At the end of my day it’s the little stories that collect and twist into the shawl of sleep. They replay sometimes at a more appreciative pace. Time slows down a little and the focal area widens and suddenly takes into view the cacophony, color, caresses and odors of the day I just dashed through. I catch the significance of a sideward glance or a smile—the peripheral narrative that makes sense of it all. Often I find myself reviewing a jumble of old familiar images—the illuminated last suppers, flopping fish and leave takings from safe harbors.
One powerful and persistent story is of my mother’s first and possibly only train ride. This would have occurred around the end of the First World War. She was 9 or 10 and her namesake aunt Alice had died. She was sent on the train to attend the funeral alone. After the service a woman gave her a box of a dozen white handkerchiefs. She said she had never owned anything so beautiful. The train moved very slowly among encampments of bivouacked soldiers. There were campfires and she smelled smoke and cooking. She held a handkerchief in her fingers and extended it whipping into the air. The night took it. She repeated her actions “till they were all gone.” Mama made a motion with her hands like a bird flying up to the sky.
Another image that returns unbidden is that of a fruit jar half filled with marbles I found in a fallen-down shed behind a dairy when I was a child. There were only a few commercially produced marbles in the group, the rest were a wonderful ménage of handmade unglazed red clay marbles of various sizes and glazed versions of the same. One marble was glazed in swirls of primary blue and milky white. It lay cool in my hand, content to be perfect. It would be just a few years later that a photograph taken of earth from the Apollo 8 Mission would reveal my perfect blue and white marble.
Most often it is the lines of an old song that takes up a companionable occupancy in my dimming mind; one of the tunes Mama favored for a lullaby, like “Leaving Cheyenne,” the old cowboy’s love song to his horse. Or the hauntingly beautiful strains of “The Cuckoo,” which always takes me back to a mossy Appalachian glen overhung with magnolia and dogwood. In “Mountain Field” the remembered smile of a woman stops a man mid-furrow as he plows, and “Where the Bluebonnets Roll” tells of the peace of a prairie burial. Melody and cadence usher me into that place where my unconscious takes over the storyteller’s job, and the dream begins. And from this dream came my new album OPEN HEART.
As James Jay traveled the world he found solace in a certain type of bar, more public house than watering hole, the local pub where friends gathered for camaraderie and conversation—a place where the ancient bard was revered. When James and his wife Aly came home to Flagstaff they wanted the Uptown Pubhouse to be such a place. It has become known for being a neighborhood gathering place for stimulating conversation with an incredible selection of single-malt whiskies. If you want to hear poetry recited or an author read from their work or a local songwriter try out new tunes this is your place.
James and Aly have generously offered to host the CD release party for my new album OPEN HEART at the Uptown Pubhouse, 114 N. Leroux (773-0551), Sunday June 23 from 2–5p.m. The album is a recording of a live solo performance at the Arizona Folklore Preserve last June, recorded and mixed by Michael Erickson and Jon Messinger of Strawberry River Records. We will have an open mic and I’m asking my musical friends to bring an instrument and share a tune. Please drop by to help me celebrate and let me autograph a CD for you. If you can’t attend but would like a CD I am offering free delivery in Flagstaff or free shipping out of area until July 1. Just call or e-mail me: (520) 491-0125 or tony@tonynorris.com.
There will be snacks and the largest selection of draft beers in northern Arizona.
