In the middle of February I visited Milwaukee for our show, to pack more and see all the people I love. It was intense, realizing I am really leaving my city and beloved community there, my children.  Through that visit Ian and I had so many wonderful talks about… So many things! One of them that I wished one of us had written on sooner was why we sing. Why is it so important? And why do we personally put so much into it? Now I can't remember all that we touched on, but a poem seems easier than an essay… Sarah 

Why We Sing

Long long before the written word   

Before we even talked    

Before names and labels   

Before tools or controlling fire  

We cried,      

We screamed

We yelled

into the wild air 

our calls

our songs

Where they floated up and wove our sounds and spirits with the wind

Tied us back to the stars

We ooh’ed and Ahh’ed and wow’ed 

We wondered and wandered through space with our sounds

We connected and healed 

And endured

 We remembered and reminded 

Then we danced and spoke and built and did so many other amazing things

We sing now to save ourselves

To deal with the slog

To celebrate

To keep ourselves human

To love and connect and share and heal

We sing because it moves us, the physical world in time with what we can not see with our eyes

or touch with our fingers

Because first there was sound

We sing because shit is flying at us and we are endangered

And all we have is each other

And our small beautiful planet

And the crazy ever expanding universe

And we are lost

Because singing finds us and brings us home 

We sing because everything is dying

And life is exploding out of the creaks 

We sing to gather

To get ready

To stay strong in the fight

We sing to release and trust

And to feel life

And tell it we love it

Ian is back in Milwaukee, recording songs, working on our website, starting plants for spring planting and I'm in Viroqua WI, caring for my 90-year-old mother and mildly brain damaged 64 year old sister through the cold snap. We are at our regenerative farm, The Nest and I am living in a small wood heated cottage down the hill from a main farm house. A few nights ago it was -20 F in the night. Now it is a bit warmer, maybe 5F  but there is a wild wind that blows right through my cottage door and I am burning wood at an alarming rate. Windy and bitter.  My mother is actually doing amazing in many ways, she looks almost a decade younger than she is (when she “has her teeth in”!)  but she's dizzy and losing her memory and asking lots of questions which can all be very difficult…

My older sister is a beautiful artist, she plays the violin and has much to offer the world. She could really help us all slow down and see the beauty around us if we spent more healthy time with her. She just wants people to go for walks with her and read with her. She wants to eat with others and have meaning in her life. And she is difficult. 

Her brain is damaged from an attempted suicide when she was 16, and that's the dark part of now that I want talk about. She was a natural introvert, smart, thoughtful and talented and idealistic. Sometimes maybe it is even harder for the smarter ones like her as they come of age and try to come to grips with the horrors that humans commit. I will not share her story of how she came there as that is her story, not mine. But at 16 years old she wanted to leave this world. She was anorexic, starving herself and had attempted suicide 2 times before her last almost successful attempt, that left her brain and both of our lives changed forever. 

She tried to leave this world by hanging herself, an understandable act for all the pain she was feeling. But still an act of violence that she has had to face every day of her life. She is still very intelligent, but her brain damage affected her executive function of her brain so it is very hard for her to make decisions and understand some complex thinking. She is also deeply traumatized by loneliness and meaninglessness having spent far too many days and hours isolated and alone.  She has created delusions to help protect herself from the traumas. I call them her  “imaginary enemies” Just as many lonely children create imaginary friends, Kara created enemies in her head so she could put the blame of her situation on someone else..  Although she can be sweet and thoughtful, she can also be very crazy, bitter and mean. Her glass is often not just half empty, but full of shit water. She gets caught in terrible negative feedback loops that make her a person many of us just want to escape from, which of course leaves her more angry and alone and bitter… 

Kara means well but just has such a wounded heart her anger and trauma spill off her and fill the space around her. She yells at me and complains as I am trying to help her. She does not have the capacity to calm down or reflect or resolve conflict in any meaningful way. She can become violent and physically threatening if contradicted or confronted about her behavior or abuse and has physically hurt people in her life including me and our mother in her tantrums of rage.

I do a lot of swallowing. Trying to breathe. Trying to calm myself and I try to stay steady in the face of angry waves. Sometimes I just escape.

What I'm really working on for myself right now is not becoming a bitter person. But I am. At the moment I feel bitter. Bitter and sad. I'm angry at the world of people. I'm angry at our culture for saving her to then just neglect her.  People just want the glamor of being the rescuer, to be the saviors. We grab the body from the jaws of death, make tons of money on keeping bodies alive and then we just forget them, let them rot away in hospital rooms or alone apartments. I am angry not just about Kara but all the people I encounter out in the world who I sense the wounds from, a whole culture full of people with similar and different challenges deeply rooted in loneliness, meaninglessness and I'm just sick with sadness and fear. 

At times I am sick with sadness and fear, overwhelmed and exhausted in my personal life and by the larger world. 

So I work, I try to breathe, I try to take care of myself while we all go through this difficult winter, this time of stress and great uncertainty. The great meta crises; AI, corporate wealth, politics and environment all in its feedback loop, no one at the helm but a headless horseman. 

I try to create practices that nurture gratitude and acceptance and peace. All is passing. 

This morning on my walk to the house in the bitter cold from my cottage, there is a bird laying in the path. Still.  A bird that didn't make it through the night. Even with this fluffy belly of down. Some of the birds didn't make it.  And as I pick it up, I notice that it's still beautiful to me. The frost is speckled on its back, glittering polka dots. I take it down to my cottage and place it outside my south window and watch the wind shake its tiny feathers. 

Today I mourn my beautiful sister who I lost so many years ago. The beautiful supportive radiant sister I could have had. I hate the world; for hurting her so much that she wanted to leave, for neglecting her, for handing off the responsibility of caring for such a wounded broken heart to me, one small woman. Sometimes I rage at us for maybe not just letting her go.

Today I just hope we all find peace and healing, wisdom and patience. I am just trying to focus on that even in all this bitterness there are still sparkles, glittering ice crystals laying on the bodies of death. 

The truth is… I hardly know what a blog is. I never wrote one, mostly never read one, and barely ever hear friends talk about them. But then… I guess there is a first time for everything… and often a right time too. So here it is… The first ToneHomeBlog… The idea being that what really makes a community work is… community… and if I'm just one person trying to build a community website… guess what??, it's gonna suck! The ToneHome website is intended to represent a community of artists and creative people… all with different ways of sharing their realities. So a place, like a blog, or a chatroom, where people can express themselves in writing make excellent sense. Hopefully, it also gives us a sense of building something together. I would love to see the poetry, stories, and words of our community grace this virtual space. Hey,maybe there's something in there we can make a song out of it! Let's give it a shot. Honestly, I'm not even 100% how to make it all work… I'm new to this web-hosting stuff. But again we gotta start somewhere… So if you got interest in  contributing to the artistic glory of our community, please reach out to us through our contact form, or something, and I think I can figure out a way to get you on board. Well, that's about it for now… Until next time… Keep making Art!