Sometimes the rain can get you down. It has been raining here for a couple of days now. It seems to fit the mood; Nature’s way of singing the blues. The blues are all about feeling bad but finding your way back to feeling good.
I have spent the past 2 weeks since arriving back in Canada packing up my house and cleaning up the business affairs of y old life to pave the way into a new life. This is not always a happy time because as my friend Sin noted in her blog today
“Like relationships, friendships, too, end. And it doesn’t have to be as a result of some major fallout, blow up, or miscommunication, but rather difference—forks in the road that lead people in their own direction.
It’s a loss nonetheless, and for both (or all) persons involved, not just the friend who is learning about the dissolve of the friendship, but also for the friend dissolving it.
The big truth is that some of us will outgrow a friend for whatever reasons: goals, spiritual, behavior, or simply a loss of having anything more in common.
It happens.
Sometimes we have to choose to walk away from a friendship that is no longer healthy/or drags us down; or ones where perhaps the friend is negative for us — likely to pull you down.
It’s easy to know that we no longer want a friendship, but it is not necessarily an easy task to talk about it with the person. This is why so many people lie and/or start a fight; it’s easier. It’s a solid reason they can point to, it takes responsibility off of themselves, it removes guilt (friendships are forever, right?) it sparks anger that they can nurture and use to shield themselves behind.”
Parting with an old life style or way of life is like the ending of a friendship or relationship. Leaving the house that I once enjoyed but no longer fits into my lifestyle, is a form of separation.
Nature, in sympathy, has been playing the blues to bring the point home.
While the realtor was here to run an open house, I bugged out and went to get more boxes for packing then stopped in at the local pub (about 3 miles away) to have a pint of Kilkenney Irish ale and a huge helping of their delectable shepherd’s pie. The regular entertainment on Sunday afternoons is a duo called Vox Violins. I know them simply, as Mark and Beth.
I have not seen Beth and Mark since I left on my ride through the USA and the winter in Florida and Texas. It was a good antidote to blues to go hear some good old acoustic Canadian roots music. Mark plays electric guitar in a local R7B/Funk band called Shift and Beth can be heard playing electric violin in the all-female band Broadband.
It was a pleasant way to spend a wet and miserable Sunday afternoon. While I tucked away a huge slice of the Irish Harp’s excellent shepherd’s pie, they covered a whole range of traditional Celtic, Canadian, and international roots music classics. Another Canadian musician friend, Brian Pickell, wrote one of the tunes they played. Brian is a superb bluegrass banjo, mandolin and guitar player. His band, the Brian Pickell band, plays the folk festival circuit and specializes in Canadian fiddle and clog dancing music. Mark and Beth played Muriel’s Walt for me written by Brian.
I did two classes four years at an adult roots music summer camp with Brian; novice mandolin and tune writing.
We are blessed with an abundance of musical talent in Canada. The Niagara region and southern Ontario where I am living has produced a wide variety of musicians over the years including jazz musicians like trumpeters Kenny Wheeler and Maynard Ferguson, rock drummer legend Neil Peart, and perennial Grammy polka nominee Walter Ostenak.
My escape from the springtime blues was a most satisfying afternoon of home grown music in the beautiful setting of Niagara-on the-Lake. Mother Nature did her best to dull down the day but a great music fix is hard to beat.
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| Mark Clifford and Beth Bartley - Vox Violins |
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| The Brian Pickell Band |
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