Way Down in Hadestown (on falling in love with Orpheus)

Way down, in Hadestown, way down under the ground... The music swells and crashes through my eardrums. My feet take on a life of their own beneath my cramped theater seat. I can smell stale popcorn and I am sitting in the same seat where hundreds of sweaty teenagers wondering if they should hold hands or kiss their date or run away during the intermission.

But I'm falling in love with this crazy folk opera, Hadestown, the telling of the Orpheus and Eurydice story set in the Depression in America, with the Fates who sing about life when the chips are down, with a Hades who croons in the lowest bass possible about songbirds and walls, and with this Orpheus and Eurydice in front of me.

There is no stage. No sets or costumes or even the faintest glimmer of planned choreography. Eurydice isn't wearing white, or whatever I picture her wearing. She is a petite blonde firecracker with a guitar and a voice that shivers and shakes.

There is only the music. Only the words nestled between the notes. Only the voices that carry us down by long dark roads and telephone wires, to the underground speakeasy, to the wall between Hades and the world.

Have you ever listened to someone tell a story so good it made you want to stop everything and write? 

(http://anaismitchell.com/hadestown/musicandmotion.html)

Have you ever heard a piece of music that made you want to learn to sing, just so that you could for a brief moment echo the beauty that you heard?

That's Hadestown. 

That's the story of Orpheus and Eurydice.

I wish I could take you there with me - to the cramped, dark theater on a Friday night with Lillie. I wish I could show you how my heart raced and laughed and longed for a pen. I wish I had the words for how music can coax you out from those safe shadows and remind you about how you are creative, how the stories won't leave you alone until you make something beautiful. 

So what? I ask myself as I come towards the end of another blog post. So what about those stories? So what about the gut-wrenching moment of yes? So what about that Italy dream, that unfinished book I have in my head, and those three plays and the poems? So what about Orpheus and Hadestown?

What difference does any of it make?

I want to create. I want to wander through the forests of words without any idea of where the path goes. I want to write the way Anaïs Mitchell sings. I want to tell the stories. I want to make something beautiful.

Why is it so hard to admit? Why is it my best-kept secret, that before all else, I want to write?

The music continues to swell, beckoning me from the birdcage I've built of expectations, of "what-Hilary-is-like" and "what-Hilary-can-do" and "what-it-is-that-people-believe-Hilary-should-do."

And for a moment I can just see it: the gut-wrenching yes to making music with my words. To write the stories, and those plays, and the poems. To go to Italy. To fly out of the birdcage and towards the sea.


Maybe the first story will be Orpheus. 

Love,
Hilary

On Finding the Words

"Find the words," she says as she looks across the table at the 21 year-old, still-many-lessons-to-learn girl across from her. We've been remembering all weekend how to ask questions and listen closely, how to appreciate being together in person instead of across phone lines and data signals and time zones. The girl's lip trembles a little bit, and out slips the other thing she's been waiting to say.


"What if I can't find them?" 

For writers, not having the words is like wandering through a pitch black room without the faintest idea where the light switch is. Not having the words is jumping off the side of a lobster boat in the middle of the Atlantic in August without a wetsuit on. Not having the words is getting lost in the woods on an early morning run and every birch tree and wild geese-filled sky looks like the last.

So we sit there, that unlikely pair, just as they have always sat there - whether it's cupcakes and tea or the first coffee shop or side by side singing the Liturgy or the office.

And she looks at me, that 21 year old, and tells me, "Find the words."

I reel a little. The words for what? For this tiredness, for this bending over backwards to keep myself going? Find the words for the conversations I don't want to have and the things I have to let go?

But there is something in how she looks at me, with her knowing smile, and her serious eyes, that tells me to go searching for the words.

So I try this:

It's early December in my heart, early morning on the marsh with this bright fog and crackling frost. My breath is ragged but the cold air feels good, and when I pause I can see a flock of geese taking off, wheeling around for home. I hear the Mary Oliver poem. I hear the quiet and the bright. And though winter is coming, though there is a long road ahead and the days are short and the nights stretch out, and gusts of wind that shake the house - still, I can feel the brightness and trust the sun.

Or I try this:

I want to write my life like Rainer, with the patience of a poet who does not urge anything, but watches everything. I want to write beautiful things, trust that this is all the gift and not the emergency it feels like. I want to move my fingers over the keyboard and find the words to reach you, wherever you are. Because we move like comets across this galaxy and we only have brief moments to hold onto each other - so I want to offer you my hands and my heart, even if it's just for the one afternoon coffee or the one dinner or the one hug. But sometimes I'm weary and I don't know how to offer it, how to open the windows and doors again to this world and its miracles. So I'll keep writing and I will keep watch. Will you help me keep watch, too?

And finally, when I come to the end of this screen and the words still aren't quite right, I remember that sometimes we don't have the words, but someone else does. I leave you with this poem, the one that comes looking for me always when I need it.

Wild Geese (Mary Oliver)

You do not have to be good. 
You do not have to walk on your knees 
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. 
You only have to let the soft animal of your body 
love what it loves. 
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. 
Meanwhile the world goes on. 
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain 
are moving across the landscapes, 
over the prairies and the deep trees, 
the mountains and the rivers. 
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, 
are heading home again. 
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, 
the world offers itself to your imagination, 
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place 
in the family of things.

Love,
Hilary

On an unexpected feeling (a five minute post)

This week, well, it's been a hard and long one over here. I'm taking a few quick minutes between shower and last minute homework and presenting someone in a convocation and work... to spin around in the words I love. Lisa-Jo over at The Gypsy Mama tells us to stop, drop and write - and to love the words just as they are. Won't you join us, and let your words fly free?

My stomach leaps, in fear or anticipation or something like excitement. All this time, and it feels like a brief two days or just one more morning, all this time apart and yet she walks down the stairs and laughs at my astonished face and folds me into a hug. She always knows how to hug me.

I can't believe it's been all this winding road since June, since the tear-stained departure and the wondering of if, and how, and what happens now that I'm walking through these crunching leaves and changing seasons without her. I can't believe that in the space of a few months I've stretched and pulled and changed, and that she has too.

But the unexpected is the joy, the space that resettles between us just as we have always made it. We cradle our mugs of tea. We cradle our questions and each other's answers. We listen. We talk. I spin the stories that have weighed so heavy on my heart, and she spins out that wisdom, that, "Hil it's all the same lesson, it's all the same obedience" and she reminds me that this long road is full of the unexpected but it's also and always full of Him.

And in between June and this cup of tea, I've missed and wondered and wished for her back. I've asked God sitting outside in the sunshine if the ache in my heart that I can't run up to her office just for a hug and a knowing look - is that ache going to be there forever?

And yesterday the unexpected answer was yes, because the ache is for the love and for the years and for the promise of all that is yet to come. Yes, you'll always have a heartache because you love her. 


So I smile, my throat tightening just a little, and look at her, and at the space. You'll always have an ache because the love is real.

Love,
Hilary