January Mourning
The Song I Meant to Let Go
One year ago today, the president of the United States of America was sworn in for his second (and final?) term.
In the seventy-six-day interregnum between his election and his inauguration, I found myself anxious and angry when I wasn’t downhearted and despondent. I was unprecedentedly worried, burning with agita. Agita about the fate of the most vulnerable members of American society. About the rule of law and democratic norms. About global security.
My imagination dragged me to the darkest places. That was a year ago. It’s been worse than I imagined.
I took to writing to anchor myself. I even wrote about practices to grapple with anxieties born of political polarization and the politics of hate. I just reread these to discover, to my misfortune, that in the year since the inauguration, I have not sufficiently committed to my own practices nor to the sagacious practices shared by my readers.
I am sharing those practices here again. If, like me, you are feeling unmoored or unsteady, I urge you to (re)read this post.
In addition to writing, I passionately pursued another practice mentioned in that piece: I leaned hard into making art.
I have been living in Europe for twenty years. It’s fine, I suppose. No complaints, really. But I pine to return to Chicago. I know, I know. I can imagine what you're thinking. But I’m turning 50 this year. My old pals and I are getting older, and I’ve learned that I can’t make old friends.
Also, our parents are aging, many of them the hard way. Our folks are dying.
Say what you will about American life, but I feel a desperate urge to support the people who raised me. I can’t save lives. I just want to be there. For them. With them.
I’m aggrieved when I imagine my old friends suffering from knee replacements or strokes or cancer or the quiet accumulations of time…and I can’t be there.
I imagine their parents’ funerals, and I’m an ocean away, and it hurts.
I don’t want to go to hospitals or churches or temples or funerals. But I should. And I must. But I can’t.
There’s something about home. And I am not there.
On our way to school on the Wednesday morning after the 2024 election, my tween daughter, who seems to be inheriting her father’s gallows-adjacent sense of humor, glibly said, “Now it looks like you can’t go home.”
It shook me. She shakes me. She shakes me relentlessly.
To shake it off, that night I sat down at the piano and started playing with that theme. You can’t go home. I was playing slowly, sullenly. I found myself returning to the refrain from the traditional spiritual, Eyes on the Prize. The song reminded me of what to do. It also begged me to hold on.
I kept humming hold on. Then, the verses appeared faster than anything I’ve ever written. For someone accustomed to wrestling with words, these lyrics emerged frictionless and unforced, which frankly felt suspicious.
I wrote a song about honesty and decency, hope and despair, windmills and wildflowers. About home.
I planned to write it, play it as an active meditation between election and inauguration, then sweep it into the wind like a sand mandala. Spiritual hygiene. No attachment.
But then, I was invited to perform at an event on the eve of Inauguration Day. I decided to play this new song. That performance would be my mandala dissolution ceremony.
In practicing for the event, I became attached to the song. Then I named it; the attachment became deeper. After the event, a dear colleague, Ms. Myriah, told me that she felt really connected to it. Alas, I couldn’t bring myself to sweep the song into the wind.
Instead, I reached out to Dave Hirst for guitars before bringing it to Brian Trahan to produce, mix, and master what was once destined for impermanence.
We play music not to escape the moment, but to be in the moment. We play to make the moment habitable. I hope you enjoy my new song. Let the words be yours, I’m done with mine.
Love,
DL
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