The Morning, Brilliant Blue

Issue # 6 - Late February 2025

In this issue, scroll on down to:

• Welcome Letter

• A Musical Remembrance of Mary Oliver

• To the Wild Earth (recording included)

• Portrait of a Young Songwriter

• Sack Lunch 101

• Breathing Into Your Life

• My Friend Fernando XVIII

• Some Upcoming Events

• Handy Tip

WELCOME MY FRIENDS,

We could sure use one of those “MORNINGS, BRILLIANT BLUE” about now, couldn’t we? In case you did not see my first issue on Substack, when I mentioned from where the name came, it is from my song, “One Breath”.

"Overnight a lot can change
We can go from cloudy gray
To the the morning, brilliant blue
The purest part of the sky
And the ocean too
There you are, there it is
Everything that Life has to give . . . "

I have been writing stories and more for you in these weeks. But in times of crisis, with the rapid changes, the shock of so many losing their jobs with no notice, nothing I had to say seemed enough. But I guess sometimes you just share whatever you do have and you trust that those you’re writing to will lean in and take up the slack with thoughts and experiences going on in their own minds and world. I would much appreciate that because I know some of my words will fall short.

For many years now I have noticed that if there are certain themes rising in my life, lessons and insights coming into focus, I can be fairly certain that they are rising in many other lives too. OR — that they already have done so and I’m just running a little behind. Either way, if we were to somehow rise up from the earth even a couple of hundred feet, and look upon the lives below, we’d see that we are all growing through many of the same challenges and playing out similar soulful paths we set in motion before we came here.

Even in chaotic times I write humor and light hearted stories too. Partly because I need them, and partly because I think there is nothing more quickly relieving and healing than laughter. So what I’m saying is that it’s perfectly fine to break into loud guffaws at a funeral. While some around you may look perturbed and may have to bite their cheeks to keep from joining you, I’ll bet the beautiful soul you are there to honor and bless, would be hollering out, “Laugh, my friends! Howl in laughter and dance too, while you’re at it! I’m just fine! In fact, I’m not even gone!”

I DO believe laughing people have more sparks go off which lead to solutions and connections that sadness cannot reach. And I know for sure that depressed people have no energy. So while most of us will weave and stumble through both as we live, I feel grateful that I often see light and remember that I have much in common with all humans.

And this; if the calamities we are caught up in and facing right now were hurricanes or earthquakes and floods, not one of us would ask what someone believed before we would paddle out to pull them out of the water and into our boat. Nor would we ask about the politics of the people who live in that house starting to catch fire. We would run toward them as fast as we can, our hearts beating loudly and our voices shouting, “Get out! Hurry! Follow Us!” as we seek to save the lives of our brothers and sisters and every human and animal we can. I know I could count on you. You know you could count on me.

So this issue of The Morning, Brilliant Blue, is not in itself brilliant. But it is with heart and goodwill. Over the next few days, I hope you’ll read and enjoy the various stories and pieces I’ve written for you. Thank you. ~ Your friend, Michael

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A Musical Remembrance of Mary Oliver

In mid-January of 2019 I heard that the beloved poet Mary Oliver had passed away. A quiet, sad feeling came over me. But also a sense of gratitude for what she had shared with us in her lifetime. If ever someone had merged already with Life Itself and All It’s Wonder, it seemed to me that Mary had.

A few days later as I was playing guitar, I started exploring whether there was a song I could write about her that would describe some facets of what her life had been. At first there were just chords and feelings. That’s how most songs begin, but I didn’t know if I could really write something meaningful yet. Then the words started flowing together in ways that felt grateful to me. For several days I wrote and when I was finished, I recorded a simple solo version on my laptop recorder and played it in my truck as I drove around Seattle that winter. I only played it for a handful of friends. It seemed a little too soon to me, to be holding up a song about her life. She had only passed three weeks before. After a few weeks, I quietly put it away.

Then last year I was going through various song ideas on my old iPod and I suddenly started hearing the chords I’d recorded five years ago, the intro of To the Wild Earth. They sounded rustic and earthy and warm to me. The song I hadn’t heard in years began playing and it surprised me, as if the tones and shapes of my chords were of the woods, landscapes and creatures from Mary’s life and poems. They felt of the earth itself. Even my own voice singing surprised me. Having let Mary’s song sit those few years, maybe something had naturally aged in it and become some small part of what I’d hoped it could be.

I’m sharing it with you now, all the folks who receive my Substack letters. You will be the few beyond a small circle to ever hear this. I share it with you in gratitude for your reading and supporting this living letter I send you. I hope there is something here which brings a feeling of kindness and love and gratitude for life to you. ~ Michael

To the Wild Earth

The deer seem to know in the flickering snow
Someone’s close to the end of their journey
And gray hawks as well, in spiraling swells
They circle the smoke of the chimney

And tattered oak leaves cling to the limb
And rattle as faint as a whisper
All of this in a prayer
Every note in the January air
In a song so ancient sung

When they felt her last breath
The ravens and wrens 
Flew her air in their wings down the valley
They notified kin in the woods and the glens
The wind was to scatter their Mary
The river grew loud, much like a shout
The willows waved gentle their mercy

In the sky full of light
Was her sigh in a silvery stream
Through the clouds rang out

Pure as a breeze on the way down
Pouring rain out over the ground
In this way she returned her
Gentle life to the wild earth

She spoke of the swans and red birds and dogs
Like others might mention good neighbors
Herons and snails, soaring and still 
Friends she would spend all the day with
When sunsets appeared, elegantly smeared 
Colors with no names to call them

In the sky full of light
Was her sigh in a silvery stream
Through the clouds rang out

Pure as a breeze on the way down
Pounding rain out over the ground
In this way she returned her
Precious life to the wild earth

We all get out our favorite and open the pages wide
We read to each other in voices a little shaky inside
Thank you Mary, for your roses and your brambles alike
All the poems that you gave us made our hearts sing out

Pure as a breeze on the way down
Pounding rain out over the ground
In this way you returned your
Precious life to the wild earth

~ Michael Tomlinson ©2025

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Portrait of a Young Songwriter

Wait! Before you scroll on by and dismiss this lanky young fella leaning hard out of the saddle and obviously about to take a hard tumble, just realize that in the last year he had written such ditties as Waves and All is Clear and Yellow Windows and I Will Not Pass You By and Raining Away! So you see, promo photo choices are no way to judge a fella.

Now, as for his dreams of becoming a recording artist, they were still about 4 years and 1700 miles away in Seattle. He knew nothing at all about that. Nope, he was a happy bicycle repairman in Austin, Texas, who swam often at Barton Springs and played funky pass-the-hat clubs all over Austin. Places like Folkville, Maggie Mae’s, The Transact Theater, Waterloo Ice House, The Other Side. Don’t those names sound impressive? Sometimes there were even people listening! But not always.

Even though I used to be him, that guy on the kiddie ride, I am unable at this time to explain to you why he felt he must adopt this pose — on a tiny children’s playground, riding Billy Buffalo and feeling the wound spring beneath him dangerously give way as he searched for just the right songwriter-type attitude. Meanwhile, a half-gallon-a-day milk-drinking Texas girl took professional music biz photos.

Two particularly great things developed from this collaboration. She took his advice concerning her allergies, and stopped drinking milk cold-turkey. The money she saved on tissues may explain her vast wealth today! And he/me gained a life-long friend who 44 years later, is the brains behind the curtains in this little letter you receive every few weeks. Her name is Barbi Springer. Mine turned out to be the clever show name, Michael Tomlinson.

When you have a friendship which has not only lasted that long, but grown in beautiful ways too, well, I think that is one of the great gifts of life. And when I started considering launching The Morning, Brilliant Blue, I asked Barbi to do it with me. I do the writing, she fixes it and does all the technical stuff and more. In fact, right out her window in Evergreen, Colorado, she took the deer-in-snow photo you see above. A woman for all seasons — who plays ukulele too. Almost.

Not long after this photo, in 1982, she and I took the great adventure road trip of our young lives and visited every state north and west of Texas. Plus Canada. We were in Seattle, staying with her friend Jim, when I started writing a song about a man who climbed Mt. Rainier. He had one leg and reached the summit on crutches. I’ll tell you the full story someday, but I wrote The Climb on that Seattle visit, and sent it to him. That changed my life forever. A Seattle radio station played the simple cassette of that song and it became the most requested in their history. Which forced me to move there and proved in a way that riding a toy buffalo in kiddieland may not look great, but perhaps it is the key to just enough success to enjoy the life I have. ~ Michael

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Sack Lunch 101

IN FIRST GRADE, I saw this poster and thought I was reading sentences. Declarative ones. So the pressure was on from day one. I took all those commands and started to put them in a new order, one that made more sense for a little boy worried about having some time left to do nothing — and to sing Elvis and Buddy Holly and Marty Robbins songs in his back yard tent.

I began with the most logical one, Eat! And then went directly to Play! The first one seemed under-emphasized, so I added it again, Eat! I didn’t know it but I was already orchestrating my life in the direction of what was called Instant Gratification. Whew! Next was Look! They didn’t say where, but I knew it was about looking at beautiful Miss Petaluma, our school nurse. So I did that real good and as often as I saw her.

I liked Ride! a lot too. I did not yet own a horse or really, any kind of thing you could ride — but a broom stick horse I’d gotten at Christmas. Nobody ever had to tell me to ride him. When I’d wake up in my wagon wheel bunk bed first thing in the morning, there was Lightning, tied to the post. I’d straddle him and he’d try to rear up and lose me, but I would hang on and head straight to the kitchen to see if there was anything with cinnamon to be had.

First grade was the beginning of education for me — “Kids doan knee no danged kinneygarden!” I remembered my Grandpa mumbling. So there was no kinneygarden for me and my sis. Luckily though, my mom taught us longhand writing — even before I began first grade. So I was able to right away send elegant notes of love to the children with ribbons, long hair and pigtails — all pointing out the wonders of potential marriage. Whew! They could only read printing though, so even though I was disappointed to receive no replies, I guess I actually lucked out. Alimony is too much responsibility for a six year old.

There had been no orientation or advance information about what a little lost child was supposed to do on the very first day of his life in which his mama was not there with him. So survival was at the forefront of my mind — eating was my North Star. Every time our teacher asked us to do something, “please come to my desk and bring your jumbo pencils,” I would bend down and reach inside the cubby-hole under my seat and also grab my sack lunch. Jumbo pencil in one hand, baloney sandwich in the other. Those other kids were crazy, it was unthinkable to arrive at lunch time and to not be prepared.

But the trip to her desk was only about learning how to use the mechanical pencil sharpener — which was indeed fascinating. My Jumbo pencil was gone in six seconds. I popped the tiny nub in my mouth, salivating over impending lunchtime. A little later, when she asked us to follow her outside, it turned out not to be in order to find a shady spot to eat under a raggedy, moth eaten tree in windy Texas dust. No, once again I found out I could have left my lunch and just come along. For it was about the giant swings and monkey bars and merry-go-round — and how not to pinch off any parts of our little bodies while we were playing with them. No mention of the searingly hot shiny metal slide radiating sun. She must have known we were journeymen. My baloney sammich was wilting.

For what seemed like days, we marched in a parade to the music room. To the auditorium. To the curb where our mothers would pick us up in the afternoons. To the gymnasium for basketball and volleyball. (bally ball) What about lunch!? Oh, my little brown sack was sweating grease and mayonnaise like it had been sat on and run over by a tractor.

Finally, at what seemed like supper time, the eleventh time we’d been asked to follow our dear teacher, it was not to demonstrate where we’d have Reading Circle or where the School Nurse could be found on Tuesdays and Thursdays. (Wait! Where did she disappear to?) Or to the shed with two shelves, called the School Library. Or where the strangely-smelly-since-last-school-year Lost and Found closet could be located. It was finally the school cafeteria! Whew! The Cafeteria! Food Time at Long Last! My sammich had seen better days, but I ate it ravenously, sipping my little half-pint, 2-cent carton of milk. Jello was dessert and though I’d never eaten anything that jiggled without being kicked, I gave it a try and was pleased. Seconds were apparently not offered.

The Chips Ahoy! cookie in my sack, Mama had nicely wrapped in waxed paper. But that was hours and miles ago. It had to be poured like gold dust out of the bottom of my sack, directly into my open gullet. I was happy, thrilled that I had not once followed the teacher without remembering my lunch! I am still that kind of kid. If I come to your house for a first visit, please don’t give me a ridiculous “house tour.” Men have never understood that and don’t care to learn. Just take me to the kitchen, please. ~ Li’l Mikie Tumbleton, aka., Michael Tomlinson

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Breathing Into Your Life

WHAT MOST EASILY GETS OUR ATTENTION in chaotic times is something explosive or disruptive. That’s because we are easily entranced by and addicted to the high level of fearful emotions, outbursts and arguments, and events we can name right or wrong. We quickly get numbed and exhausted by it.

But how do we pull ourselves out of the furious rapids? The roaring whitewater of confusion and panic of being lost in constant emergencies? Someone, as many someones as possible, must pause amidst the frenetic pitch and breathe. That’s first. You won’t be able to do anything else if you cannot find a calm breath in the midst of chaos.

If you’ve never done that, it will sound like doing nothing. People who are thinking, “We’ve got to fight!” “We’ve got to shut this shit down!” will very much believe what they are saying. In the right situations, we need that kind of burst of action and purpose. But if those same people cannot pause and allow some inner wisdom, love, guidance to arise, they will just feed and become part of the insanity.

In pausing, the tiniest spark of remembering that you are a soulful Human Being arises. And when you extend that pause, holding a space of quiet in your heart and mind as you breathe a little longer, you are renewed and in balance again. We all need that.

When this simple pausing/breathing experience happens to many, scattered around the world, we are joined vibrationally with them. The relief starts to spread, and then the sparks and faint light of people become clearer and less caught up in fear.

We can shift the energy of our entire world by doing this. Not instantly, but faster than we can even imagine. And even if you have doubts, I would just ask; what wonderful method is currently working and making the world better — that you are doing instead?

If you wish to spread love, pause and breathe and they will do it for you. Because we are more filled with love and compassion and even brilliance when we calm ourselves. Do it often. Ask others to join you, but don’t worry if they don’t. Just keep doing it yourself and let others see you. You’ll be surprised to see sometimes that people are calmed by YOUR breathing. ~ Michael Tomlinson

NOTE: Every week since the beginning of Covid, I have hosted a small online gathering where we breathe and meditate. I sing a song, we visit, we laugh, sometimes someone shares a story with us. How has this lasted five years? Because it feeds us, lifts us, gives us hope, makes us laugh. And so I keep hosting every week.

People come and go. Some attend often, some now and then. Some every year or two. It’s all good and somehow it seems always the exact right combination of people are there.

You may always register on my website for the next Thursday’s class. 6pm - 7:30pm Pacific. I hope you’ll join us. ~ Michael Tomlinson

Breathing Into Your Life
Music, Conversation, Breath, Meditation
Live on Zoom Thursdays at 6pm Pacific
Register at www.michaeltomlinson.com

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My Friend Fernando XVIII

IN A HEATED EXCHANGE WITH MY PET CRICKET, FERNANDO XVIII, we were arguing furiously (but civilly) over the wisdom of windows left slightly ajar on chilly nights. Whether the practice was sheer lunacy or not. I live near the sea and midnights get cool. It was Fernando’s position that a window left slightly ajar — even if it was a little chilly out — is necessary egress for crickets, in case of emergency. I however, having big floppy lungs which are inordinately affected by blowing pneumonia holes left dangerously gaping, feel there are better methods by which to exit a house in an emergency.

I ‘splained to Ferni in Bug-latin that since I was but a tiny tyke I had practiced knuckle-knocking frantically along walls for discernible gaps between studs, hoping that if ever a deadly disaster occurred, I might quickly fall onto my back between 2x4s and with my cute little plastic cowboy boots kick a jagged hole through dry wall and outer sheathing, then shimmy rapidly out to survive fire, smoke, police raid or nightmares. “Of course,” I explained, “if that ever happened, I would for sure whistle for my favorite cricket to accompany me so that we both could escape before natural gas ‘splodes everything into matchsticks.” Side note: in Seattle, even a house burnt to smithereens has a “fair market value” of $1.5 million. Realtors list it as a “Charming charcoal-infused urban stick hut.”

Fernando XVIII looked askance at me, having some doubt that I’d have my wits about me in such an emergency and actually remember my pet cricket. During an argument, I once called him a “grasshopper” and he bit me. Wouldn’t sing for a week. I felt bad about it, plus, I needed stitches.

Anyway. I continued my emotional exposition as he rolled his eyes like I had just made up the worst story he’d ever heard. Crickets do not often roll their eyes because they can pop out. But Fernando did it all the time with me. Also, crickets generally do not enjoy tales of grandiosity concerning human heroism which end in kicking walls to splinters. They prefer heart warming stories of catching and sautéing gnats for lunch. Why aren’t there more of those stories? they wonder.

“Do you even know where crickets sleep, dumbass?” Fernando sawed in his high pitched ratchet. Before I could finish Googling it, he whined out, “Inside the WALLS, Bozo! We live in the walls! How would you like it if someone just went Bigfoot crazy on you, kicking holes through your cozy bedroom in order to save a little time getting to the door?”

Oh. I would not. That is certainly a valid way of looking at it. But I’ll admit that I was threatened by Ferni’s oratory skills. It was not the way I saw our little talk going. So I ran away, sort of. “Harrumph!” I announced, and turned on my heels to stomp away. Which I’ve imagined doing since I first read of such a thing in Charlotte’s Web. I have never before been quick witted enough to snort “Harrumph!” but have often wished that I had.

It’s kind of an exhilarating exclamation, because no one these days knows quite how to respond to it. Give it a try. You have to say it almost under your breath, yet loudly enough to be heard, and with some fairly good nose wind puffing through your mustache (ladies yours need not be thick and bristly). Then you spin quickly around and gruffly exit without stumbling. That’s key, a trip and fall will spoil a perfect Harrumph! I’ve stumbled every single time and twice I seriously hurt my toe. I really want to get it right ‘cause I think it would be super satisfying.

As I think of it now, I don’t even really know why I rescued Fernando the XVIII in the first place. I guess I just liked his name. ~ Michael Tomlinson

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Some Upcoming Events

I have had several online events in mind that I’d like to host this late winter/spring. The day to day chaos of where we are as a country has made it difficult to make those plans and set dates, but we will work them out soon.

The events we’re working towards:

1. A Creativity Workshop on Zoom; meant to spark a vitality of imagination and joy — which is deeply needed on Earth at this time. People who can express their creative urges, in any area, live with a more satisfied fullness and overall well being. I’ve hosted these for years and will let you know as soon as we have worked out a date and format.

2. An Online Concert before summertime. Songs from through out my recording history, including several new ones and the stories behind them.

3. A special evening gathering on Zoom for my paid subscribers. A few songs, conversation, creativity, breath and well being.

4. An Online salon on What is happening on our planet in the Animal Queendom. There is a level of awareness and consciousness creatures are showing us that could make our lives so much better if we humbly listen and let go.

Keep breathing, my friends. Every time you think of it, pause and take a few breaths. Laugh when you can. That may sound ridiculous, but sometimes I will watch old Seinfeld episodes or 30 Rock or The Office, because I know for certain I will laugh and that will lift me and lighten me. Go easy on yourself. Nothing about this life on Earth is easy. So Give yourself permission to live as you wish, be who you are, and in that will rise more and more love. That alone could lift the whole world into a lighter, more harmonious time.

Thank you so much for reading and for your support.

Your friend in the wind, Michael Tomlinson

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Handy Tip

Here I am bike riding on a bitterly cold winter day, proving that one need not exhibit good common sense in order to have a happy life. But whatever you do, don’t forget your ear muffins.