28 Feb How Do I Find You

How Do I Find You

The weeds and the wilds of human behavior

fill up the earth with a bittersweet synonym 

for what we contain 

in a world that is brimming 

with light that is dimming 

but fighting to hum its hymn to tomorrow 

and what is to come. ~ Caroline Shaw

I heard my first live performance in several years recently, a beautiful recital by Welsh baritone Roderick Williams at the BMC. One song stopped me cold: How Do I Find You (music and lyrics by Caroline Shaw). It has an interesting backstory: Sasha Cooke, a well-known mezzo-soprano, asked composers she knew to each write her a song during the pandemic. They agreed, and she ended up recording seventeen new songs, including How Do I Find You, the title track of the resulting album. (Listen here.)

In an interview, Cooke said: “This project was more about hope and creation than it [was] about the pandemic. [When the first song arrived], it was as if the light shone in suddenly and part of myself was returned to me. I think the experience of losing so much work and having this vast horizon of nothingness was so scary [ . . . ] but when songs started to arrive on my doorstep I had some hope, I had something to look forward to, and I had myself again.”

It’s been three years since the pandemic began, since Cooke asked her fellow musicians to help her keep going. What I love about Shaw’s song is how it speaks to the dislocation of loss, which to me has defined this time: In many ways, our everyday lives shifted into something unrecognizable, less connected and more fragile. And Shaw, like many of us, turned to her gardens as both balm and bulwark. The power of the natural world to heal infuses her words.

So, how do I find you today, this first day of March 2023 . . . well  . . . exhausted . . . renewed . . . resigned . . . over it already . . . ready for more . . . unsettled . . . unmoored . . . grounded . . . grateful  . . . bereft . . . hopeful . . . returning to yourself?

If you would like to find us, for help navigating the end of life (yours or a loved one’s), a death loss, or advance care planning, stop by, call us, send us an email.

We’ll send you, not a song, but support.

~Hilary Farquhar