It’s Raining in Cambridge Tonight
16 Nov
I am writing this from my room at Irving House, a great little Bed and Breakfast in the heart of Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA. The owner, Rachel Solem, always takes great care of us, and we look forward to staying here whenever we play the Boston area. It’s raining out tonight, and I’m getting some laundry done downstairs, grateful to have a washer and dryer on site so that we can head to Colorado tomorrow with clean clothes. I’m tired, we’ve been on the road now for so long I don’t even know how long, but I feel good as well, knowing that the shows have been successful, and that I am doing what I was put here to do. A sense of flow comes with this traveling life, and the tiredness comes when I slow down. Tonight we are off. I know I’ll be able to get some rest soon, but tonight, it’s get a few housekeeping things done, find a nice little place to eat dinner in Chinatown, probably The New Golden Gate, ( I love their Lobster with Ginger and Scallions and Salty and Spicy Squid), and go to bed reasonably early, tomorrow is a fly day, off to Colorado for three shows.
I’ve been reading a lot about the Harlem Renaissance lately, and enjoyed one of Langston Hugh’s Memoirs called The Big Sea. It lead me to a book I absolutely fell in love with called Cane by Jean Toomer. What an amazing book! Jean Toomer was unknown to me before I read about his work in Langston’s memoir, and now I am fascinated by him. Alice Walker has written that she can’t live with Cane, she loves the book so much, and here’s a review from Amazon:
“By far the most impressive product of the Negro Renaissance, Cane ranks with Richard Wright’s Native Son and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man as a measure of the Negro novelist’s highest achievement. Jean Toomer belongs to that first rank of writers who use words almost as a plastic medium, shaping new meanings from an original and highly personal style.”
Langston Hughs also reminded me of what an amazing human being Josephine Baker was, and this lead me to discovering that she’d performed her own version of The Times They Are A Changing.
Coretta Scott King asked her if she would take over leadership of the American Civil Rights Movement for the slain Martin Luther King, (she was by his side on for the March on Washington, and spoke to the crowd before him), but Josephine decided that her children were too young to loose their mother. She was an amazing, amazing human being, and now I am on the hunt for a great book about her life. One book leads to another…..
Are you likely to come for a few dates to the UK? England specifically? If not, well, just know how much your music touches me and how I relate. I knew from the first time I heard your voice I would like you and bought all your albums there and then. We survivors need to be out there to show other survivors we can have wonderful lives despite the black hole we had to crawl out of. xo
Josephine Baker was a very remarkable woman…an inspiration to many.
So good to see and hear where your light is shining now. Thanks. Had not heard Josephine Baker for a long time, and had not heard of Jean Toomer. Such a blessed richness.
..so odd ..this just came across the wires …as I was re reading “If (and only if) You Want To Write”….which has sortta become my Bible…after you had recommended same a few years back…and found just ,dare I say, exactly what you found in that miniature masterpiece…that over and over…told us what we really knew already…and the great error in ever thinking that though our expressions are as varied as the species on the planet.. there is but one origin …and it is in the delivery of the Obvious that excites us..and if by extension it excites another…fine …if not ’twas a great trip back to the womb anyway…guess we are all flowers in the same field…but you Mary …have a great way of distribution of the Seminal, so all the other flowers have to thank you…While most thought I was really going off the deep end playing the album Mercy Now over and over ..while getting back up from a destroyed relationship…they had no idea that your genius in finding Truth in Anguish and Pain …was only the Mirror Image Of Beauty in Redemption…and “Mary is just saying what I already know”…it’s just done so well and with the Precision I needed…(it also helps that I drank in Olympic fashion for 30 years always fighting it by Guilt…rather than it’s opposite Weapon of Mercy)….denial is a hard nut to crack…and to get used to loving yourself requires the skill of Courage…AKA …Mercy. Mercy is no pious grace…but a Warrior one…and I suppose , like many, I want to gush with platitudes and gratitudes.. on how your work has made such a difference in my Life…but I know you’d have none of that…but say rather..”Get out in the Field and start Seeding”…well, I’ll try…but in the meantime…armed with that film clip .. the Performance Art it truly is…and possibly a new book to read…I’ll do my Homework…Honestly…and Mercifully ..cause Mary told me.