Fussing with my dolly and singing . . .

Fast and slow songwriting

Enjoy “Picnic in the Sky” live with the Big Picnic Band, Pasadena, California, 2014. Lyrics are available at the bottom of this past letter.

Cecil, Ed, and Ella Eslwick, my grandmother’s cousins, with Ella’s baby doll.

Welcome newcomers!

A kind welcome to new subscribers who found me through

Tom Cox

and

India Flint

and through the mystery of the internet. It means so much to me that Tom and India have recommended my songs and stories to you and that you took a chance on me. Thank you for your comments and likes on my song and letter about the apple tree church. I usually send out a new or previously unreleased song each month accompanied by its story. I also write letters about what I’m making and what I’m seeing on my travels. You can read a potted history of me here. And you can read and hear my favorite song about my Appalachian childhood here. Paid subscribers receive a download of my new song or songs each month. I like to think of it as a song club!

Thank you, everyone, for being here.

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Songwriting, Fast and slow.

The miner now a memory, in the same place as little me
fussing with my dolly and singing the old rugged cross
listening to the women speak of patchwork and recipes
the power in the blood, the power in the blood.
– from "Picnic in the Sky"

When I write a song, it can happen in a few ways. Sometimes, I start hearing a phrase in my head and the phrase comes with a rhythm. I put my fingers on the fretboard of my guitar, choose a chord at random, and start singing. I change chords, see what I can find lyrically and musically. I record these moments and come back to them with paper and pen where I transcribe what I’ve done. Then I tweak and expand on the improvised lyrics and I see if there’s something more I want to do with the chords. I sing the revised song and, if it feels right, I’m done! That’s how I wrote Church ‘neath the Apple Trees.

Sometimes I write out a whole poem and set about finding a melody that fits with it.

Other songs, like “Picnic in the Sky,” (which you can hear at the top of this letter) fall out of my head in a great rush of words. I woke up in the night dreaming the words of that song. I left the light off, but wrote the lyrics in my bedside journal in somewhat runic handwriting and went back to sleep. In the morning, I deciphered what I’d written. My old duo partner and I worked on a melody and the song was finished.

“Picnic in the Sky” had been brewing in me for a while. My Dad used to call it “gathering wool.” While I’m gathering wool for a song, I might write down a line or two and look at old photographs. I’ll go to a museum and walk around the park. The song follows me around for a while – sometimes years. It’s not that I’m procrastinating or avoiding it, I just know that I haven’t found the way into it yet. It’s not ripe. I need another approach. I’m picky about songs. Just because I have a subject in mind doesn’t mean I’m ready to write the song.

So, I do other things. I do things that put my mind in what I’ve heard some people call a “flow state.” I knit, embroider. I make drawings and prints. I quilt. I read. The song is always there. Actually, several songs are there. They are like constellations in the firmament of my brain slowly taking shape until I can see the whole picture.

Sometimes, my songs come along like fevers. Other times, they just wait to wake me up in the night after a long time of wishing on them.

Doll Fever

I have several songs in the slow lane right now, so it’s no surprise to me that my brain has decided to work on something else until they come into focus. And that something else is doll restoration. I’ve been here before. It’s one of those places my mind likes to go because dolls reach way back into my childhood and my adventures with Mawmaw.

Last summer, I tried to interview Mawmaw (my grandmother) and her sister, Princess, about their childhood dolls. It was a very short interview. They didn’t have any dolls when they were little. They were born at home on Smith Ridge in the Appalachian Mountains of Southwest Virginia in the 1930s. Many years later, I was born in the hospital in town and I had so many dolls which Mawmaw and Mom and Dad gave to me. Holly Hobbie, Orphan Annie, Winnie-the-Pooh, china dolls, Barbie dolls, Cabbage Patch dolls, and my dear beautiful Babette – what we called a “dresser doll.” I did occasionally put her gingerly on a pillow beside me, but she was really a doll to admire, to gaze upon. She still stands in all of her splendor on my dresser at Mom’s house.

Babette.

Mawmaw didn’t have a doll until her eldest sister Edith brought a couple home for the younger children, but by then Mawmaw was a teenager and had never relied on a doll for play or comfort. She and her brothers and sisters played in the barn pretending the animal pens were a post office and general store. They held their own children’s church in the orchard behind the house. They dug clay out of the side of the hill, fashioned it into “fairy furniture,” and my great-grandmother Narcie let them bake it in the oven. Then they covered their clay furniture with moss carpets and leaf tablecloths, but there weren’t any tiny dolls to sit on the tiny furniture.

This wasn’t a hardship, Mawmaw tells me. There was nothing to miss because many of their cousins and friends didn’t have dolls either. Dolls just didn’t come into it. I suppose that’s why I love one of the photos my cousin Norma Grace sent to me. It shows Aunt Sarah’s children holding a giant doll. They lived just around the mountain curve from Mawmaw. The way they hold the doll like a real baby and the fact that it was photographed with them shows what a prize it was. (See the photo which heads this letter).

Five years old and well impressed with our dolls. I’m on the left with the lacy purse. M.A., my best friend from pre-school days, gave me a Barbie coffee-maker for my fifth birthday! The die was cast.

Right now, my fever is about Dolly (here she is below before I cleaned her and her clothes). I found her at a car boot fair (British flea market) for a song and brought her home with a look on my face of unabashed childish triumph. She’s currently in my own doll hospital being cleaned, restrung, and having her hair and clothing mended.

When I saw Dolly on the table at the car boot fair, she brought back childhood visions of yard sales, roadside gift shops, and the Sears catalog. It was like I was holding Mawmaw’s hand again walking through the sweltering Virginia heat looking at tables piled with Tupperware, lamps, and knick-knacks in someone’s driveway in Tazewell County. I see a doll. Her dress is dirty, there’s magic marker on her face, and her hair needs washing and brushing.

“Mawmaw, may we get her, please? I love her!” I say.

“Sure, honey,” says Mawmaw. “Here’s fifty cents. I know you’ll look after her.”

Perhaps, there’s a new song brewing right in dolly’s little hand?

Mom’s rag doll, Marcy, made for her by a neighbor (yellow hair). Raggedy Ann who went with me everywhere including my Dad’s seminars at Harvard Divinity School (red hair). Dressy Bessy was the ultimate learning doll with buttons, shoes to tie, a zipper pocket, and yarn hair to braid. Who needed an iPhone?

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This might be a good time to mention my article for Modern Daily Knitting about the Barbie exhibition here in London.

So, do you get these fevers? For dolls? Stamps? Yarn?

And when your brain is working on something big, do you do other meditative things like sorting buttons or pulling weeds to get your mind to relax?

Did you have a special doll or bear or toy in your life?

Thank you for reading and listening along! I’m just over here “fussing with my dolly and singing.”

With kindness, always,

Jeni

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P.S. When I found Dolly at the car boot sale, the seller said he’d found her and another doll at the same house which he’d cleared. He only had Dolly with him. I chatted with him, learned his name, and where he had his shop because I’m chatty. The next day, I thought about it and realized it was rather sad for Dolly to be separated from her sister doll. But I didn’t know the name of his shop. I called all of the antique shops in that one English village he’d mentioned and finally found the right one! So, I brought home Dolly’s sister Edith. Dolly and Edith didn’t cost much money because they do need lots of care. But they are very special because they were so loved by children of the past. That means the most to me. They’ve been together for nearly 100 years. They’re still together in my studio!

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I post my songs and my adventures on Facebook and Instagram.

I have actual physical CDs for sale (and digital downloads)! Most of the physical CDs have very elaborate booklets and artwork. You can see them all in my shop. You can also hear my music in those now familiar places like iTunes, Spotify, Alexa, Amazon, etc. Look for Jeni & Billy (my old band) or Jeni Hankins and fourteen albums will magically appear.

I’m always grateful for tips for my writing and making. PayPal and Ko-fi are my tip jars.

Most of all, be well, and fall in love with a button, if you get the chance. It happened to me and I’m glad it did.

Bye, for now.

Stanley Bear, my teddy bear, with my Dad’s childhood doll Rusty.