The Stories in the Things That Are Still Here

Halloween is tomorrow. At this Samhain threshold, in Scorpio season, I feel drawn toward the thin veil between worlds and the possibility of communing with those who were here before us. Before I decided to write this, I lit candles on the hearth above my wood stove, and I broke into song as I did so--singing love for the daughter I lost earlier this year, for the soul of our dog who we lost after that, and for the souls of the babies we are still welcoming earthside. I am looking out a window at a field of corn that went from verdant green to crackled yellow just overnight--another seasonal symbol of the cycle of growth, death, and rebirth.

I intend to make real space and real time for all of this reflection in the work that I do, personally, artistically, and professionally in my work with clients. The people we have loved and lost, and the people whose names we have never known, need some of our time. The people who lived in our homes before us. The teachers who taught in our children’s schools, and the children who walked those halls. The people who built and filled the buildings we still use, who walked the trails we love, who spent their days in relationship with this same Earth. We will be better for it.

As Día de los Muertos approaches, families in Mexico and elsewhere are preparing their own ways of welcoming and remembering their beloved dead. It matters so much to give remembrance a place in our lives. To allow those who have died some of our time and attention.

Upon reflection, I think this is part of what drew me somewhat spontaneously to the Cortland County Historical Society this week.

On Wednesday, I walked in for the first time somewhat on a whim. I had emailed director Tabitha Scoville a few times for a project I'm working on, but I had no concrete plans to go that day. We walked through the Suggett House Museum and talked about old things and the people whose lives are still connected to them.

Tabitha and I found common ground easily and had a lovely conversation. As we spoke, I kept finding myself drawn to the kitchen, to a gorgeous bicentennial quilt, and to the agricultural items. The crocks. The stove. The grain mill. The cider press. The milk bottles. The things that would have been part of an ordinary day. These are things we overlook as disposable today, as we look at most material goods. But what I have been reflecting on recently is the inherent creativity involved in every day life and survival. Everything we do is creative. We have allowed ourselves to believe that's not the case.

I could imagine sitting in this old kitchen room with my instruments and listening for a while. I could also imagine the work: preparing food, tending a fire, figuring out how to make the harvest last. I wanted to know who had done that work, what they knew, and what might remain of their stories. I also know that this is a significant part of what I most cherish in my every day life that has taken such a back seat in so many others' lives in today's world.

What had the people who held an crafted these items been thinking about while their hands were busy? What songs were they singing? Who were they worried about? What made them laugh? What were they hoping would become easier for their children?

Those questions feel especially close right now. Scorpio season, for me and many, invites attention to death, transformation, and what lives beneath the surface. I want to bring that attention into the places around me and spend time with the lives that helped shape them, not just this week, but regularly.

This is a curiosity I have been following for a long time through music, writing, ecology, and the way I live. I have renovated old, neglected houses and helped bring old items back into use over and over again. Much of the furniture in our home arrived secondhand or from the side of the road. I love looking at a piece of wood and imagining the tree it came from, then noticing what someone’s hands made possible with it.

Somebody learned how to do this. Somebody practiced. Somebody spent part of a life making it, and someone else spent part of a life using and caring for it. AND it still exists in good condition--outside of a landfill! There is so much there to be curious about.

At the museum, a conversation about crocks became a conversation about food preservation. Through orchard work, growing food, and making things with what is available, I have experienced how much creativity belongs to the work of keeping ourselves alive.

Knowing when to harvest, how to use what you have, how to make something last: these are skills that connect us to the Earth and to one another. They require observation, practice, and a serious relationship with the conditions of a place. The weather matters. The soil matters. So does the work of the person who knows how to turn a harvest into food for the months ahead.

I want to return more of that attention to everyday life. I want to understand the knowledge held in ordinary tasks and the relationships that make our lives possible, including the ones we rarely see.

They also raise questions about whose work we remember. Who grew the food? Who prepared it? Who cleaned up afterward? Who made the container?

Tabitha spoke about how difficult women’s history can be to recover. Sometimes there is enough information to write about a couple, but very little that allows the woman to emerge as a person in her own right. I want women’s experiences to have room in this work, including the everyday labor that may never have made it into an obituary.

In the same breath, I think about the "who" involved that are from the more-than-human realm--the animals, the plants, the old, old trees, the spirit of the land itself, and the ways that these beings are almost always forgotten in the retelling of history.

I want to keep asking whose stories are missing, whose work supported the lives we can read about, and whose relationships with the land were disrupted or left out of the telling.

We benefit from things people before us built, learned, preserved, and worked to improve. We also inherit unfinished work. Learning about their lives can help us understand what we want to carry forward and what we want to change.

I am interested in people’s uncertainty, relationships, humor, and the decisions they made with what they knew at the time. I want to learn what the records can tell us and remain curious where they fall quiet. An unanswered question is something we can carry honestly.

My wish to commune with those who came before me is part of that curiosity. I want to sit with the traces of their lives and the spaces where they walked and give them time. Sometimes that might mean reading a letter or learning a name. Sometimes it might mean listening in a room, making music, or noticing the wear on something that passed through many hands.

That attention is becoming part of Spirit of Place: The Songs of Wood Grain and Growth Rings, a project I’ve just proposed for funding through CNY Arts that connects to the larger body of improvisational music-making that I've been doing since 2019--formerly "Spirit of Place" performances through Edenspore. I want to spend time in Cortland County’s historical and ecological places, listen closely, and respond through voice, instruments, photographs, and writing.

Alongside that, I am exploring a digital street theatre project with the Center for the Arts of Homer. We are imagining original scenes through which people could encounter historical lives on their phones at particular places. Someone walking through town might pause and meet a person whose work helped shape what is around them. Much more to come on this as we develop and produce the project.

It is early on, but I am enlivened, inspired, and motivated by this work. I am gathering questions, names, and possibilities. The projects can inform one another through the time I spend in these places and the stories that surface.

I keep thinking about people my age and younger who would never imagine spending an afternoon in a historical society--myself included until just recently. What might shift our perspective to make us curious enough to stop? A familiar task. A voice. The discovery that somebody stood near here trying to solve a problem we recognize.

This belongs within Earthtoned because sound, ecology, embodiment, and community are all present in it. We can listen to a room. We can feel the effort of an everyday task in our own bodies. We can use our curiosity, creativity, imagination, and pure humanity to fill in gaps in emotion and relating. We can follow the materials in an object back into the living world.

I believe the Earth wants us to thrive. I want to participate in relationships that make thriving possible, including our relationships with what we already have, the places we inhabit, and the lives that continue to influence ours.

This week, and all weeks, I want to leave room for remembrance. To feel grief where it lives, and to know there is also always space for affection, gratitude, curiosity, and wonder without covering up and masking the harder feelings. To remember someone I love and learn about someone I never had the chance to know.

Whose life might you make a little room for? What could you learn by giving your attention to something they left behind?