Quiet moments that refresh your soul in life do come, but not often. Savor those ones that do arrive. Hold on to them. Memorialize them in your journal. In written form your pen strokes create something akin to a glass vial containing the last remnants of a beloved fragrance. With the vial you can just barely crack it open and take a whiff, with a journal you can read just a few lines and then you remember. In either case you can be transported back to that special place for an instant, for a moment. Sometimes an instant of joy will fend off a very, very rough day.
Recently I had a period when the bustle of life slowed for just a second. The catalyst was an invite to a concert while the boys were away from home and safely lodged at music camp. Up North, way up north Francie and I wended our way last Thursday afternoon. We were off to catch up with dear friends and to see a concert. The ostensible reason for the journey was that we had been offered an opportunity of tickets to see Joan Baez at Interlochen.
Now my taste for Joan Baez has waxed and waned over the years but it had been a long time since I really had an opinion about her either way. A concert seemed a wonderful reason to get together with these good hearted and smartly funny people.
All agreed that due to our schedules we would meet not at our friends’ homes but at a restaurant near the venue. The meal at the restaurant was okay. I ordered a meatball sandwich, nothing transcendent there but that was my fault now wasn’t it? If you are looking for something special you order something special not a pedestrian sandwich.
The concert on the other hand was more that I expected; it was wonderful. Going into I was mulling a question that was probably articulated best as at forty years after Woodstock, how much could I expect? But from the very start it was clear it was a special night.
Arriving at the venue I saw that the hall is what is known in the trade as a barn, a large open air mostly covered glorified band shell. Sitting in the amphitheater we were facing in the direction of a lake. Warm but not hot it was a perfect summer evening. On either side of the stage you could see through the trees and look out over that calm water.
We were about one row in front of the board and dead center. We sat in the in the softly changing glow of the soundboard’s electronics. The lights of the mixing board wavered changing in intensity. The aqua green and pale blues with small red dots and faint numerical readouts were ever morphing. Being in the forward shadow of that glow assured us that the aural mix was a good as it was anywhere in the house.
The audience was older. Sitting there in those narrow seats (specked out in the days before the obesity crisis in the boomers became self evident) were people like me. Many of those people (shifting from one cheek of their ass to the other to keep blood flowing) I am sure heard Joan Baez, really heard her for the first time as she sang I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night. Back in 1970 we had all been transported by our one friend who had enough cash to take us to the Woodstock festival via the overpriced 3 LP set on Cotillion records. A few people here maybe picked up on her music earlier but looking around I am of the opinion that if that were the case they were precocious and the exposure was from an older sister or brother playing the music on their parent’s console stereo.
The lights on stage rose just a little bit and suddenly there she was. With a tight bluegrass/newgrass band she worked her way through the cannon of folk songs that have traveled with me from college and onward. She sang murder ballads. She sang songs of the lass disguised as a man to save her lover now gone a sea. She sang Dylan and she sang of Dylan. And finally she sang of the South last days and from the south closing with pure bluegrass stained glass acapella gospel of Angel Band.
Her voice was still there mostly. She hit the high notes but sliding down the scales was not an option. She reworked a few songs but there were still her songs, she owned them from start to finish always the consummate artist in her presentation. The sun’s light was slow in fading over the lake that lay behind the amphitheater. But this is the North Country in summer you know. The light in its slow flight remained lingering so as to outline the trees between my seat and the water. There was a dim glow until very late in the concert. Forty years almost to the day from when she belted many of these songs on Yasgur’s farm, the night was still charged, her music remains a touchstone that matters.
And then it was over. We headed off to take up our hosts on their offer of hospitality at there lakeside home in the woods. Using social media I documented the physical environment of the place but not the feeling. Pictures were posted on Facebook that showed a gorgeous waterfront and the verdant canopy that lies between the house and the water. An image of a magnificent and sensual whitefish dinner with baked veggies and really fresh corn got popped up as an upload a little while later. None of those images captured the smells of the forest mixing with the smell of fresh cooked sweet summer corn. How could grainy pixels captured by a telephone camera ever convey any sense of the light hearted and warm conversation that follows a good meal and a few ounces of India Pale Ale?
We talked late into the night for the two nights we stayed there. We walked the beach. A bonfire was built and sitting quietly we experienced a lakeside sunset. Of course the conversation turned to the green flash and then to the northern lights. What wonderful topics as the sounds of the trees moving gently in the breeze provided a background sonata.
Sometimes it is just words spoken in conversation, the tones and the timbre that make all the difference. Being engaged in an oral history, or dissecting a personal issue may not really matter as much as the flow of the words, the continuing nature of the conversation. Sincerity and warmth often trump “getting to the crux” of whatever life is presenting to us right now. The tone and timbre of the conversation was wonderful.
Yeah, take time and savor the moments when warming by a fire you feel a northern summer night come to full.
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