The New Call

My grandfather, the band leader and humanity proponent, refused to bridge into the coming age.

He grieved over loss of the musical movement days he’d come through, and worried that true performance art values and morals were being corrupted.

Though he would not help me become part of his living legacy, I was held up close to it all, snuggled warm for as long as I could be.

I absorbed nuance of the process of artistic adaptability as his music evolved and movies and musicals filled the big screen and TV.

And as my life suffered patterns of disruption time and again, I learned to instinctively identify patterns of continuity – no longer bound by rules of conformity because these precepts would not welcome me.

My grandfather’s presence was the scent of love, endless cocktail hours, and burned cigarettes left filling his closet of countless professional jackets and outfits.

I still remember the lingering smell of leather shoes after feet recently vacated where I would hide in his closet, and the adoration for each other in my grandparents’ eyes when they would dress up and go out for an evening together

I listened to his piano composing process and wondered why it could not easily transfer on to me when I would sit right there next to him on the bench (I was very, very young, then).

I used to think it was because of the trauma and my being closed off, held away from the world.

But now, as wild magic finally comes forward from me into making new songs all my own, I begin to understand.

What I am meant to be now was not reflected then.

I am meant to be a bridge between generations.