that doesn’t require me to let go of what LA built in me, while wanting to flow with this KC charm and warmth. Trying to be both, trying to have both. In LA, I was regarded in my town’s music scene. Here, I’m barely a smudge on a wall, largely unnoticed, but not in a rude way, just the experience of a new birth and my own penchant for cocooning. I don’t even go out for auditions for the many plays that are being cast at the very theater where I work. My instinct, as I’ve said, is just to stay a little bit cocooned, and I’m not even certain why. The fight-or-flight pace of LA kind of did me in a little, so I guess I just want to breathe slower, talk slower, decide things slower, get involved slower, emerge slower. I guess. Just looking for simple.

Two years here now, and no I have not done the drive back west again (though I’ve flown home a few times now). I meant it when I said I had sworn off those torrential rains. I feel very settled here, and happy. Still not completely out of my performance shell yet, but that’s okay. I’ve done some singing. I chased fame and travel and record deals and pizzazz for so long in LA, and it beat me to a pulp, frankly. Just looking for simple. And yet even with the agenda to simplify, I still manage to over-commit myself. Total co-dependency thing. I definitely need more than just my once-a-week Al-Anon meeting. Winters blow here. I know, weird segue. I will never embrace the snow. It just isn’t in the bones of this Cali Girl. I know, I know, be open-minded.

I love the friends I’ve made in my new town. Few, which means fewer choices of who to call for a hang, or whose invitation to accept for a hang. I miss my LA friends like nobody’s business (thank God for Zoom!). That circle was and is VAST, and I am so much luckier and more blessed than I ever truly appreciated when I was actually there. But here, I sort of like it that my circle is small. Fewer decisions to make. Have I said yet that I’m looking for simple?

Here, I can embrace being 62. There, it’s the thing you’re supposed to hide. Artistic pursuits are blowing up for me here. In LA, I did the gig beat for nearly 40 years, and it was every experience from dazzling to grueling. No regrets at all. It was an extraordinary time in my life, but there wasn’t really any other avenue of my pursuits that ever went anywhere for me. Here, I’ve had firsts. Of course, everything I did in LA began as firsts, it being where I began life. But the firsts that have happened since I’ve been here are kind of dizzying. Amazing, humble, grand, small, precious firsts. My first-ever poetry reading where I was invited to be the featured poet (and I’ve had a few now) in a town known for its vibrant and weighty poetry community. First time having a hand in getting a jazz series started (at the theater where I work). First time I’ve gotten to be a participant in a wall mural (up at the iconic Unity Village). First time making a little documentary short about a Kansas City community event (the citywide Black Lives Matter street murals), and having it be my first ever Official Selection in a film festival. My first time ever having art of mine juried into a gallery exhibit, which is opening in a few days. My alcohol inks ‘bout to make their li’l splash! Pun intended! (If you know the medium, you’ll know it’s a lot of splashes of ink…never mind…)

I know that my children’s videobook winning multiple film festival awards (whaaaat???) has nothing to do with Kansas City, nor an alcohol ink of mine making the cover of a literary journal, nor having an entire concert of music (by the LA Metropolitan Master Chorale) created and performed around several of my short stories (all firsts), but I’m giving KC the credit anyway, because all these things happened while living here, and somehow here, more than in LA, I’ve managed to cultivate better focus in order to carve the space for these blessings to be made possible. Too much the blitzkrieg of Los Angeles, I guess, and all that that allegorically means, and which kept me just running, bouncing, collapsing, recovering, then running and bouncing again. Ad nauseam.

I’m exhausted. Still, two years later. Walking along the Missouri River humming “Shenandoah,” and the hiking trail that gives me genuine serenity, and strolling the halls of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art weekly — are all great balms that are slowly recovering me.

Did I mention I moved here 2 months into global lock down? Talk about throwing my own roadblocks in my way. I trip and fall a lot. Like…physically. I’m a klutz. But I’m starting to think that has whole other metaphorical layers of meaning for me and my life. And yet I persevere like a cockroach.

I like Kansas City. I might actually love it. No, yes, I definitely love it. I love Kansas City. I am mesmerized by how much art and theatre and music is embraced here. And then there are the city fountains (more than in Rome!), and the recent citywide installation of giant heart sculptures, 154 of them, all painted by different local artists, and which demanded my obsessed attention for 3 months, finding and photographing as many as I could. And the West Bottoms, and the River Market. And the 18th & Vine Jazz District, and the First Fridays Art Walks. And the stupefying amount of live theatre I’ve loved seeing, and not just at the one where I work. And my favorite building on the entire planet, the downtown KC Public Library, whose design is that of a GIANT bookshelf of classics. Crazy cool!

And even if none of that was going on, this move also means I now will not die having never left home. That’s huge for me. A dream I’ve had forever, though in my imaginings it was more along the lines of somewhere in Europe. But that’s okay, since KC is actually known as the “Paris of the Plains.” 🙂 No kidding.

I wouldn’t have chosen it on my own, but Kansas City came my way, and I happily said yes. Leapt. In a way I am not prone to do. I’m still saying yes. No looking back. Well, maybe some looking back. After all, I would take California earthquakes any day over the “Severe Thunder Storm” alerts that routinely pop up on my phone, and do indeed freaking deliver!

Poetry Is

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Often thought of as the genteel art form.

But I’ve known poets who were fierce.

And feral. Whose words cut.

Like a blade. Whose words smelled.

Of gasoline. Pumped

Freon. Into veins.

Poetry at its most punch-packed

is all our stories. The ones we bury.

The ones that try to bury us.  

A feisty turn of phrase. A graceful cadence.

A rhythmic pulse that sings. That brings

music to the proceedings. This army of love.

Carving the space that can hold all the trauma.

We can no longer hold.

The more creviced and stuck in greasy corners.

The more light is shed. And thus.

This magnificent beast that is

poetry operates

as the doorway into gratitude.

The genteel is power also. Hath caused many a heart

to crack open with its beauty.  It’s simply not

The IT and the ALL

of what poetry is.  Not by a

—shall I compare thee to a summer’s day—

long shot.

In the Pursuit of Growing Sharper : A Meditation on My Solitude Thanksgiving 2021

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I couldn’t quite believe the action of my prayers two days ago. I am a pray-er. I never really was, until I began a program of recovery a few years ago, where prayer and meditation is essential to working the program.  They even say that whether you’re atheist, agnostic, or a believer, pray anyway; just go through the motions and witness how it shifts your life. I can personally attest that once you’re immersed in working the 12 steps, your whole life begins to focus on fine-tuning your character and how you walk in the world.  

Being a person who “stages” moments in her life, and isn’t especially skillful at how she responds to plans not going the way they were planned, I got in my car early in the day for a Thanksgiving that would be spent alone, and I knew I’d have to fend off those defects today. I’m fairly new in my city, with all my family elsewhere. And though I’ve made friends, I just barely hang out with a few of them, so being without plans for Thanksgiving isn’t unusual. Instead, I made my own plans: to go to the movies (my first time since Covid, which is a ritual I have missed sorely, as I love the movies, and especially on holidays that I spend alone….yes, even living in L.A. I sometimes did holidays alone), then follow the movies with finding a cool restaurant to eat a meal in, while I’d sit and dine with a good book——one of my favorite solitude rituals. As I drove, I took note how gorgeous the weather was, and immediately got a jolt of adrenaline that told me the next words out of my mouth were going to be “this day rocks!” So, I immediately went into prayer about expectations. I spoke out loud something like, “please allow me to accept the unfolding of this day in whatever way it will, and to respond with pliancy and flow and understanding if anything I’m planning falls apart. Please help me to take a breath first and to be okay with whatever happens instead of stomping my feet like a brat…which I can do. Let this day unfold without disappointment because I have received the day with open-heartedness, whatever happens.”  Something along those lines.

My plan was to go to a particular movie theater, which was in a part of town not terribly close to home, because it’s right next door to the only Trader Joe’s in town.  I figured I could kill two birds with one stone. The movie showing was at 1:30, so I planned to arrive nearly an hour before that to do some much needed grocery shopping first. I knew stores would close early for Thanksgiving. They might even be crowded because of last minute turkey dinner shopping, and I would be perfectly all right with that.

With the prayer for patience and non-attachment out of the way, I continued driving, and at a red light, I idled at an intersection where a homeless man stood on the corner right next to me, with his sign in his hands. I had no cash on me to offer him, but I instantly went into prayer mode again to ask that he be able to find warmth today, and some food on this beautiful but nippy Thanksgiving. And I swear, a second after my amen, a man in the car behind me at this red light hastened quickly out of his car with a gift bag of food and handed it to the homeless gentleman. It was so ready-made that I realized he had a carload of gift baskets that were prepared to be passed out as he encountered the homeless community today. The timing of that witness against my prayer was so insane, like something out of a movie, as I watched this all unfold, that I started to cry as the light turned green.

This kindhearted man had made his plan to feed some homeless folk long before my prayer, so it could hardly take credit for the magic we usually associate with prayer (believers and skeptics alike). But the timing was such a level of perfection that what it really served was the attuning of my own consciousness. Because as I kept on driving, so moved by this witness that I was in tears, I thought about how little I have been of service to others in my life, and what a marvelous and kind idea to do on a holiday like Thanksgiving, and I was suddenly deciding, right then and there, that I would do this next year. I also did something quite out of my usual character, which ordinarily would be to self-berate for not thinking of this myself. Instead, I got excited by the prospect of being given a great idea for next Thanksgiving, or any other day of the year, as the homelessness in this city is fairly profound. It was a good moment for me.

Okay, one prayer instantly, remarkably answered. The other, already s-l-o-w-l-y beginning to unfold, and I didn’t even know it yet.

As I finally entered the parking lot that houses the Trader Joe’s and the AMC complex, I could see that Trader Joe’s was closed. My impulse was to get angry, as I’d driven a good ways for this plan, but I remembered my prayer and took a breath. Several. I saw cars in the adjacent parking lot, and my curiosity took me around the bend to see what they might be connected to, since it obviously wasn’t for Trader Joe’s.

So now, a few things proceeded to unfold that made me realize my prayer was being answered in even more nuanced ways than I was intending. I had arrived a little after 12:30 and the movie would start at 1:30. That was going to give me roughly 45-50 minutes to do my grocery shopping. I have been to this Trader Joe’s many times, but had never been to this AMC, and I had a picture in my head of where its entrance might’ve been. In this instant of looking to find out why cars were in the parking lot of a closed Trader Joe’s, I learned that the entrance to the AMC was directly behind the Trader Joe’s, and not at all what I had pictured by the way the buildings congregate against each other. I knew at that discovery that I’d just been saved several frustrated minutes circling this rather large shopping center, which has lots of other stores too, trying to find the damned entrance. Only because Trader Joe’s was closed, and cars were curiously parked there, did I find the entrance immediately, out of my nosiness plain and simple.  

I decided I should probably go on in and buy my ticket now, even though the showing was still 45 minutes away. And when I walked up to the window, I saw that the online information had been wrong and the movie was actually starting in 15 minutes, at 1:00. Had I not been attempting to do some grocery shopping first and instead simply driven out here just to see the movie, I’d’ve been half an hour late.

Trader Joe’s was never meant to be open. I had made assumptions because most grocery stores are open on Thanksgiving, even if they close earlier than usual. But I was meant to think it was, so that I could get to this movie on time. The way my prayer was answered was not to simply make me okay with being unable to grocery shop, but also by giving me the gift of my misunderstanding, so that it could benefit another part of my plan.

Was this the magic of prayer? I’m more inclined to believe it’s simply what CAN happen when we let go and stop holding on so tight to a conclusion. The truth is, every bit of it could’ve shit the bed for me that day, and I was actually asking in my prayer to be prepared for all of that. To not curse loudly in my car because I couldn’t get my groceries or see a movie. Perhaps, because I bothered to ask, to have my consciousness attuned to a certain behavior and reaction to life, I was given hidden gifts; little grace notes. Maybe. I’m not necessarily convinced, because I have a hard enough time believing in magic. But I AM inclined to believe we are rewarded, however subtly or small, when we at least attempt to be better than we usually are.

Likewise, when the movie was over, and it was now so late in the afternoon that I knew I wouldn’t find any grocery stores open, I thought to myself, “well now, I HAVE to find a restaurant open somewhere, because I’ve got very little food at home.” I proceeded to drive back into town and passed several restaurants I’m fond of, to see if any could accommodate an easy party of one, as families often choose to take their Thanksgivings outside of the home. And yet this city, I came to learn, is a virtual ghost town on Thanksgiving, and there was absolutely nothing open anywhere. So now I had no groceries AND I had no restaurant to give me my Thanksgiving dinner experience (thank God, I’d at least gotten some popcorn at the movies).

See, I actually really love the ritual of going to a favorite restaurant alone, and enjoying a meal while having my head buried in a great book, and being waited on. I don’t feel remotely lonely on such holidays if I happen to be spending them alone. But I’ll be honest; I was beginning to feel a little let down. A little lonely. A little abandoned by society because it dared to shut down so that its laborers could enjoy Thanksgiving too. Let down is okay. Disappointed is okay. It’s the full-on, pissed off, yelling-at-no-one as I drive my car around town looking futilely for something to be open, and the punching of my steering wheel, like a petulant child, that I was asking to be delivered from.

And I truly was. I breathed deeply, stayed in a calm mood, even feeling cheery as I listened to a Christmas carol playlist, and resolved to just go home and make whatever was in my fridge for my Thanksgiving dinner, even if it was only a bowl of cereal. I certainly knew it wouldn’t be special. But it turned out all right. More than all right actually. I found a frozen piece of salmon in the freezer, and some broccoli that I roasted, and I did a hot pot of brown rice. Perfectly respectable and enjoyable, if not especially fancy and fun and benefiting a Thanksgiving.

Even more importantly, I was surprisingly swept with gratitude. This day pointed out to me, in some none-too-subtle ways, that I was a person who had a roof over my head, food in my fridge, warmth on my arms, and a program of recovery that, on this Thanksgiving Day, truly helped to deliver me to an appropriate, mature response and sense of serenity to the fact that my day only just barely resembled the one I had planned. I was able——privileged, in fact——to bear witness to a tiny spurt of emotional and spiritual growth; a gift that gave me so much more than my perfectly planned day, had it been perfectly realized.

I’m not terribly inclined to give much credence to magic, which is how I sometimes see prayer. But Thanksgiving 2021 was a grand show for me of the power that can be experienced. Then again, the poet Eden Phillpotts may have been onto something when he wrote: “The universe is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.”

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference

Spiritual Algorithm: A Prescription for This Age of Pandemic

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Navigating the murky waters of life is a job with tenure.  All the money and station in the world won’t reprieve us from the task.  Below are 9 simple practices that can mean the difference between the grind of life (or even the blunt interruption of that grind) and truly living.  Costs nothing.  Big Pharma has no equity in THIS medicine.

 

  1. Turn away from the anxiety-fueling news programs that litter television and the Internet.

Just refuse them.   They are designed for one agenda only —— to whip us into a distracted frenzy, and by virtue weaken us and our pocketbooks at the seams, because having an entire culture in panic mode is profitable, and is never about being in the public’s interest.  Find your news through more legitimate sources.  Do the homework needed to figure out who and what those are.  Information is valuable and crucial; hysteria never is.

 

  1. Read for pleasure.

As a writer I want to encourage books. I want to encourage good books.  I want to encourage literature.  But hey, read a magazine, just read —— for pure enjoyment and expansion.  And try as often as possible to do it outside the digital and electronic universe.  Kindle and iBooks are both fun and convenient, but don’t let them be your exclusive source for reading.  The brain needs a good chunk of quality time every day to be removed from electromagnetic energy and social media, and to be reminded of the world of imagination and connection that does exist beyond our digital screens.

 

  1. Meditate.  OR . . .

…at the very least find a way to simply be in silence and stillness for a few minutes every day.  The more minutes a day you can find in that quiet, the better able you will be to heed the inner voice, and the better everything will be.  Guaranteed!   Consider a wonderful memoir by Sara Maitland on her experiment of withdrawing from the world in pursuit of silence.  There is a whole world of discussion to be had on the topic and its impact on a society, and which is utterly fascinating.  For now, for this, simply allow yourself a few minutes each day to power everything down.   And listen.

 

  1. Connect with Higher Power.

This term has as wide a berth as the ocean, so even the most ardent atheist can find his or hers.  Something that is greater than your pedestrian self and has something to teach you, offer you, feed you. Maybe it’s the Collective Unconscious. Maybe it’s your own higher consciousness, which exists in every human, usually buried beneath all the traumas and dysfunctions, but there, just ripe and ready to guide us, if we’re keen to do some unearthing.  Maybe it’s nature.  Maybe it’s the source within.  Or a source out there. Maybe it’s simply goodness.  It will show up differently for every individual on the planet yet is that unquantifiable something that maneuvers us around the land mines and connects us to each other.  There is no need to affix a label; simply be with it.  Find yours, and plug in regularly.

 

  1. Create, even if you’re not an artist.

“Artist” is merely a label.  We all have creativity and imagination within us, and it can show up in the most unexpected cloak, which is usually how it works anyway.  Feed it. Allow it to feed you.  Have fun with it.  The benefits to soul are untold.  In this time of quarantine, and out.

 

  1. Be a child again (closely linked to the above, and which is not the same as being child-ISH).

There has been so much obligation, commitment, management, planning, and fortune-making that has governed our adult lives that we can easily allow it to collapse our spirits.  Easy to get so caught up in building the life of our dreams that we forget to actually live the life of our dreams.  These mandated lockdowns and Stay at Home orders have forced us to slow down, whether we’ve wanted to or not.  As a result, some truly profound epiphanies have been had from the many about the lives they’d been living before this pandemic.  So, every once in a while let it all go, and do what children do. Precisely because we are presently in the state of severance, throw Zoom parties. Live-stream living room performances for friends.  Stage social distancing drive-by parades. Play dress-up to come to the dinner table.  The ideas are endless.  The point, to play fiercely and with release and abandon.

The flipside of that same spirit … do nothing.  The Italians have a delicious term for it —— dolce far niente —— literally translated as the “sweetness of doing nothing.” They have raised it to an art, but in our ambition-worship culture we have stamped the label of shame onto it.  We do not need to be in the constant state of planning, producing, and consuming.  Precisely because of this pandemic, we are in trauma.  We are in grief.  You are okay to not be okay.  So, take the pressure off.  Smile at nothing.  Sit and gaze.  Daydream.  Decompress.  It is the crucial yin to our Everest-conquering yang.

 

  1. Be in nature.

Communing with creatures beyond our pets and other humans, moving among the wise old trees, strolling along a shore, recognizing the cruciality of taking care of the earth, this is what it means to be in nature.  For the time being, but not forever, our access to beaches and nature trails has been limited by the necessity for flattening the curve of this virus.  Even so, it is possible to snag ourselves a little bit of nature every day.  Put on your protective mask, walk outside your door, and you are in it.  Even in the city.  Just walk, and marvel at the sky (cleaner these days than ever before with fewer cars on the roads).  Equal parts meditation and exercise, being in the nature right outside our door can open the heart chakra and shift our receptor paradigm to receiving or, perhaps and more pointedly, feeling worthy of blessings.  It increases our ability to see that blessings are flying all around us like gnats.  And it’s not only the stuff that feels like blessings.  It’s even the stuff (or people) we consider the opposite, because every encounter serves as a teacher —— and may actually be where the real gold lies. Wait, what? All this from observing flowers and trees?  Oh, yes.  Until our beautiful beaches and glorious canyon trails can safely reopen, even the smallest patch of garden or that duck pond in the neighborhood can be that salve and conduit.  Nature is quite remarkable at showing up anywhere and opening the vessel within for our daily access.

 

  1. Create a daily gratitude ritual . . .

…particularly during this coronaspell of death, sickness, fear, and the loss of “normal,” when it’s harder to see blessings.  It can be a prayer, a journal log, a mantra, a meditation.  Even in the various periods of my life of not feeling especially grateful, I, for example, always found such beauty in the tradition of blessing one’s food.  What a lovely idea to express out loud our thankfulness for the bounty on our plates, and for not taking a meal for granted but cherishing it for what it gives us, especially considering how many don’t have this luxury. Now, imagine employing that gratitude practice with everything.  Just imagine.

 

And finally . . .

 

 

  1. Be of service.

From sewing and dispensing face masks, to surprise drop-offs of groceries at someone’s door, to making food for the homeless, to outreach calls, this Age of Pandemic has shown what people are made of, and that it isn’t only the front-liners who are able to be of service to the community.  We all have the ability to be there for others, whether an individual or our community at large.  Service is the most restorative unguent there is for self-absorption or for trying to find meaning in a world that often seems senseless and cruel, especially in these strange days.  Maybe you aren’t struggling with that.  Many are.  Pandemic or no, this might just be the single most potent go-to for establishing or recovering ourselves as persons of value on the planet…

and within.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Angela Carole Brown is the author of Bones, Aleatory on the Radio, Viscera, The Assassination of Gabriel Champion, The Kidney Journals: Memoirs of a Desperate Lifesaver, and the 2018 North Street Book Prize-winner for Literary Fiction, Trading Fours. She has also produced several albums of music and meditation.  Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Goodreads, Amazon Author, & Bandcamp.

 

 

Belligerent Romance : song. heart. bravery.

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“…the only answer is to recklessly discard more armor.”
― Eric Maisel

 

I re-post this every year.  An anniversary of sorts.  So, if you’ve been down this road, please bear with me.  If not, enjoy.

On this morning 8 years ago, I was awakened rudely by construction in the neighborhood. I fought it for a time, but eventually gave in and hastened my exercise gear on. I got myself outside for a good walking meditation, and couldn’t get Hans’ song out of my head.

Angela.

There are actually lots of songs with my name in the title. The music from the television show Taxi is actually called Angela’s Theme. There’s Helen Reddy’s Angie Baby. Of course, the Stones’ iconic Angie. The Bee Gees have a song. Even Motley Crue, stealing lines from Hendrix’s The Wind Cries Mary with their own “when the winds cry Angela” lyric.

It can be heady, this idea of your name inspiring song after song, but then again none of them were written for me. So, how heady can I really get?

Until Hans. I was to be giving him a kidney in just two more days. This anticipated event had dragged out for nine excruciating bureaucratic months. My best friend pointed out the symbolic time frame as indicative of a kind of birth. But now it was finally arriving, and both of us (Hans and I) were bouncing off the walls in our own way. Me, I’d been doing these walking meditations every day for a month solid in preparation. It was equal parts exercise (I really hoofed it) and opportunity to live with my own thoughts before my day officially began with and in the world; to level myself and clear out my brain for the big day. I chanted, I did mantras, I worked out problems, I talked myself down from ledges, I rationalized behavior, I asked for forgiveness, I defended myself in imaginary arguments, and I thanked the Forces That Be for everything.

But on the walk 8 years ago today, all that activity got shoved to the various corners and crannies of my obsessive brain to make room for memories of the night before, going to see Hans play his guitar in a coffee house, and open his set with Angela . . . written for me.

Interestingly enough, almost all of the romantic relationships I’ve ever had have been with musicians and composers, and yet none of them has ever written a song for me. It is either a great poetic juxtaposition, or a really unsettling indication of the impact I have on the people I’m involved with. Of course, I’m also a songwriter, and I’ve never written a song for any one of them either. So, okay, maybe all it indicates is that every one of us is jaded and crusty and we’ve lost all sense of romance and inspiration.

Picasso painted every woman he ever fell for. What has happened to that kind of belligerent romance? The terrible compulsion to celebrate another human being?

So, hearing this song, sung by teenager Hans and his girlfriend and the drummer in his band, was a moment that had left me speechless and tearful. A moment that had made me realize that inspiration and romance do still exist…. they’re just hiding among the young. And if we still want to be touched by it, then the young are who we need to surround ourselves with.

So there I was, walking my regular route in the neighborhood, and trying to chant my daily mantra, which usually began with “Love, reign over me…” (I have tended to find much more prayerful intention in rock songs than I’ve ever found from anything biblical.) “ . . . make me mindful . . . give me grace . . . deliver me from need . . . fill me with wonder . . . ” etc. Sometimes I chanted for winning the lottery, but I do get that that’s not really how it works, and so those requests always came with tongue firmly planted in cheek. But on that morning I didn’t care about money or enlightenment.

On that morning, I was intoxicated by having had a song written for me, for the first time in my life. I felt like Marie-Thérèse, or Anaïs Nin, or Beethoven’s “immortal beloved”; women who have been painted, written about, composed for, dedicated symphonies. I highly recommend it. Being someone’s muse. It’s a high like no other.

As I walked, I completely tuned out the music that was blasting through the iPod buds wedged in my ear. Explanation: It’s easier for me to do my mantras against music; it’s a deliberate sensory overload; somehow things just stick themselves deeper in the subconscious when they’re too overloaded to have surface impact. It didn’t matter that day anyway; I had abandoned my Pete Townsend-inspired mantra and my downloaded pop tunes, to be flooded with Hans’ song. Or rather, the idea of Hans’ song.

A complete stranger who was walking my way held her palm up, and shouted “high five” as we passed each other. I obliged. First time I’d ever been accosted in that way. And I thought of this woman’s completely loopy bravery. Just to infiltrate a perfect stranger’s sphere, for a split second, and engage. What if I had refused her? Treated her the way we treat the bag ladies who pass us by? I wouldn’t be brave enough to throw my loopiness out there in that way; too afraid of rejection, of having someone look at me like I was nuts. And then I thought of the oddly shaped angle that I was practically on the eve of having surgeons cut me open and pull a kidney out of my body, yet here I was assured that I would’ve been too afraid to be silly on the street with a passing stranger. Which one really takes more bravery?

It takes a special kind of bravery to write a song for somebody. It takes letting down one’s cool guard and daring to show a little vulnerability. Letting the world peek into your opened and exposed heart. And most especially, letting the person for whom the song is written peek into your heart, daring to let them know that you feel, and that they have impacted your life enough to inspire public song.

I once had a boyfriend, a brilliant composer, who, with me, was one day listening to a song written by a friend of ours with a woman’s name in the title. He said, “I don’t think I could write a song with some woman’s name in the title.” He said this with a kind of pride in the claim. I felt sad for him. And sad for myself, as well, because I think that claim was my truth too. We’re all just too cool. Vulnerability is not attractive.

Leonard Bernstein’s Maria, from “Westside Story”, a song of truly loopy and delirious love.

Tom Waits’ Martha, an invocation of sweet, melancholy reminiscence.

The Beatles’ Michelle.

Elton John’s Daniel.

Brian’s Song.

Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair.

The list goes on, and on, and encouragingly on. Who knows which of these is based on an actual person, or is merely the playground of fiction? And who cares? Either one still requires a level of unadulterated celebration, and a willingness to abandon cool, which makes someone ultra-cool in my book.

Hans is brave. He is brave to be a musician, going out there in the world for the scrutiny of the jaded. He is brave to have withstood years of debilitating dialysis, countless surgeries, stem cell experiments, catheters and fistulas implanted beneath his skin, and finally a transplant. But perhaps the bravest act of all was his daring to expose his great heart in so many ways, only one tiny example of which was the writing of a song entitled Angela.

 

(Two days later, on July 22, 2008, I successfully donated my kidney to Hans San Juan, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, in Los Angeles, and Hans has been healthy ever since.)

 

 

 

 

 

Angela Carole Brown is a published author, a recipient of the Heritage Magazine Award in poetry, and has produced several albums as a singer/songwriter, and a yoga/mindfulness CD. Bindi Girl Chronicles is her writing blog.   Follow her on INSTAGRAM & YOUTUBE.