Best-laid plans

and trusting the process

Life goes in circles, its’ a merry go round

—Jenny Lewis ‘Psychos’

“No more planning,” was my request on Monday. At least for the evening. Between gigs, summer travel and the basic needs of day-to-day living, I’ve either been in an acute phase of coordinating directions, flights, gear and bodies, or on the go. It’s all in the service of seizing the day, something I’m that much more bent on these days, given the times we’re living in and my sense of time passing quickly, which life keeps reminding me about.

As we drove through the city on Sunday after playing a Summer of Music gig and a meal out with loved ones, we passed the Scott St. apartment I sublet for several months. At the time, I had just been laid off from a job (that I loathed but which paid decently) and was planning a very indie music tour with a couple of other artists. It really wasn’t the time to be living in Pacific Heights, nonetheless, there I was. I’d ride by bike to a yoga studio in the Lower Haight each morning and pit-stop at a Buddhist friend’s house to chant before heading home to work on tour plans. Despite being simultaneously in a state of abundance and lack, my life was really moving at the time. I was playing music with some excellent musicians and becoming close friends with Kwame. Anything seemed possible and a lot of things — music (including a bumpy if instructive mini-tour of the Pacific Northwest and a subsequent series of recordings), new rentals, relationships — did happen, albeit perhaps differently than I could have imagined at the time.

Which is the case right now. It feels like there’s a lot of movement…and like I’m starting all over again.

“Is this you?” Another friend texted on Saturday, with a video clip of her car radio broadcasting a snippet of a KALX radio spot of me singing an improv version of ‘Hesitation Blues’ with my band from around the same time I was living in Pac Heights. It had been a late night at the studio — a Cal game had gone into overtime — and we were all punchy from too much time in a windowless room. Eventually we’d play our actual set, but this bespoke jingle is what persists nearly 15 years later. You just never know….

The next day, Kwame and I were parking the car on a street in Albany about to play in a resident’s driveway as part of the town’s COVIDchella, and I remembered pulling up on a similar street to record a spot in performance artist’s Frank Moore’s Shaman’s Den, which a PR person had booked for me. I soon found out that Moore was a performance artist, poet and filmmaker who was interested in ritual and eros. Nudity was often a part of his act. He was funded by the NEA and targeted by Jesse Helms. He also had cerebral palsy and was confined to a wheelchair. Talk about seizing the day! We were a bit of a tame act by his standards, but I recall having an enjoyable time playing music in his den. He knew what I was still, still am, learning, what it was all about and it wasn’t wasting time or complaining about what wasn’t. Moore was extremely present, and more than anything, all heart. It was being open to possibility, to embracing the best of what was.

“I’m going to get a little woo on you,” Jen said later that afternoon, after we played and I recounted the sense of deja vu I kept having all weekend over mezze and shish kabob. She was talking about astrology. Evidently, Saturn is shaking things up, having moved into another sign, giving us an opportunity to revisit old terrain and, perhaps, do things differently. Or at least how I understood what she was saying! Who knows? I’m not an astrologer. I do know the blasts from the past keep knocking, and for the most part, I can look at those past images with compassion and humor — which is perhaps why Frank Moore came to mind — and maybe show up for the now that much better.