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meditation: loving what is gone

We know a parent’s overall mood will have an effect on their children. I’m happy with how Isaac’s turning out; he appears to be smart and well-natured. Cooperative and agreeable. Talks a lot and seems relatively competent for his age. I wonder though about my overall mood and the effect it might have on him as he grows up. His mother was diagnosed with cancer and projected to die before the end of the year when he was two months old. Isaac doesn’t live with a father who’s really chosen his circumstances; I can sometimes feel quite bitter about my life. But I take my duties as a parent seriously, and since those duties include securing a child’s emotional well-being and that a parent’s mood can play a role, a negative disposition may be an inadvertent violation of those duties. It’s been clear from the moment I knew Ale was going to die that I had an obligation to accept what was happening and the circumstances that would arise from it, but I don’t think accepting something means as mu...
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being heard

I've wondered about which words would be good to use when it's conversationally natural to mention to Isaac why his mother isn't in his life. If he asks, for example. He knows who his dad is, so where's his mom? He very reasonably will wonder sometimes, so it might make sense to say something about it. It's also going to be natural to just point this out sometimes, even if I'm not asked, because it's a big part of the explanation of why he has to go back to his grandparents' house on Sundays. "If you're my dad, why aren't I living here?" he might wonder. So I thought for a while about what the right words would be, and last weekend I had a chance to try them out. When deciding on what to say, I figured obviously whatever I say has to be comprehensible, and I'm happy to report that I don't think this criterion will ever be difficult to satisfy. When I started having him at my apartment on weekends, I underestimated how much of wh...
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décor

About five or six months after my separation from Sabina, I started to face the fact that having a bunch of index cards scattered around in every room with notes about how upset I was just wasn't likely to be attractive to new romantic prospects that find their way into my apartment.  I mean, they weren't merely notes. A few of them were just notes in plain prose. I did that sometimes when I knew what I wanted to say but didn't know how to say it. More often though they were ideas that had been transformed into poetry, intended for use as lyrics, for songs I'd written about a breakup. Yeah, not great. But I wasn't about to pack them up yet either. The songs hadn't been made yet, which means I still had to record the vocals, and I think it's important to have the original notes in front of me when I do that. Also, by keeping them out, I'm consistently reminded that I have to finish them. The whole room cries out, "Your work's not done." I gu...
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renouncement

In the weeks leading up to Isaac's birth, I took stock of the music I had made and decided it was enough. There were loose ends though. I still hadn't finished the third part of the Long trilogy, and I had piano tracks that I recorded a year earlier for an urgent expression that I had completely lost motivation to complete. I also wondered sometimes if I should have made more urgent expressions about my relationship with Ale. By the way, "urgent expression" is a technical term. I'll explain. My work roughly divides into two types of productions: electronic and acoustic. Electronic productions begin as songs written in an acoustic environment (i.e., on a piano) and are subsequently re-conceived as works produced with numerous electronic elements. Piano passages might be retained, but notes that constitute single chords might be broken down into separate virtual instruments. Tracks might then undergo extensive processing, and various drum machines will be added to c...
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