Mama, dear mama, mama tell me more. I feel a trembling in my arms, I've never felt before. Daughter, dear daughter, listen what I say, Your granny always told me you'd feel that way some day. Every time she looked at you, she saw the old-time ways. When we could fly, we could fly. We could slip the bonds of earth and rise so high. We could fly across the mountains, Together, hand in hand. Searching, always searching for the promised land. Mama, dear mama, come and stand by me, I feel a lightness in my feet, a longing to be free. My heart it is a-shakin' with an old, old song. I hear the voices sayin', it's time for moving on.

 So this morning, Mikaela was cold while at work and I told her that if she wanted, she could come over to hang out with me and the animals and we could lay a fire in the hearth so she wouldn't be cold. (My plan was to get some laundry done today, and I did get some of it done, and because she came over we had lunch at my place instead of me going into work so I was able to get more loads in across the day.) And we had a lovely fire going all day long.

 

Yes, my fires always have sprites in them and the flames always seem to have beasts in them. As has been pointed out to me by many people, my magic is far more elemental and fée, doesn't require ritual the way it does for most people.

I had her bring my laptop home (I'd left it at work the night before so we could have music when I came in to spend some time with her) and when she got there and after I'd started a fire going I asked her what she wanted to listen to and we had the following conversation:

Mikaela: "Something witchy. Or pirate-y."

Dani (slowly): "Well. All i can think of for pirate is Pirates of the Caribbean. or sea shanties."

Mikaela (made a face): "No. not those. I mean something to suit the season. Witchy is more my mood."

Dani (sighing): "Sweetie. the only thing truly witchy I can think of is Delta Rae......"

Mikaela (quietly): "I know. That's what I want. But I'm still mad at them and they're still dead to me. Unless. have they apologized to you for the hurt and the wrong they did?"

Dani: "No."

Mikaela: "Have they even acknowledged it ever?"

Dani: "No. And. Love. It's been enough years that I don't expect they ever will. Not at this point. There are things that are impossible even for me."

Mikaela: "But you're the most magical and optimistic person I've ever met! You don't give up on what's right..."

Dani (sadly): "But even my magic can't make someone be a better version of themself than they choose to be. And at this point, it's been what, four years? They've made it clear who they are and what their true ethics and nature are. I no longer have any hope inside me that they will do the right thing or their music can com back alive to me to bring me joy again. Sometimes you just have to believe a person is who they show themselves to be by their actions and choices rather than by anything they say or claimed they were."

Mikaela: 'Then they are still dead to me. And they always will be until they apologize to you and make right what they did wrong. Only... I miss how it was when i was little and we could listen to them all the time and I would fall asleep to them. When their music was all joy and you didn't have that sadness in your eyes you try to hide but I still see, especially when they come up or you think about them. I can't forgive them for that sadness in your sparkle."

Dani (hugs her): 'I miss when their music was a source of joy and a soundtrack for our adventures too, sweetling. But they're not now, they're dead to you now, and there's no joy in any of the songs for me now. And that's their choices, it's their actions manifested that truth and nobody else's. So we'll not think on them anymore. How about some Rhiannon Giddens? We Could Fly is a very witchy spiritual song and I think most of her songs have the vibe you want even when they speak of heavy hard histories."

It was only later, after she left and I'd folded everything and my aunt had called to tell me she found the Highland Park scotch and was sipping it in Charlottesville thinking of me that I realized: today is the five year anniversary of the Tree of Life Synagogue massacre. (Ironically, the shirt I put on today is the We Banjo 3 one of a tree of life under the stars that says "By Hardship We Rise" in a banner across the roots. It's a shirt they designed during the early first year of the pandemic when everything was still in lockdown and nobody knew when or if live music could return in the ways it had before; subconscious choices are strange but rarely wrong with me.) Which means tomorrow (today now since it's after midnight) marks four years since Britt made the choice to block me on the band's official Instagram account. It's an easy moment and date timestamp for me to remember because I was actively in my Instagram when their account disappeared form my unwatched stories while my parents were out of town and I was standing in the doorway waiting after letting the dogs out was about to head out the door to the interfaith solidarity unity sabbath shiva held at the Unitarian church hosted by three of the rabbis (one of them a trans Jew) and two of the black pastors/community leaders in town and the host lesbian Unitarian priest. And when I went to search the band up while Sophie ran back in past me and Audrey went to sniff the hydrant at the corner, it told me that no users could be found by searching Delta Rae. I was shocked and then angry but too hollow for the anger to catch anything and stay burning, so it just turned to ash and bitterness and I said, 'Of course she did that TODAY of all days to a Jewish fan who never gave them anything but admiration and honesty. Fuck that. Today is not a day that as a Jew I need any false allies who don't walk what they claim to stand for -- at least I can see their real colors now. I'm going to go where the real allies to fight this are."  And it didn't really hurt after that until I was back home and all alone with the dogs and all I wanted to do was curl up and listen to All Good People and Morning Comes and try to find some comfort there for my feeling of being all alone in a world where there are those who hate me for no reason other than the accidents of my birth as a Jewish woman born in Jerusalem to American parents. I'm reminded of it every time Israel and Palestine are in the news, I'm reminded of it every time that I don't know how to list my place of birth because it's changed so many times in my life that no two passports say the same thing, and to know how many countries in this world aren't safe for me to even visit because of the passport I travel on.... I've spent my whole life aware that though I hide in plain sight there are plenty in this world who would kill me for nothing more than the accidents of my birth but nothing to do with ME or my choices. And the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history reminded me that even here in the "free" country I wasn't free and following that synagogue attack I was just feeling so all alone.... 

Somewhere in me I still grieve for all the joy that was lost as a result of Britt's choices in the name of the entire band, which they have all continued to stand behind and allow to be perpetuated in their name, and that she chose to do it when I was already in a place of the hollows feeling all alone because of the shooting at the synagogue and took from me one of the places that had up til then been my comfort in the face of the white supremacist patriarchal hate and misogyny that is woven through America's identity and the fight to not let it win..... Somewhere inside me there is the sense of betrayal at the hypocrisy and the gap between all the rhetoric they claimed to stand for and the truth of their actions.... But even today it's not a sorrow that can find its way to be expressed in tears, it's the dry ashy sorrows of the hollows, where all you feel is the emptiness. The absence of what you loved dearly and is now lost and dead to you -- that's what the hollows are. The place of echoes that's too empty for tears. It's the nothing, the apathy, that is the opposite of love. That's the place inside me that I instantly enter whenever I try to listen to any Delta Rae songs or hear Britt's vocals or see any video or images with her in it. Because for me, since she's the one who caused this to happen, anything that involves her sends me straight to the hollows where I feel nothing at all in response to the songs I loved or anything she's involved in. 

So anyway. No Delta Rae songs today for Mikaela and the fur babies and me, even though it was the right season for it and both Mikaela and I were missing when that would have been the obvious and only choice of music for us for a day when the veil was thin and growing ever thinner as Samhain approaches. They are dead to her until they apologize for the wrong and the hurts and the sadness made by their collective choices, and for me there is no joy in their songs anymore. Not even the ones that I loved. And since late August 2019, I have given up hope that they even care or have any desire to make anything right and I have accepted that there is now only emptiness and deadness where once there was (and should still be) joy, even for the songs I used to love most dearly of all. Only the hollows of mourning the love and the joy that is now gone and lost to me..... 

Four years is a very long time to still be in mourning over someone else's choices... But then, in this life I'm always a long time in the hollows of mourning whenever I lose anyone or anything I have loved deeply. And my love for Delta Rae and their music and the ethical/social/philosophical causes they claimed to stand by ran so deep in me for so many years before the choice/actions of Oct 28, 2018 murdered it all for me into a state of non-reaction to everything they create or do as a collective. After all the shows I'd been to over so many years in so many states and all the hours the music carried me through, the loss hit me like losing a beloved family member unexpectedly and without warning. So yes it's been four years, but inside me, everything related to them or being reminded of them still hits me back into the hollows and the sorrowing of mourning an emptiness where once there was love in my life. The band may still be together, but as a result of Britt's choices in the name of the entire band and the band standing behind it never righting the ostracism or even acknowledging the bullying her choices created of the band's official Instagram account, the music is dead to me in a way that it wouldn't be if they had broken up or actually died... Their songs and the promises of the goodness in them as a collective for change is what died the day she made her choice and acted upon it... And as along as that choice is clung to and never made right, they and their music and the promises of goodness in them remain dead to me and my life and even if I hear their songs by chance, it can't even make me feel the smallest tiniest bit of remembered happiness to make me smile or bring a light to my eyes. The last time that happened was in 2019, when I held hope inside me that it had been a mistake and that now they were indie they would choose to right things once they were reminded of the mess and wrong that was done in the band's name. 2019 was also the last time i saw them, any of them, in person or attended any shows of theirs. 

Of course social media doesn't want me to give up like that....  Not a day goes by that my facebook sponsored content doesn't serve up the High Noon Show. And both Ticketmaster and Live Nation decided last week that rather than serve up all the tickets onsale they would only tell me about this one show at high Noon.

Which Crissy told me and showed me when we were at Viking Brew Pub before the Lone Bellow (with BAILEN opening) show at Stoughton Opera House was highly abnormal -- that hers were just upcoming shows and they were one recommendation down near the bottom of many....

But what do facebook and my inbox know about the choices people won't make because they think they did no wrong? What do algorithms understand about the death of joy that was and should have been when you're in the hollows of losing where once you loved? 

But that's not how a soul keeps going. That's not how you make it through the hollows. You have to keep your face to the light of everything that brings you joy, even in the deserts of the hollows. That's how you get back to where everything sparkles and shines and you don't lose yourself in the place where grief is too deeply pervasive to be purged in the catharsis of tears. So let us acknowledge where the emptiness is and the hurting that the hollows protects us from being consumed by, and let us turn toward the light and the sun of the people and things that gift joy light into ones life. Until the hollows dry up enough of the deep sorrows that you can cry out and purge what remains without drowning in it all. Because it will. In enough time, all things change. And until then, there are still sources of other joys not tied into the mourning and the loss that created these hollows.

At least today, on the actual anniversary of the Tree of Life massacre, I wasn't alone. I had a fire and my bonus little sister (who was one of my older sisters two lives ago) and my animals and Rhiannon Giddens music.  And tomorrow Mikaela is off school as well -- so even though my need to go check in on Crissy's cat Henry will preclude another fire in my hearth still I'll get to spend tomorrow with her and will make it back to work at the end of the day for cocktails and however many hours are left for me to get in before I head home again. And it's almost Samhain for real!

O! And!! The email from Cedar Cultural Center (in Minne) announced today that they will be having a show with Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas on April 19!!!! And their compositions and string parts (that's all they are, entirely instrumental, Scottish fiddle and cello) are so gorgeous!!!! I'm so excited about the promise of it for my life for April!!!! It's a beauty that's well worth the 4 hour drive each way! Tickets go on sale tomorrow (but Cedar is gen ad first come seating) so I'm just waiting on confirmation from Crissy that she wants to go enough to take off work for a Wednesday drive up to Minneapolis.

I am rather sad that the George Winston show in Milwaukee on Tuesday night Nov 1, which was the only night that my mom could make Stones In His Pockets work.... George Winston is also playing green Bay and Eau Claire next week, but I could only get either my mom or Crissy (both of whom have gone with me in the past to see George Winston) to agree to Madison or Milwaukee level humor me for his shows... They like George Winston songs, but not as much as I do -- and they both told me that midweek Eau Claire or Green bay was too far for them to want to go to see him.... Especially since he plays Wisconsin areas every fall into winter so I do get to see him on an annual basis. Which is more than most people get. Still. I would like to go to either the Eau Claire or green Bay shows next week -- though driving back alone that far/late isn't the smartest or safest thing for a girl to do by herself. But still. I do miss me a live George Winston show... I'll have to consider.

[Post Title: Lyrics to the Rhiannon Giddens song We Could Fly. Lordy do I love this song so much!!! Always and always and always love this song!