Phone Calls

One of the many artists I have liked through the years is a Canadian named Jann Arden. She had some minor US hits from an album called Living Under June. I really liked Unolved a duet with Jackson Browne, but I digress. This morning I wanted to find out if she would be touring this summer. My hope would be that she might be playing at small hall where you could hear her voice and see her face. Nothing posted for the summer so it goes. However she had an online journal.

I only read yesterday’s entry but it was wonderful (5-15-08). God how much of that story sounds like the way I communicated with my parents before they died. One parent talked about the mundane but talked on for a goodly while. One parent yelled, Your Son is on the Phone and that was the sum of the contact. I wonder how many people have that kind of relationship with their parents post high school or college? In my case the phone calls were the way of contact because letters took too long to write and I couldn’t stop in often because I have moved 600 miles away. Uh yeah the 600 mile move was mostly to get out of the intrusive sphere of my folks and my large extended family.

So much of contact with people becomes routine clichés over time. It is just a fact and I don’t mean this to be a criticism of such contact. Just saying hello and cracking the same lame jokes again can be soothing, comforting and part of making a person feel in place in the world. But sometimes you are just left wanted more.

Here is the link to Arden’s journal. Check the entry from yesterday out. http://www.jannarden.com/journal.php