I never, met Bonnie, but I knew her former boyfriend, Dick Waterman, who managed the old timers, like Son House, Fred McDowell, Skip James, as well, as back then Buddy Guy, Jr. Wells, and Luther Allison.
Bonnie cut her eye teeth playing with the old guys, learning that bottleneck thing, and she does justice to it. Just as John Mooney, who learned from Son House, does.
BTW, I recorded Eddie'Son'House in the fall of 1969 in my dorm room, before that fateful day when some kids, wanting to learn bottleneck, gave him a jug of wine. One bitter cold night in Rochester, a snowdrift, and frost-bitten fingers...and Son House's career was history. |
It is Valentine's Day. May your love hold you in the blessings of your life whatever they are. This collection of songs may have something to bandage your pains.I am home after a long day. Sitting still, very still thinking about love letters, love songs, listening to this downloaded Bonnie Raitt, as I watch a campus shooting being reported on CNN. It is real. it isn't surreal right now.
A tragedy on a university in Illinois I think.
I was with a crisis team today talking about our school crisis. The killing by one child of another in our district. A death of a child I taught a long time, yesterday. Who carried all of the things one might never wish on such small shoulders. Music helping fill in the in betweens when pain waves in and out, when the coinciding of Valentines day and my happy 1sters gleeful in their parties is framed by the greater community and personal soulfilled grief of losing a child to a classroom shooting.
Carrying my own feelings, I want to talk through this lovely collection by an artist that seems to be singing to me this afternoon.Soulful, bluesy, county, a collection that takes me into my world, transitions me from the work of the day into the feelings of this night. When a teacher grapples with her life, her walk through fire. With cancer, with illness. With the life of being brought to knees. Baby come and hold me now. Not above me baby, love me. Oh, it has been a day to turn to the blues.
I am presently listening to "I Can't Make You Love Me If You Don't." Don't patronize me.....I soar with her voice. I recall her singing this in Santa Barbara at the Bowl holding the hand of someone who felt as lost as I in love. More lost. Today I just give up this fight to understand. My child is lost. Gave his life in a room my husband built in another school. We were brought into our District, he really to build that then state of the art room in technology, a Smart classroom. Not smart enough to save us from what, we do not know. We do not know. When our children take up arms and take up killing each other what sings us away from this pain? Jack, built the room where in his last minutes my student left this world. May no one ever pass this way again.
I wanted to get in touch with my feelings all day. I reached and found my students, their Valentines, their 1st grade cheer, their love and laughter free of the harm we do one to another. Free and joyful, beautiful. If you listen to Raitt on the lead into the very 1st tune of this old house falling in, the river drowning of tears, I reached her too. I'm lost in this place. In her beautiful free flying voice. My children as the tune strummed through these days as we made the cards, the love bugs, the events of their lives. My student, Larry King gave me a velvet heart in his year filled with chocolate truffly candies. Decorated with a rose.Gorgeous it was to see. His day has dimmed. And I know the sadness Raitt sings to here. Bittersweet these candies I taste in my mouth tonight. He ate two of these candies coming into our day that Valentines Day. Caught by a fostering father ill prepared for the task of assuming his care. And I said to him I was so glad, too chubby you know to eat all this alone. Must be shared to be enjoyed. He had such a good time with us.
Have a Heart is so fun. It is so right. I have eyes to see. I thought I knew you, all these lines so through me. Have a heart. Universe. Please, please, see a little. Lessen this sorrow. Let me go from this pain. No more sadness for us now. Take a little tenderness.
We have done in our work something others did not. I know it, you know it.
Met the day looking in the face the world's injustices.Nick of Time. I love this line "Life gets mighty precious when theres less of it to waste." A song maybe about why I am so lucky working with kids...with possiblities. Looking for the meaning.But today, now I'm not fully able to articulate the pain of knowing the loss and failure of life taken for what? For what?
It is a lonely time. You call, and you hear your own voice.
We need to know the love on the horizon. Raitt holds us in the songs of looking out to sing to the fates.
We bleed everyday in our work with children, that fall together and apart everyday.But we also in the wax and wan go around in our orbit held in this process of growth. Today I could not speak to my meanings well enough, tangled in the rushes. More I try to reach you, the more I slip away. i have to just be still. Why is the truth so hard to say. Raitt asks us to go where we can to find our way. I need to know where to start. Wake up, call out.
As we struggle bravely to make our nows matter. My student so loved music. He loved singing. He loved signing to songs. He had a beautiful voice. He would have like this album actually.You will. Maybe we played it then, maybe.
This is an album of love in the myriad forms love takes, the actions, the hopes, the illusions. The plea it is to find here, now, some kind of purpose, meaning, some center in the firestorm. We will die, but will we leave inside the hearts of others a change, a call, will we harm another, be harmed, will life matter? Will we be a part of love or reject it as impossible for us to attain? Can we know in human form ways to hold our good, give it, share and cope with the unknown, trust, be seen for who we can be, and then will be? Are our eyes wide open? Raitt sings with beauty to these questions. I can't analyze this musically just now, why I love the clean sound, the rifts, the voices of instruments washing me in a river of pain.
I can say talking to the crisis team an hour was a ritualized formality I needed, the Principal informally I needed, my friend Heidi sharing our days i needed, and listening to I can't Help You Now the holding of my feelings somehow. Somehow. All parts of the day after the killing of a dream. My dream of a life better for this child has died.
So a child is lost. Lost to you, lost to the world, another is lost too. Lost to his violent act. Lost to the world too. No lament can I write. No place to walk now. No way to pull sense. A class giving me arms full of gifts of love here on Valentines. A singer singing me to love tonight. Their teacher standing with them today. Loving them in the process of learning. Loving. It is Valentine's day. We lay down our heart.
Lay down our heart in a world where there is hate, greed, hurt, anger, misunderstanding, wants. All I can do is give another day, morning will come, we give up this fight.
Here in the dark, the final hours we lost a child. We lost ....this piece of music sits with me, piano, guitar, candle. I blow sadly away this day. |
Expedited Available
"bonnie raitt hits"