February Crushes: Punch Brothers

I'll be seeing this amazing band live for the second time tomorrow night with Mr. Magpie and two dear friends here in Portland.  I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that I have a crush on the whole band.  Lead singer and mandolinist extraordinaire Chris Thile, whom you may also know from Nickel Creek, won a MacArthur genius award this past year, and his collaboration with Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, and Edgar Meyer led to The Goat Rodeo Sessions, a fantastic CD that just won the Grammy for Best Folk Album.  

I have to admit that I was smitten from the moment I first saw Punch Brothers open for Josh Ritter a few years ago down in Boston, and I think you'll love them, too.

Music for a Tuesday

Because we all need some beauty on a Tuesday, here's a wee bit for you.
I'll be back tomorrow with giveaway news!  x Gigi

I've Been Missing You

It has been ages since my last post.  Please forgive my long absence.  Mr. Magpie and I have been housesitting for friends back on the island where we lived last year.  We haven't had regular internet access while we've been there, which has made me realize just how much I depend on it every single day for both work and pleasure.  I have also been very busy with several writing and photography projects.  Many wonderful things have been happening on the photography front--things that I can't talk about yet, but that I will sometime later this year.  How's that for a tease?

I have also had a terrible cold, which I'm only now emerging from.  Being bedridden and sans internet left me feeling quite sorry for myself for a couple of days.  A few very brisk island walks cured me of most of my self pity, though, and they also rewarded me with several marvelous bird sightings, including my first great blue heron of the year as well as multitudes of cardinals, robins, chickadees, and crazy starlings.  So spring must be here even if it still feels like winter.  At least there are a few hardy flowers braving the cold, including an elegant hellebore that I will share just as soon as I have time to process some photos.

Please come back and visit me on Friday when I will be hosting a most special giveaway.  I can't wait to tell you all about it.  In the meantime, here's a lovely Kate Rusby video just for you.

   

Love and Other Magic Spells

Warm thanks to friends who've sent well wishes

via comments, emails, and smoke signals

about the new blog, The Magpie's Pen.

I'm having a grand time over there,

concocting thoughts and prompts

and other sorts of inspiration

for all my writerly friends.

And The Magpie's Fancy

will stay put right

here. In fact,

I've got a

bit of

love

just

for

u.

The Knot

I'm working on a difficult piece of writing that I want to share with you, but it may be some time before I can.  Once when I was having a tough time with a piece of writing in graduate school, one of my professors told me, "Put the problem into the poem."  She suggested that I write about what exactly wasn't working in order to find my way into the heart of the piece.  

To do this feels a bit like trying to untie a particularly nasty knot with your eyes blindfolded.  At first, it seems an impossible task, but as you gradually begin to trust your fingertips, you feel the contours of the thread, and what you learn as you tease out the loops and twists is that the center of the tangle disappears at the very moment it reveals itself to you.  Where there was once a knot there is now a long line running through empty space, which feels like possibility, a string to follow back out of the maze, a thread to weave, a rope on which to walk across a treacherous river.  It's not a guarantee of safety or comfort, but a guide through the hardest parts of the journey.  

I find that I can't untie the knot without trusting myself first.  Tonight, I don't feel it.  Putting the problem in the piece takes an act of faith.  For a long time my acts of faith have failed.  I know that is the point.  I know that means I must have more faith--in myself, in others, in my work.  I read that quote from Emerson and I feel it burn like a condemnation.  What if what lies within me is not the long thread of possibility but the empty space through which it travels?  What if I truly am the nothing I feel?

I went to a lecture once that the late scholar Edward Said gave on hope.  Maybe I have mentioned it before.  It stitched itself into my life more than a decade ago, and now I can't imagine myself without it. What he said boils down to (and sometimes I hear it like he whispered it into my ear alone): to create is to hope.  To face the bleakest moment and still put pen to paper or brush to canvas is to hope.  It can be a chicken and egg problem, which is where the faith part comes in.

A few weeks ago I wrote about loving even when we feel least like loving, and I think this post tonight is a mere extension of what I was talking about.  In fact, both posts are just me taking the advice of my wise professor.  I've chucked the problem right into all of my writing for a few weeks now,  and I'm still messing around with the mere surface of a knot the size of those fabled giant balls of string (or tinfoil ) that enterprising and obsessive hermits have managed to turn into tourist attractions out on dusty desert roads.  I can imagine the crumbling billboard: 

FIVE MILES 

TO THE LOST GIRL'S 

MYSTERIOUS AND AMAZING

NEVER-ENDING KNOT 

OF DOUBT AND FEAR  

And yet I'm still writing.  It can't be all bad.  And for you, because you have been kind enough to visit my little roadside attraction--complete with a souvenir shop peddling snow globes, snake skins, and miniature replica knots on keychains--for you I have the gift of a song from the Josh Ritter show we saw this past weekend here in Portland, just a few blocks from my house.  Yes, I know it's pitch black for much of the song, but that's because he sang it in the dark, which is almost as good as a blindfold, and I promise there's a glimmer of light at the end.  

The Giveaway Winner is . . .

. . . Louis Dean!

I used Random Number Generator to select the winner, and it churned out number 10, which happened to be Louis.  Now, the funny thing about this is that I've known Louis for a very, very long time.  We went to college together back in the, ahem, 1980's, and have only recently reconnected on facebook.  Back in the day, Louis and I lived in the same dorm, shared many a laugh, ate many a dining-hall meal together, and drank many a cheap beer in many a grungy dorm room together.  He is one of the coolest pals ever, and I know he loves, loves, loves good music, so it seems right that the internet gods selected his number.

Thanks, everyone, for entering the Mary Gauthier giveaway!  I'll be hosting more giveaways this summer, so please keep coming back to visit.

A Giveaway . . . Just Because!

Some songwriters just hit you where you live.  Mary Gauthier (pronounced go-SHAY) is one of those songwriters.  With a voice at once edgy and sweet, and lyrics that flow through your veins like a shot of whiskey, Gauthier crafts and performs songs that leave you reeling.  If you like Americana and roots music, Mary is your gal.  Think the lilting rhymes of Johhny Cash, the heart of Lucinda Williams, and a little of the darkness of Tom Waits, and you start to get a sense of her work, although she is definitely an American original.

Her newest album, The Foundling, tells the story of her search for her birthmother.  In Gauthier's own words from her website:

I was born to an unwed mother in 1962 and subsequently surrendered to St. Vincents Women and Infants Asylum on Magazine Street in New Orleans, where I spent my first year.  I was adopted shortly thereafter but left my adopted family at fifteen.  I wandered for years, looking for, but never quite finding a place that felt like home.  I searched for, found, and was denied a meeting with my birth mother when I was 45 years old.  She couldn't afford to reopen the wound she'd carried her whole life, the wound of surrendering a baby.  The Foundling is my story.  

If you would like to be entered in the giveaway for a chance to win a copy of this remarkable album, simply leave a comment on this post by Thursday, June 17 at noon EST.

The Foundling can be purchased here.

Click here to watch some of Gauthier's videos.

Mary Gauthier will be playing in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 

on Tuesday, June 15 at Club Passim!

Thanks so much for visiting!  xo Gigi

Berry Picking: the Window to Joy

We spent Saturday afternoon at our old favorite, Lull Farm, in Hollis, NH, picking our own blueberries and raspberries, and thanking our lucky stars that the rain finally stopped in time to keep the berries from moldering on the bush.
A memory came to my mind as we picked, one from five or six summers back when Todd and I went exploring one afternoon out in the countryside near Sebago Lake in Maine.  On a back road we found an old farmhouse, its white paint peeling and front porch sagging.  It was perched on top of a hill with a hand painted sign out front that said RASPBERRIES.   Well, we are suckers for handmade signs and fresh fruit both, so we pulled around to the back of the house, parked, and walked down a muddy path, following a painted arrow that pointed to a tumble-down shed.  Inside were two girls at a small card table with a cigar box of money.  We paid them a few bucks, they handed us a couple of green quart containers, and then they directed us toward another path that led a bit farther up the hill from the shed.   
The sun was beaming, but it wasn't a hot day--maybe seventy-five degrees and dry.  As we made our way through the tall raspberry bushes, we heard a few other people picking and chatting quietly.  Other than their voices, the only sounds were bees and a light breeze through the trees that bordered the raspberry patch.  The bushes were loaded with deep red berries, so perfectly ripe that they almost fell into our hands.  As we picked (and ate) our share, I thought, "Life doesn't get better than this."
 Just at that moment, someone--we never knew who--opened one of the farmhouse windows, and the strains of "Ode to Joy" poured from the window out over the field.  It turned out that life could get even better than what I'd imagined.  It was one of the best hours of my life, finding that farmhouse and that berry patch, but the best thing about that hour is that I've carried it with me ever since.  Many hours of my life in the last few years have been much less than perfect, but there was always this memory to go back to when I needed it.    
No one played "Ode to Joy" when we picked berries this weekend, but the sun was shining again, a breeze was blowing, and the berries and each other's company were, as you can see, all the joy we needed.

What is one of your happiest moments?  What made it so?

Bittersweet Heartache

I'm up late tonight working on a manuscript, listening off and on to early Bob Dylan.  If you ever need a good cry in the middle of the night, listen to "Girl from the North Country."  I'm writing a tough scene in my story, and, yes, getting pretty misty.  Not weepy, just misty.  Trust me, that's enough.  I need to see to type.  This moment grabs my heart and gives it a good squeeze every time:

I'm a wonderin' if she remembers me at all.

Many times I've often prayed,

In the darkness of my night, 

In the brightness of my day. 

I read a great blog post the other day--can't remember where at the moment--about favorite sad songs, songs of heartbreak, songs to nurse a broken heart or maybe even rub salt in the wound.  This one would have to be on my list.  What songs would you include?  I'd love to hear.