Thursday, March 23, 2017

FLYING ON THE GROUND

Four years ago this week Paul was in hospice. His hospice nurse didn't know how long he'd have but she said he could hang on perhaps for months or weeks. But we didn't think days. Our son Alexander, eleven years old at the time, and I were preparing to fly to New York to attend a gallery show of Paul's written work and a loving tribute to him at the Boo-Hooray Gallery in Soho. We left a few days after this post in late March 2013. We wouldn't make it back in time to say goodbye. 

Paul's oldest son, Kenta, was with his father when he passed away. Remarkably an hour before he was gone Kenta got us on FaceTime together and Alexander and I told Paul how much we loved him. I told him how beautiful his books and writings look at the gallery, with the admiring eyes reading his words. I also told him I would help his books and papers and writings find a home. That is a thing still on my heart and mind. 
*     *     *
March 20, 2013


Listening to Buffalo Springfield Boxset disc 1 


If Flying On The Ground Is Wrong


Alexander visiting his dad's room




On the wall: Philip K Dick, Christopher Dick, Paul Williams


On the TV table; with Paul's glasses


Losing weight. But still has some fire. When his music is interrupted by a conversation between me and his teenage-years friend Judith Bragar he shouts "shuddup"...
We smile knowing Paul is 'still in there, loving the music he always loved'

*

Is my world not falling down
I'm in pieces on the ground
And my eyes aren't open
And I'm standing on my knees
But if crying and holding on
And flying on the ground is wrong
Then I'm sorry to let you down,
But you're from my side of town
And I'll miss you.
-N.Young

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

From the E-ternal Border Blaster station of rock



Yesterday walking through my neighborhood on the way to the beach I thought I saw my late husband, Paul Williams. He was walking with our very young son up fourth street, hands held, a father gently coaxing his very young walker up the steep sidewalk.

I had to look again. It was an optical illusion of course. As the figure got closer I could see it wasn't Paul and 20 month old Alexander, it was a rather bookish looking mother and her child. But for a moment..it was like the photo above.

It made me realize how long ago that time was. These photos were snapped in 2003 on our way through the Tehachapi Mountains, the Ridge Route, on our way to northern California.

Id forgotten about that warmth of feeling. A small family, Paul and I working together for the greater good of the unit. There's a kind of selflessness that brings out a feeling of safety, love and warmth.
I miss that.

In a little over a week it will be four years since Paul passed. But it was very long ago indeed, that he was this guy in the photos. He began to disappear about 2 years after these pictures were taken. I don't miss all the caregiving and worry and time spent on Paul's care. But I do miss Paul.

I don't want to give you friends the wrong idea here, I don't live in a state of grief. I have a very nice life now, one that Paul would be happy to see. Life isn't perfect but there is a lot of room for new adventures.

Last friday my new album The Adventurist landed in stores around the free world. What a joy that is. There are so many things to be thankful for. I can feel Paul's joy as he listens to my new music.. on Radio Heaven with DJ Wolfman Jack on the eternal Border Blaster station of rock, coming at you every hour with an infinite quantum connection of rock and roll power.

So in the infinite crazy of quantum physics, multi-universes and alternate realities, yeah, I saw Paul yesterday, for a minute. He looked happy.


Monday, March 6, 2017

Raising Money For Touring and Promotion of The Adventurist

 My new album The Adventurist comes out this week. Im excited about getting the word out about and doing some touring around the U.S. I could use your help making that possible. Since its been so long since I toured I will need a little help to kickstart the process. If you have the new CD, ahead of the release date, you know how effective a fundraiser can be. If you can help get the word out about the album I would be most grateful. clb

https://www.gofundme.com/cindyleeberryhillCDPromo


This is what the funds will be spent on:

1. touring the U.S. 
2. a sturdy flight case for my Gibson 330
3. a promotion person to get the word out to magazines, newspapers, social media and blogs that the new music exists!
4. fix and upgrade CLB website
5. Pay musicians on those special occasion gigs, where Im not playing solo

Friday, March 3, 2017

God Only Knows..

Written March 2013, I was coming to terms with Paul being admitted to hospice. All of life was in the present moment and we took it a day, and sometimes an hour, at a time.


Today I met with the hospice nurse, while she looked over Paul's charts, his stats and took in how he looked. Pulse, temp. all that stuff fine. "He could be like this for a little while", she said, "he's only lost one pound this week, now he's 110. So you don't want to stop your life, put it on hold."

"So",  I asked, "how do you know when someone is ready to die?" "You don't know", she said. "For him it could be tomorrow or a month from now. He could aspirate on some food and that could turn into pnemonia. If we see that things are very close we will call you. But don't think you have to be in here every day. Go have your life and be with your son."

I was just talking to a friend tonight, Chuck, who lost his mother a year ago. "I was at a Y Indian Guides meeting and I get the call from the nursing home; 'Your mothers dead'. And I had to tell the guys I gotta go my mother just died and they looked at me and said  'Your mother just died and you were here?'

There's this idea I have, maybe from the movies, maybe from reading obituaries of well known people, that they were constantly surrounded by their family and friends. 
Who has the time to do that?
Who has the free pay-check?

Here their are elderly spouses that come and see their partners on a daily basis and they are the ones that do that. Otherwise the families are working and come on weekends. 

Their was an older man in the nursing home, he'd had a stroke and his family would show up once a week and pull him into the tv room and they'd play music; guitar's, horns.... I sat in with them a few times and the dad played the bongos a bit, and I sang. That was the Sprague family and they are exceptionally gifted musically and quite beloved in the county. Quite a family and they really fit that ideal I had of going out with the family all around. 

But a lot of families live far from one another. Paul's family lives in the Bay Area or on the east coast. So when they visit it's a real commitment. This weekend Paul's first wife, Sachiko Kanenobu Williams is coming to visit with her partner and I really look forward to seeing her. She's a singer-songwriter and she and Paul met in Japan right before the release of her debut album in 1969.

Mostly what I see here at the nursing home is aging lonely people with no one visiting them. And that is a fact, though a sad one. 

Death is like a birth, in that it seems like you'd want someone to be there to witness the experience. But maybe the witnessing is happening on the other side, (as one is escorted into the new experience ones energy will take). 

Paul and I saw many a talk with Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hahn in which he talked about death. He said the wave is afraid of not being a wave anymore, and doesn't realize that it is part of the water, a part of the whole sea..and that is us. 

One of the deathbed stories that has stuck with me over the years is from a book called Paradise Outlaws: Remembering the Beats by John Tytell with photographs by Mellon. 

On February 26m 1994, the day of the World Trade Center bombing, Mellon accompanied Allen Ginsberg on the D train to the Bronx Veterans Hospital to visit Carl (Solomon) on his deathbed. Carl was getting oxygen, Allen took copious notes and some photographs, and encouraged Mellon to use her camera as well. At one point he cleaned Carl's glasses with affectionate warmth. 

Then, bending over him, Allen asked Carl's forgiveness for having put him in the spotlight and making him a sensational cipher for universal suffering in "Howl."

Mellon reported that Carl was calmly surrealistic in his last hours, claiming that he was still thinking about sex though he was fading. 

I don't know how much time Paul has left in him or what he'll be thinking about on his way out, but he has been enjoying some little things this week: the smell of essential oils like lavender, the familiar chords and chorus' of the Beach Boy's Pet Sounds, and a few times being sat up, propped up, so he can look out the window. 

He grows increasingly difficult to communicate with, he's moving further away, but these few lovely things are the last tethers to this world we have all agreed to be in together.