Maple and I saw Brandi Carlile in Boston on Friday night. I’m not sure that I am even beginning to come down from the experience yet, it was so much, on every level. We bought the tickets way back in January for Maple’s Birthday and, as it always is in the life of a child, it is incredible how different things are now than they were then. We each feel like so much more than we were back then. Both healed and hardened from this year of moving into the endemic world. Simultaneously licking our wounds, and growing strong new flesh around scars that we couldn’t know how deep were running as we were making them. Brandi’s music was there for us through all of it, both a microscope and a life raft.
Maple says that Brandi is her “ring of keys”. Do you know what that term means? I had to look it up. She had said it to me sometime last year; that listening to “The Joke” helped her know that she wanted to come out. And then she said it to me again on Friday night, through all of the tears and the hugs that carried us through the concert. It was magic y’all. The whole thing, from the first note to the final bow, like something perfect and precious made special for all 30,000 of us. For the LBGTQIA+ community, Brandi is a beacon of courage and love and belonging and there is not one single aspect of that that can be undersung. For a queer kid like moo to grow up with big examples like Brandi Carlile and her family and the community that she just keeps on creating and creating is life-changing. There is so much to relate to: being a gay artist living in rural America with a heart full of love and faith in something brighter and more luminous than any small-minded antiquated ideology could ever bring to bear.
It was magic. I loved every single moment and every single person that was there, on stage and in the massive audience. Every song was perfect and thrilling and made me so thankful to be alive and to be me and love who I love and thankful that I am learning to see and know and love people more and more every year. We stayed in the fancy-ass hotel above the venue that I will be paying off for a while and it was a perfect little nest; like we were birds perched in a canyon skyrise cave looking out over the bright lights and life of downtown. Me and my nearly grown girl. The one who, beyond any doubt and all measure, split my heart open to her and to the care and tending of my life, and my family, and the world. It was all the stuff of mama’s dreams.
Earlier in the week, I taught the first Yoga and Mindfulness class at Peoples Academy, Maple’s high school. The whole thing came about because she asked me to teach some yoga to the track team last spring and afterward we could both see how important it would be to offer to the teens in general. In the days leading up to this first class, Maple asked me what I was going to say, how I was going to lay the foundation for what I was going to be doing with the kids that showed up. She caught me a little off-gaurd and truthfully, I hadn’t thought about it specifically yet at that point. So I asked her what she thought along with what she says to kids who come to the Fiber Arts Club that she started at the high school last year. She said that she would start by recognizing that life is hard, for everyone, and that here (yoga class) is a place to both acknowledge that and build some tools for dealing with the difficulty. (Uhh yeah this is my kid teaching me forever and for the record- along with this: she was always listening. She sure was.) Then she said that one of the big intentions behind Fiber Arts, and really all of the school groups and clubs in her opinion, is for community. For kids to have a place where they feel a sense of belonging along with a knowing that they are a part of something and that they have value in that space, and in all spaces really. She is brilliant, I swear.
I was reflecting on this a bunch throughout the week not just in the classes that I taught at school and at the lodge, and it was in the forefront of my thoughts when I spoke with a woman who is interested in coming to the retreat that Sam Rice and I are leading together in Stowe this Winter. She, similar to me, lives in a place that doesn’t feel proximal to a yoga community, whether by virtue of her own new motherhood or by physical location or both. This dynamic really got me thinking about all of the divergent paths and forks in the road I have either followed or turned away from over the course of my life. Especially as an adult and especially as it relates to yoga and motherhood. Early on it felt big and lonely to choose to begin a family over countless classes and hours spent in the studio with other practitioners and teachers. My friends and my people. And then I had to claim that choice over and over again through the years, through feelings of separation and distance and loneliness. I seldom feel that way ever any more; it was made better in small part through online yoga, certainly; that has helped and you can probably read about it in the countless captions attached to videos I shared during Covid, where that was an ever-present theme and muse. But mostly, my capacity to maintain a sense of belonging has been made possible and been nourished through the regular, all be it occasional efforts made by myself and others to gather and share our breath and movement and heart by immersing ourselves in a practice and a tradition that we each love in our own, yet powerfully similar, ways. It has been another life raft of sorts to carry us through. It has certainly carried me.
I know that when I announced that the retreat Sam and I would be teaching would be an intermediate-level practice experience, it gave some folks pause while they questioned whether or not it was for them; if they belonged in such a “level”. I also know that I haven’t really taken the time to explain what the thought behind that is, in part because I wasn’t quite sure how I could say it that would convey the intention. What I have been saying when I talk to folks about it is more along these lines: that it is intermediate because we are going to spend a lot of time in the yoga. It is not an add-in to a relaxing vacation. It is the central focal point, it is the thread that connects us and draws us together. What I want to say is that it is intermediate because there is an element of the yoga being a force in each of our individual lives that we have given ourselves to. Through time, through space, through loss, and change, and all of the other turbulence that makes up a life, the yoga has held us. Whether through an era of daily practice or a season of seldom making it onto our mat, the light that lives inside of our hearts for practice, has burned. Intermediate is by no means to say that we can do all of the poses, of course not; it doesn’t even mean we can do most. Rather what it speaks to is that the yoga can hold our attention for 5-6 hours and day over a long weekend, and that that stretch of time is a part of a longer conversation and relationship each of us has with practice. This is what we hope to convey through the use of the word “intermediate”.
This mood of community connection through time and space came alive for me at the concert on Friday night. So much of the big coming together of all of these new and old Brandi Carlile fans and her whole vibe of inclusivity and welcome really spoke to the belonging that lives even through the loneliness. So many of her songs weave this theme through them and I think it is in part what makes her music so real and raw and hopeful for so many. When I attach this post to a reel, I will probably put it with a version of “Right On Time” from her newest album (and the delux). I think right now it is one of the very best ballads for expressing where we find ourselves in the pseudo-post-Covid world. Full of recognition for our pain and loss running right alongside our strength and humanity and hope. I think it is just right.
I am sure I have so much more to say about all of this in the coming days and weeks. Especially as it pertains to parenthood and presence and continuity and community. But this is what I have for now. Thanks for being here.