The Morning, Brilliant Blue
Stories for Thanksgiving
Howdy Thanksgiving to you. It was not my plan to send out a new issue of The Morning, Brilliant Blue on Thanksgiving weekend, but then I thought for those who might be not feeling the most thankful, a little kindness and goodwill might be timely. So I’m sending you a collection of a few of my writings, some brand new, some that I’ve rediscovered from years past and felt that they might leave you feeling a part of a family, a part of something beautiful.
I hope you can feel some form of Thankfulness on this day or this weekend. And if you cannot, please do not judge yourself for that. There is not a soul on the planet who had felt unable at times to feel grateful. It too will pass and not only will you be grateful again for your life itself, you’ll even feel grateful for this darker times that helped you to eventually find that. Thank you for reading this, my friend. ~ Michael
I HEARD A MAN KNOCK AT MY DOOR and then politely step back down from the porch onto the sidewalk. I opened it up and he said, “My friend and I are out looking for work and we wondered if you’d like the numbers on your curb refreshed.” I paused a minute not aware that I had any numbers to refresh. I said, “Oh, I don’t even own the place, I don’t think I’ll do that today, but thank you.” The man said, “Okay” and turned around and headed to the next door. His friend knocking on doors across the street seemed to be getting the same responses.
I walked back into my office and instantly felt a pang of regret about thoughtlessly telling them no. Why did I do that? I sat there feeling sad, wishing I’d said yes. The man was probably in his 40s, looked like he’d had a pretty rough life. His friend was more youthful, probably in his 20s. I thought to myself, “there was no reason to not say Yes to those men. They were just trying to do an honest bit of work to make some money.” Why not say yes to people if you can? They were gone by then though, probably on the next block.
About fifteen minutes later, I was writing at my desk when I caught a glimpse of movement outside. I looked up and was surprised to see them walking back down my street and past my house. I jumped up and knocked something over, leaning across my desk trying to stick my head out the window before they were gone. “Hey, fellas!” They stopped and looked around, trying to figure out where the voice was coming from. I think they’d been turned down enough that they didn’t expect anyone to be calling out to them. I waved my arm wildly so they could spot me in the shadows under the big walnut tree, my head hanging out the window. They saw me and stood there trying to figure out what the guy with his head and shoulders out the window wanted. “Over here! Wait, I’ll come out!”
I walked out to meet them and said, “I’m really sorry I said no. I got to thinking about it and I regretted not saying yes to you. It’s a hard thing making a living. I used to do all kinds of physical jobs to make a living. I admire that you’re out here doing something creative.” They both brightened when I said that. “I would like to have my numbers painted, can you still do it?” They lit up. “Sure, that would be great.” I loved that I was asking them and that they held the power to decide if they would do me that favor.
I asked, “How much are you charging?” The younger man said, “People are just paying what they think is fair, ten or fifteen bucks or whatever they want.” I told them to wait there and I darted back inside and got a twenty dollar bill and walked out to hand it to them. I looked them in the eyes and said, “Thank you for doing this. I don’t know what was going on with me, but I’m glad you came back.”
The bright shift of mood and light that came over those two men came over me too. It was not only about the money for them, though that might well have been dinner for them. It was that I had really seen them and apologized for not getting it in the first place. I know it mattered that I treated them with respect and appreciation, and maybe even that I shared with them honestly that I had regretted my decision and recognized my mistake. It gave the three of us a moment of shared humanity.
I went back in the house and could hear them out there, hunkered down and talking at the curb. They sounded happy. It surprised me, the care they took and how long they were at it. I heard the spray can rattle again and knew they were giving it several light coats, letting it dry right and then adding more. When they finished, they looked up and waved at me as they left and I hollered thanks to them out my window. When I left to go to the store a little later I looked down at the tidy, very clean and concise job they’d done and it touched me that a simple small action in this world could make their day and mine better.
When I got back from the store, I was surprised to see that quite a few of my neighbors had hired them too, after seeing them work on my curb. Damn, just one moment of recognition of my roted initial reaction had made a difference in all our days. This happened several years ago when I was living in Seattle, but the emotion of it still rises in me now. It was my beautiful reminder from Life to Say Yes to People every chance you get. And that has never let me down. ~ Michael Tomlinson
In 1982 I was in a rural woodsy area outside of Austin with my friend Jim Montgomery, who went invisible over twenty years ago, dang it. We were visiting the farm house of the woman who had been like a mother to him. I never knew the full story, but she was the sweet soul who took him in as a boy and raised him when his folks were not there. He had long wanted me to meet her but also, he wanted to take me out there to show me some dinosaur tracks, frozen for thousands of years in the stone bed of a spring creek that ran nearby. Only he didn’t tell me that. He wanted me to stumble around and think I’d discovered them. Which I did. “Jim! Git over here man! You’re not gonna believe this!” They were astonishing, gigantic imprints like a two ton chicken had been walking there a million years ago.
Jim couldn’t follow through on the joke because he couldn’t contain himself and was giggling like a little kid the whole time. It took me a minute to realize that I was not a great scientific discoverer after all. But I could have been, pretty much no one knows about them since they are on private land and were never made public. No cell phones yet and I never carried a camera. I was one of those idiots who thought, “Naw man, I just really look at stuff and I always remember it.” What a load.
After a while we were drinking iced tea and visiting his mom on the long covered porch. As they were catching up, I went for a walk around the property, past the barn and corral full of probably fifty or sixty huge white geese. I wandered off into the woods and along the creek. Half an hour later I emerged from the live oaks and when I rounded the barn, I could see past the corral that Jim and his mom were still sitting on the porch talking. They waved me over and I started walking toward them.
When I was just past the barn I thought, “why go all the way around the corral when I I can just slip through the gate and cut across?” I was inside, locking the gate behind me when I looked up and saw what looked a like alarm on Jim’s and his mom’s faces. They stopped mid-conversation and both rose a little tentatively when they saw what I was doing. As I crossed the corral, heading straight for the geese, they both grew suddenly serious and stood straight up. I mean like statues, stiff, silent, unable to talk. I had no clue what that was all about.
I walked out through the giant geese as they were feeding and milling about. Jim’s face was the same as his mom’s. A kind of weak, wavy grin was glued on both. I grinned back a little tentatively and waved, then walked right through those geese.
When I got to the other gate, no geese had followed me. For that matter, no geese had noticed me. I’d wondered if they’d try to escape when I opened the gate, but no, they just went back to eating. When I turned back toward Jim again, they both owned mouths the shape of Big O’s. I smiled, not knowing what the heck they were doing. I walked up on the wooden steps to the porch and found two people who looked like they’d seen a ghost. Jim’s voice was croaky and he was saying something like, “Ho-lee shit, Mike!” His mom muttered something I couldn’t make out. I think she thought maybe I was The Undead.
Jim said, “Michael, I don’t know what the heck you just did brother, but in twenty years I’ve never seen those geese not attack the shit out of anybody who walked into their midst.” I was astonished. “Attack? They attack people?” His mom was speechless and didn’t say a whole lot the rest of our time there.
Because I hadn’t expected an uproar, nothing about it surprised me except what they told me after. On the way home, Jim was still shaking his head and looking a little wary of me. I was howling laughing, because one of the few irritations we’d ever had between us involved my lack of wanting to go out on the town and party a lot. It drove Jim crazy. He just couldn’t fathom another young man who was happy staying home in the evenings and playing guitar and writing songs. Now that he’d seen what he thought of as some kind of supernatural event between me and the geese, well, he stopped bugging me about going out partying.
By the way, about a week after that, I sat in our backyard one spring night and wrote “All is Clear.”
“It’s been raining here, I can smell it in the air
And I love this southern city like I spent my childhood there
It is inevitable that we will soon be saying our goodbyes
But I’ll always have your skyline in my eyes. . . “
I was so glad I hadn’t hit the clubs with my pals that night.
I’ve never tried to repeat my situation with the geese. Why mess with a good record like that? It would be a huge disappointment to have it go another way. ~ Michael Tomlinson
One of my great loves in writing is to find a vintage photo I am moved to write about. What happens is not just imagination, it’s love. I love the people and places. And so I just type their lives over again, maybe a little more fun this time. ~ M
Thanksgiving Brothers in Law
ON THIS PARTICULAR THANKSGIVING DAY in rural North Georgia in 1957, four brothers-by-marriage took turns telling of their adventures and misadventures, accidents, injuries, hirings, firings and ill-timed flat tires that had befallen them since the last Thanksgiving.
Because men do their best talking with a prop of some sort, the fire pit was perfect for their purposes; providing them something to lean against that would only smudge their britches lightly; an obstacle to pace around and something warm over which to hold their outstretched fingers to wiggle in the visible heat waves of the crackling blaze. Born of need, there was the defensive propping-up-of-the-foot pose, with elbows crossing knees, designed to protect the tender crotch area from pebbles heated and pelted like bullets from the fire. Were it not for that pose, handed down since the Cave Men, none of us would be here today.
When Flora Lou emerged from the kitchen and walked into the grove of pines with a plate of cookies, she heard great laughter and paused to listen as her husband, Plod, told a story about the laying of their backyard patio. She gasped and stepped back slightly into the shadows, astonished to hear an entirely different version of the event than she'd witnessed with her own two eyes. See, Flora Lou did not understand what every man in the world knows from birth; that LIVING great stories and TELLING great stories have absolutely nothing to do with each other. And so, hearing Plod tell of the great timber falling toward little Jimmy's good foot, and Plod's courageous lunge to block the massive log just in the nick o' time, was troubling news to her.
What timber? Who's Jimmy? He has a GOOD foot? These were questions she could have stepped forward and asked Plod right then, had she been a cruel and punishing wife. But she was not. Instead, she paid heed to the brisk Thanksgiving wind whispering to her through the pines, puffing in her ear its husky, urgent plea: "Flora Lou! Just LEAVE THE COOKIES and WALK AWAY, WOMAN!" Which she did, setting forth a holy gesture of True Thanksgiving and Forgiveness that lives on as an inspiration to humanity to this very day. Supposedly, there is a plaque somewhere.
And so, Saint Flora Lou reminds us this Thanksgiving Season to go easy on each other, to allow for all the crazy juxtapositions of memories and to let lie in peace old grievances and feuds. Because aren't we all a little confused about who did what to whom and why nobody ever did say they were sorry? I know I am. I can't even remember who got that last buttery dinner roll last year. I just know I didn't. ~ Michael Tomlinson
Some of you who are reading my stories, may not have known my music over the years. Those songs and concerts, albums recorded, friendships made . . . sigh. . . no one could ever have asked for a richer, more surprisingly welcoming life than me in those wonderful years. It has long been my plan to write about the ways my songwriting lifted me, opened my life and led me onto a path which I could never have imagined was possible. It’s been a life which, when I look back, never felt apart from my own, natural soulful evolution. I’ll be writing about the events, the songs, the people and places, and certainly, my own heart and mind through those beautiful years into this time we are in now.
I will probably skip around in time, because that’s how we tell stories. We go with the spark of the moment, “Oh, that reminds me of the time in Telluride when . . . “ I hope you’ll enjoy being a part of my meandering recollections. Many of them will surprise me, and you’ll probably be able to tell that. Sometimes a single memory uncovers a stash of others that want to be shared. So that’s what I’ll do over this next year; recalling whatever is memorable. Because my life is hopeful, I already know the stories will be that too. ~ Michael
Tacoma in 1984
Becoming Whoever It Is That I Am ~ early years in Seattle
There are certain moments when I can access again the lovely flow of gifts that came to me in the beginning years of touring, playing concerts in the cities wherever a radio station had fallen in love with my songs. For one thing; that’s what it felt like — like they personally loved me. I would show up in Anchorage or Casper or Santa Fe or Orlando, Baltimore, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Boulder, San Francisco — and of course Seattle, where the first few years so gently lifted me up and helped me learn how to be this man thousands of people heard singing from afar, but also someoe who people would stop and talk to in Pike Place Market or walking around Green Lake in Seattle.
So much of that time was good, fun and warm hearted and exciting. I can hardly recall any aspect of it that was unpleasant. It’s the friendships that I remember, the concerts where the people who came, whether a few hundred or eventually, thousands, seemed like my family, my good friends and neighbors. And something that made it even more beautiful was that they all liked each other. People would tell me, “I always know that if someone loves your music, I’m going to like them.” Just think about that a minute and imagine that it’s you they are talking about.
There is so much grace in that remark, “if someone loves your music, I know I’m going to like them.” That alone could give you a feeling for what my life was like in my early years in Seattle. What was inconceivable to me and almost all the people close to me, was that in a few years it would happen in city after city. Not entire cities, but wherever there was a station playing me, that community to a great extent seemed to think of me as their long lost friend coming home. It is still so moving and astonishing to me that I still feel emotion welling up inside me as I write this.
I was the regular kid who in my thirties suddenly got to do special things; concerts and river raft trips, festivals — and I got to bring my friends along! How I learned so quickly to be at ease in interview situations, radio and TV and press, I’m not sure I know. Still, I was in certain ways a shy person. I was in Seattle over two years before my first album came out. The day that happened every music store in the area had my album up on the wall as a best seller. Suddenly, I stopped running around Green Lake. It seemed too public. I’d been running around that path for years, but with my album photo so commonly seen everywhre, I felt shy. I felt vulnerable. So my running moved to neighborhood streets instead of a three mile path around a popular lake where I’d see hundreds of people. Unless my friends were there, then I would go anywhere.
In fact, my friendships would have save me from almost all the worries about becoming well known. My friends would never have allowed me to be fake, to be somebody else onstage from who I really was. There is a real quality of wholeness and safety in that; having friends who were themselves so filled with love and honesty that we simply wouldn’t have been friends if I was not that way too.
One of those friends owned an ice cream store in the U-District. The day we met has made a difference in my music and in my life that could be a whole book unto itself. . .
To continue in upcoming issues . . .
The Road to Mount Si
I created this video for you this morning as a way to share my Thanksgiving song from my Winter Tales album, one of the two Holiday albums I created in 2017 and 2018.
Almost every year for thirty years I drive out to Snoqualmie or Fall City Washington and spend the day and enjoy a feast with my close friends. The drive itself is beautiful and everywhere you look it’s November. Sparse leaves, start trees, tall evergreens and firs, foothills and mountains in the distance. And of course the Snoqualmie River which flows out of the mountains. From my friends’ house you can see Mount Si, near North Bend. It’s magestic and surprising at any time of year. By now there is some snow up there and the mood that lends to the river towns is powerful.
When I wrote this song it was the melody which excited me first. I sang it for over a year before I found lyrics and realized that it was to be a Thanksgiving song and a memoir of my years driving out by myself, some years with a friend along. And the beautiful feeling that goes with driving through beautiful country to go be with people you love. I hope you enjoy my song. Both Holiday albums are available on my website, filled with half original songs and half reimagined classics. ~ Michael
An evening of songs and stories, laughter and love ~ Live on Zoom
Sunday, December 15th at 5pm Westcoast and all on Zoom
Tickets at www.michaeltomlinson.com
Nice stories