I am writing this in a budget motel in Buffalo, Minnesota. It’s a clean, but spartan place. I talked a bit with the owner, an Indian-American woman very kind and proud of her establishment. She wore all the hats, working the front desk and then mid-morning donning on the cleaning apron and cleaning all the empty rooms. Since I have an Airbnb at my property in Chicago, I mentioned to her how impressed I was with the way she took care of the facility. She smiled and laughed when I said, “I get to do what you do, too sometimes!” There is an art form to cleaning, especially the same rooms all the time. Humility can be found when kneeling and hand cleaning a toilet. It was nice to meet a fellow artist.
The day before, I looked across the parking lot to see that the legion hall had sponsored a ladies wrestling match out in their parking lot. It looked like the sort of stuff I watched as a kid on All-Star Wrestling, except these were women who could have easily been my niece's age. An audience made up of families were there, applauding the choreographed moves as one woman slammed another onto the canvas mat of the ring. The referee moved around animatedly. I thought about filming it for fun but decided that it was best to just let it go off into the ether. As of this writing, I still am shaking my head in bemusement at this odd, but wildly popular type of performance art. Does it touch souls, I wonder?
The reason I was in town was to pay respect for the passing of Maggie FitzGerald’s brother, Sean Cronin. He died last September at 70 years old and his death was quite a shock as he passed a week after I was in Buffalo to pay respect for the passing of his brother, Michael Cronin. Michael’s remembrance last year was tough, but we didn’t have the same relationship that I had with Sean. Sean’s remembrance this year was wonderfully hard and bittersweet. It is hard to accept that Sean is gone from this world, and we gather to remember his memory. There were plenty of grandkids around, that next generation blissfully unaware of the meaning of the gathering, but jumping in the above ground pool and having a “cousins club.” That will be the memory they will touch on years from now. A beautiful pictorial of Sean’s life had been made, and I found myself tearing up as many of the photos recalled a time or a place over the years of my own visit to his and his wife Christie’s home.
On the back of the property is a little hillock that had a tree with a bench underneath it. Sean used to sit there and gaze over the rolling hills, woods and marshland that make up this part of Wright County. I sat there and gazed for a while and thought about another friend who died recently, John Rice. John was a musician who was on several of our albums and the PBS shows we made in 2007. How he passed, I don’t know, but John was just another wonderful soul moving on his celestial journey. He was one of those people that was a "satellite" in my life, coming in from orbit when we were recording or performing and then moving far out on his own elliptical course. I myself am a satellite in a lot of my friendships and relationships. Music is mostly to blame, being out on the road brings me in and out of lives at different times, different places and though it is wonderful to be connected through text and phone calls, even those fall by the wayside in the busy daily happenings that make up life. I guess we all are satellites for each other, looping in and out until that one day when we ultimately break that orbit and leave this existence.
All this occurs as I near my 63rd revolution around the sun. I have been thinking a lot about orbiting--my own revolutions filled joy and gratitude as I contemplate my own mortality. I think of how grateful I am for all the friendships and glorious memories I have amassed thus far on earth. How much joy has been produced and captured on canvas, audio and visuals. But also, how much laughter, meaningful moments and peak experiences that soared above the mundane and chaotic blather. How I wish I could have a pictorial of those peak experiences we could somehow all watch now, rather than looking back with some nostalgic feeling years down the road. How amazing to have good people in my life that took time from their own orbiting to acknowledge me passing by.
Life is about touching souls and as an artist, I realize how fantastically satisfying it is to do just that. But we are all artists on one level or another and it is key to understand that.
It is also key to know we all will be remembered by those who we’ve shared those blissful, joyful moments with. Everything else in our life will not matter a wink. Those who understand this have to remind themselves daily of this, because Joy requires effort. It is a mindful action to be Joyful.
And, if we are lucky, like Sean or John, we will be remembered by those who we have touched. As one young man (who had grown up with Sean's son Seamus) said today at Sean’s remembrance "I am all the better in my life for having known Sean.” What a wonderful salute to give. And it was not by happenstance or serendipity, but a fleeting, joyful, intentional touching of souls, orbiting past and onward into the unknown.
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