In December, I attended a live performance (a live performance!) at my native arts and tradition middle, a theater based by the late Katharine Hepburn, our Connecticut city’s most well-known resident. It was an intimate setting wherein to deal with my mother to a efficiency by the one and solely Judy Collins, eyes nonetheless luminous, voice nonetheless buttery wealthy at her elevated age of 82.
We made a reminiscence that evening. Neither of us had ever seen her carry out, though each of us have beloved her so lengthy—my mother because the Nineteen Sixties, who in flip launched me to Collins by way of some well-loved vinyl information within the mid Nineteen Eighties. Again then my very own (comparatively inferior, clearly) soprano was beginning to current itself, and I discovered unbelievable lecturers in Judy (and Joni and Joan).
My mom and I each drew in breaths when Collins opened her set with “Each Sides Now,” her rhinestone guitar strap catching the sunshine, and we each teared up desirous about the passage of time and a few vital individuals we’ve got beloved and misplaced alongside the way in which.
Early on within the efficiency got here “Within the Twilight,” a current music she’d composed about her late mom when she grieved her imminent loss of life at her bedside. It’s a character research, a lyrical poem, and a eulogy set to music.
Right here she is singing it on YouTube.
A line stood out to me, one which served as a form of chorus…
Chardonnay in a crystal glass/Amethysts on her fingers
I’ve to suppose any jewellery lover would reply to those phrases; I imagined one thing just like the rings under.
Clockwise, from left: Paloma ring in 18k gold and enamel with amethyst, $6,250, Francesca Villa for Solid; Twinkle ring in 18k rose gold and white enamel with Rose de France amethyst and diamonds, $3,400; Emily P. Wheeler; Drained Eyes ring in oxidized 18k white gold with amethysts and white and purple diamonds, $6,500; Misahara; rectangular cocktail ring in 14k gold and enamel with amethyst, $1,485; Alison Lou
Collins had many items for us that evening. The ultimate—and most spectacular—one was a devastating supply of her well-known cowl of Stephen Sondheim’s “Ship within the Clowns,” made much more poignant given the truth that the composer had handed away just some weeks earlier than.
This, the night’s encore quantity, undid me on many ranges, however there was one other Sondheim second from earlier on within the set that I’m nonetheless desirous about. The music appears apropos for my first All That Glitters put up of 2022 as a result of the lyrics include superbly articulated recommendation for any jewellery designer considering their agenda for the brand new 12 months.
It’s known as “Transfer On,” from Sunday within the Park With George, Sondheim’s Pulitzer Prize–successful 1985 musical concerning the stormy, conflicted French pointillist painter Georges Seurat.
When Collins sings it, it has a motherly high quality, consoling and reassuring, and its phrases will certainly resonate with artists throughout all mediums, struggling and in any other case. I wished to share a number of the phrases right here as a form of benediction when the probabilities appear equally hopeful and daunting:
Cease worrying in case your imaginative and prescient is new
Let others make that call
They often do
You retain transferring on
Simply maintain transferring on
Something you do
Let it come from you
Then will probably be new
Give us extra to see
“Transfer On” is just not a toe tapper, however I feel it’ll illuminate no matter readability you’re looking for at this exact second.
And to these of you who say there must be clowns? Nicely, perhaps subsequent 12 months…
