Stillness and motion

Keep calm and keep going

In mid-September, I did a mini-getaway with a couple of artist friends, renting an old farmhouse on the edge of the Tomales Bay for a mini retreat. All of us wrote or made art or played music so we brought our instruments and sketch pads though the point of the time wasn’t necessarily to generate new material. We hiked along marshes and through dunes and out to the beach, ate gourmet pizza at a bustling cafe in Point Reyes. The stairs of our rental creaked whenever anyone walked upstairs or down as did the old wooden walls of the house in the night and there was a delightful amount of birdsong, but one of the best things about the weekend was the quiet. I don’t know how numb to the amount of noise I’m living amid everyday — car traffic, leaf blowers, construction, you name it —until I wake up to stillness and find myself amazed.

We had drawn up an outline of activities and ended up doing about half of the things we planned. It turned out we most needed that unstructured openness, the blank canvass of quiet more than anything. Inverness was a sleepy town, the streets hushed, the few stores and restaurants either closed or opening at noon, the main attraction being the stunning landscape. I stayed up late reading and got up earlier anyway, to go outside to see if anyone new had flown in. I spent not a small amount of time just gazing out at the dependably gorgeous West Marin landscape.

How fortunate I am, I think every single day.

Other than those couple days in Inverness, September was an intentional blur and bustle of activity. I don’t feel this is a time to sit still for long if you have the option of taking action. I went straight from the mini-retreat to the San Rafael Porchfest — a neighborhood festival with more than 70 acts playing on resident’s porches. Thousands of people showed up to roam Gerstle Park and listen to local acts play.

Given the political climate and that Kamala Harris has made joy a strategy, I’ve made sure to put an old song of mine, ‘Joy,’ back into the mix.

“If hope and fear can be successful political strategies — and they have been in recent presidential election cycles — then why not joy?”1

Which is the spirit I wanted to continue with as I turned my attention back to my main focus of September:19 Voices for Kamala, the benefit for theHarrisWalz campaign and a celebration of the power of women's voices. And after all the planning (and not a little bit of worry that it would all work out!), I was overjoyed to finally see and hear such an amazing group of women all in the same room playing to a full house and delighted to send a big donation to Harris the next day.  As one attendee wrote after the fact “A dazzling display of talented beautiful artists singing for progress, freedom and joy!”

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“People have the power,” I will quote Patti Smith ad infinitum. Smith, 77 and showing no sign of stopping, and much evidence of joy, performed at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass on Sunday, closing her set with her signature anthem. It was more than 90 degrees in the Bay Area, and I didn’t have the energy to deal with the traffic and crowds and get out to the park this weekend. Nonetheless, I could log into the HSB livestream, which I happily did. And how great was it that Sunday’s HSB programming featured performances not only by Smith, but Mavis Staples (85 years) and Emmylou Harris (77 years)? People have the power, and powerful women, blessedly, have the mic.

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It’s been more than a week since the epic goodness that was 19 Voices for Kamala and are now 28 days until this most important of elections. We raised nearly $2500 but there's still time to give more to the #HarrisWalz 2024 effort in the spirit of the concert via ActBlue if you’re so moved. Either way, keep going!

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1”Kamala Harris is showing that joy can be a strategy,” Errin Haines, The 19th