After despair, hope. At the end of a tough week, Joe Henry.
It’s my busiest time at work. The big, long, complicated conference I project manage is imminent. About a week out, I always have a couple of vile days.
It’s not necessarily that there are more mini-crises or dumb questions than at any other time. It’s something in me; some tide of desperation that simply has to flow before it ebbs again and I regain my equanimity.
During those days, I turn up to my desk as usual, but the feeling is one, not of panic so much as of a deep, bitter certainty that I will never get through all that must be done and that this will be the year that everything that possibly can go wrong, does.
I find myself fighting tears; at some point I lose this battle and have to leave the building for a bit. People I usually deal with calmly feel the brunt of my ire. I work late, plugging away at my endless list of must-do-by-yesterday tasks with a sense of dogged desperation. It’s all going to be a disaster anyway, so why am flogging myself? The things that usually buoy me up: a good novel, a brisk walk, a tinkling G&T at the end of the day, have lost their curative powers.
Then suddenly on Friday, the end of a brutal week when logically I should have felt lower and wearier than on any other day, the fog lifts and I am a different person. All day I work through my tasks, ticking each one off with a sense of achievement. I am calm and cheery. The sense of humour that went completely AWOL is back.
Nothing has changed except me.
At lunchtime I venture out and the sun is gentle and warm and when I get to the city library I pick up books by two of my favourite authors and one new one that looks promising.
At the end of this good Friday, I knock off at a normal time. I walk through city streets thronging with Friday night drinkers that cheer me. Two days ago I would have been scowling condemnation at them all.
I meet my husband and we walk through the chill evening to the Melbourne Recital Centre through the precinct richly awash with theatres and concert halls and art galleries. The lights are twinkling on the river and the night has not yet become ugly with loneliness and inebriation. ‘It’s a fabulous city if you have a reasonable income,’ I say to my bloke, knowing that we are going to a concert we have looked forward to for months and we have enough money not just to pay for the tickets, but to have a drink in the bar beforehand and people-watch the arty crowd with their grey hair and funky clothing and cool specs.
Then, to crown the whole, wonderful day, Joe Henry. We bought his album ‘Civilians’ years ago. That’s all we have heard of him, but in the years since, it has been our most played CD. He walks quietly on stage, no fanfare, and starts to play, and I experience that surreal moment when a voice that has filled your living room for years is embodied right in front of you.
Henry is self-deprecating and dry and talks between his songs just enough and not too much, so that by the end of the night we feel that the budding relationship we had with him before has become true friendship.
He is accompanied by his son Levon on sax and clarinet – the young bloke starts tentatively but soon gets into the swing and delivers swoony runs and swirls of sound twisting through his dad’s guitar and vocals.
Henry is, I believe, primarily a poet. I didn’t realise before how much he uses rhyme – almost every line of his lyrics rhymes with the next. And, unlike so much rhyme, it works. I love his tunes, but they can be slightly samey. They are, however, perfect backing to the simple sophistication of his poetry. I don’t know what he is talking about half the time, but still, it takes my breath away. I want to go home and start writing poetry again.
When he puts down his guitar and moves to the grand piano, I am tingling with anticipation. They are his loveliest, moodiest, deepest, richest songs; the bass notes of the extraordinary instrument make me weak at the knees. I want him to play more songs on the piano, but I’ll settle for guitar.
The seat is comfortable, the week is over, I’m sitting next to my best mate. I am listening to wonderful music that is feeding the creative in me and the week that was, is over – every gruelling minute of it. I survived, I did what I had to and now, unexpected, this gift of grace – of happiness beyond contentment, this evening of beauty and humour and depth that reminds me of all the good things in life.
‘A good song is equal parts hope and despair,’ says Henry at one point. For me, after a week of despair, all I got from him was hope.