Pieta Brown – Notes From The Boneyard

Good morning, Omagh.It’s Mark here.Remember me?Or am I forgotten already?

I write this from the typewriter at Boneyard Headquarters to inform you of this week’s contributor, Pieta Brown..

Pieta is the fantastic songstress/musician from Iowa City. She is also an oracle of sorts.

A beacon of light.

She has worked through the years with artists such as John Prine, Mark Knopfler, and so forth…

She is often found dwelling in the folk/singer/songwriter area of the genre club, but Pieta names country blues and jazz as strong influences on her unique style. And who are we to argue.

So, now, I will cower back to my cage for another week. And maybe you will hear from me then.

Or maybe it’ll be Howe again.

Who knows.

But for now, over to Pieta…

I wanted to be telling you about Lisdoonvarna. And matches. Maybe I would even be telling you about love of some kind. But Lisdoonvarna’s renowned matchmaking festival, like so many dreams, got postponed.

Howe Gelb and Mark McCausland were supposed to take me there after the rain – before Mark would be going back to Taiwan, and before Howe was scheduled to go back to Berlin to see the dentist again, even though he lives in Arizona.

We had big plans to meet the morning after the last night of their tour. Bangor seemed as good a place as any to converge.

Finally, I would get to take in the Irish rain.

Finally, Howe promised, I would get to see the collection of souls transitioning into oceanic accumulation over Ballyholme Bay. And, maybe, Howe’s promises came drenched in the pour of Guinness from McCann’s – but at least they were drenched.

And Mark had promised to take me to Omagh.

I had met Mark in a dream, and he knew I loved rivers, and he promised to take me to the confluence and maybe an underwater forest or two.

Would the forests be green?

Or red?

Maybe blue?

I was looking forward to meeting Mark in real time.

Then, in more real time, we were meant to head to Malin Head for the wind and sea, where finally I would get to see where almost everything happens.

Maybe, I would get lucky, and even catch a glimpse of migrations – of the gannets, the shearwaters, the skuas, the auks (migration is comforting to musicians).

For kicks, though, it occurred to me to ask Mark and Howe if they wouldn’t mind detouring over to Belfast before Malin Head to visit a fortune teller named ‘Roxanne’ that a friend of mine told me about.

“She can’t rewrite your past,” my friend said. “But she can definitely invent your future.”

But, it was only in recent times that Howe had invited me to tour Ireland with him and Mark.

The invitation clearly stated that to sing in the land of my ancestors – that I’m quite sure my cells still carry – I would have to ‘invest’… Meaning ‘pay my own way’.

The trouble was, I had some shows in the US already scheduled for the same time that would be paying my bills, and maybe even paying my way to Ireland one day.

So, I hit the familiar road to sing my songs, and watched Mark and Howe’s tour from hotel rooms on Instagram. Except for Malin Head, who, like any restless goddess, refused to be diminished or contained by an app on a screen.

But, after Malin Head in real time – if there could be such a thing – I was hoping if these guys really were Troubadours, I would somehow convince them, last minute, to take me further south for a couple days to see my friend Mary down by Cork.

Mary, as bright as any sun. One visit with Mary, and suddenly the world is in balance again… Meaning, all at once, the light outweighs the dark, and hope is a living thing.

Then, finally, in balance, it would be on to Lisdoonvarna.

Finally.

And, finally, I would get to dance in Ireland, like my great-great-great-grandmother used to.

And maybe even sing.

The story is, my great-great-great-grandmother was known throughout the island for her dancing.

She could sing and paint, too.

And, many years later, her great-great-granddaughter, Ella Mae, living in the Ozarks of Missouri, would write a luminous poem called, ‘Wish I Was A Painter’, that, years later, her grandson, my father, as a young man living in Iowa, would turn into the prettiest song you’ve ever heard.

Now I sing it often.

Especially in the fall…

And, always, when things get postponed.

“I wish I was a painter… I would mix red, green, and blue… Oh, I wish I was a painter… I’d paint a picture for you… In these hills are every colour…

“Every colour, but one or two…

“Oh, I wish I was a painter…

“I’d paint a picture for you…”

But, be careful what you wish for, as they say.

Lest it may come true.

~ Pieta Then