March forth!
Taking action that can bring us hope.
Hi, Friends.
All through middle and high school, I played clarinet, a much maligned instrument, in the school jazz band. Despite years of lessons and dedicated practice, it never ceased to be a difficult instrument for me to play. But every Monday night I showed up to band practice, no matter if I was struggling with the recent arrangement or angsting about the fact that I would have to take a solo. Part of the draw was the band leader, our teacher Ray Morrow.
Ray was somewhat of a legend around my school. He was understated and unassuming, but poised and powerful enough to gracefully wrangle a bunch of surly teenagers into an ensemble that regularly won a competition for high school jazz bands at Boston’s Berklee School of Music. He was dedicated to his craft and felt that we, as petulant teens, were worthy of sharing it with - he once went so far as to get in touch with the widow of Charles Mingus in order to get permission for us to perform a specific arrangement of one of his songs.
Through example, Ray taught me about creativity, consistency, and the power of a teacher who truly believes in you. There were no try outs for jazz band. If you played an instrument, you could join. That meant we often had several drummers, two bass players, and three flautists. While some of the musicians I played with were insufferable jazz snobs, the band Ray cultivated was by nature inclusive and expansive. While by the end of high school I was more focused on punk rock than jazz and the freedom of teaching myself power chords on the guitar, I kept my commitment to the band and the clarinet, even as my other tastes and ideas changed rapidly during high school.
One of Ray’s brilliant pedagogical techniques was “story time.” He’d give us a ten minute break during our two-hour evening practice and then to corral us back into our chairs and refocus us he’d tell a story from growing up in Maine or from his musical career. We loved his stories and would call them out by name. “Blue hubbard squash!” “This mic is shocking me!” we’d clamor.
Ray also created small traditions and rituals, which added to a shared culture of the band. One of his favorite days was March fourth. “It’s the only day that’s a full sentence!” he proclaimed. It was a day we should “March forth!” Perhaps literally. I remember one day in honor of March fourth my friend Mark decided to walk the 14 miles to school that morning, leaving in the freezing dark of 4:30 am to make it on time.
Coming up to writing this post, I’ve been feeling stuck. No new writing to share. The projects I’ve been pitching and editing and nurturing and trying to force into accountability have ground to a sludgy halt. The momentum with which I approached my writing at the beginning of the year has drained away and transformed into overwhelm. I’ve read post after post about how under this current administration we need to stay loud, keep making our art, protect our joy. But I am exhausted. And I am outraged. And from this place I can’t connect with the focus I need to be generative. My time feels alternatively grasping and fractured, or stretched out like unproductive taffy. I think I need to accept instead of fight it, but sometimes I get into that headspace of “If this [ie. writing] isn’t happening now, therefore it will never happen again!”
But then I remembered March forth! In Maine (where I grew up) the fourth of March is still winter, at least for now. While the days are starting to hint at being longer, the sun shining a little stronger, some of the breezes a little softer, most winters you can be sure that there’s at least one more big snowstorm on the horizon, that you cannot pack up your heavy sweaters anytime soon. But there’s an energy under the surface, a crack in the shell of winter.
While it may not always feel like it, the earth is beginning to soften (unless you live in coastal Southern California where the flowers are already blooming, lucky you, in my high desert yard the storksbill are just rearing their tiny sprouts, warning at the months of weeding ahead) and perhaps the dawn of revolt is emerging into our spring of our resistance. I certainly hope so.
Right now, I’m as inspired by the creative protests and refusals I’m seeing around the country as I am angry at all the people and companies complying with these idiotic and illegal executive orders and mandates in advance. You can just say no!” I find myself saying to the screen, to the radio news, multiple times a day, “Just don’t do it!”
But also, the revolt is there. 433 protests in national parks last weekend, including a large one here in Joshua Tree. Here in Yucca Valley, residents showed up en masse to a town hall with our ghoulish MAGA puppet representative Jay Obernolte to try to force him to “do your job” and it made national news.
Marching forth isn’t just about saying no, it’s about what we’re building. In my overwhelm, I’m trying to center myself with what I know and what I can confidently contribute. I’ve decided to put my energy into joining my Flamingo Heights neighbors to revitalize a quasi-dormant community center about a mile from my house. Together we’re envisioning a “third space” where people can come together for workshops, performances, social events, and information sharing. I keep reminding myself that so much of this march towards authoritarianism is about keeping us isolated and mistrustful, to dismiss any attempt at sincerity and solidarity as “cringe.” The antidote to that is building something that reflects our values - inclusivity, openness, and connection - together.
Frankly, this dismissal of a belief that community can matter as “cringe” reminds me of in the 90s when I began organizing punk shows and activist groups in my hometown of Portland, Maine and would be dismissed by adults, and fellow teens and punks as being “too earnest” (the 90s equivalent of cringe). However, I believe that heart-on-your-sleeve sincerity and a belief that we have the power to make our world better together is what makes life bearable. So I have decided to move forward with an energy that feels creative and productive, and to dare to create a place where people can not only learn from each other, but connect and have fun.
I’m also jumping into volunteering for another state race via Tech for Campaigns. It’s a chance to use my email marketing skills to support the re-election of a working class, Black candidate who is one of the youngest to ever be elected to the legislature in his state. As flawed as our democracy is I do still believe there’s something that can be gained from progressive candidates in office that actually listen to and work for their constituents.
I share all this to ask, how are you marching forth? Where can you move through the murk in a way where action can turn to hope? I’m absolutely still muddling through, but I feel little better about muddling together.
xox,
Eleanor
PS. I’m also, in this windy transitional month, thinking about the famous line from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, “Beware the ides of March,” a warning to emperors and empires everywhere, a reminder that a corrupt power grab will not go unnoticed. May we be the warning and the knives.
PPS. Are you going to AWP? Doing a reading, panel, cool offsite? Let me know. I’d love to see you there! I have very mixed feelings about this conference, but I’m trying to approach it as some fun days in LA amongst other writers, not a place where I have to prove myself as a writer.
Currently reading: Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar (finally!)
Love this and your vision board, Eleanor
If this is what "not writing" looks like....I'd take it.