“My couch moving crew was coming, so I had my work cut out for me to make sure this operation would run smoothly, and efficiently. When you depend on others, when you live in a state of dependency on others in no uncertain terms, you learn how to have more fun than less, to not belabor or over-tax the goodness of volunteer labor, or barter-mates, or weekend warriors. I stripped the cushions of the sectional, to lighten it, remembering, as I tromped overland and down the construction stairs balancing each bulky enormity on my head, the day I drove to a suburban part of Richmond VT, to buy the monster off a Craiglist seller. Had it been a year ago? Or more? So much is a blur now. Tape measure in hand, I reviewed all the possible routes, rejecting the most obvious, realizing we’d boxed ourselves in with finishing trim, which pointed now to the only viable navigable pathway. I don’t know how many folks out there understand the gravity of a sectional sofa. It’s a huge commitment, or leap of faith, symbolic, almost garish in it’s nod to loungewear, or grand social enactments.For me, it was a dream. To have a sectional sofa dominate a whole room, an almost wasteful fantasy, could not but garner second thoughts, in my own mind, as well and certainly as, the opinions of bystanders and soon to be critics. Could age possibly play into this? Finally giving myself permission to recline and flaunt it? No, that wasn’t really it. Thinking back to my impressions of the bunk beds in the amazing Pete Weiss’s Andover VT recording studio, I realized I was only climbing to match his class, his vision, his desire to provide everything he could, in a rustic, back woods creator space, so that artists of every stripe could have the means, and the furniture support, to do their thing in comfort. It was maybe only twenty steps, from Pete’s bunk beds, and perfect band hang room, to the microphones, and the hardwired lights, bells and whistles, that made his sound remarkable. That made his bands want to come back, and do more of what they did, because it was a uniquely 360 Vermont experience. Even further back in my memory, was Suntreader Studio, hidden in the woods of Sharon, VT, where i was hired as a twenty-something to sing backup vocals on someone’s album. I’ve lost who it was, who owned the studio, driven all the minor dirt roads in WIndsor county, to try to find it again, only to get confused, & disappointed, as nothing looked even vaguely familiar, or as epic as it had, at the time. But we don’t forget what moved us. We don’t forget the stairways, the control booths, the excitement of being in the center of art making, at its primal source. And process, is what it’s all about. How something is made, is almost more important than what was made, although if the music was good, and it reached ears & hearts beyond the woods, that would be icing on the cake, and a well deserved notch, for all the effort. Here now, sitting in front of the blazing glow of the wood stove, as my posterior enjoys the soft buoyancy of the couch, I feel somewhat triumphant, for these personal reasons. My crew would have done it for less than a bowl of soup, but I felt food might be fair pay for their taking time from their day. And so, after we moved it, after removing railings, and taking it out to the back porch and then in again, through the new studio French doors, in slippery condition despite all my shoveling, there was soup passed around, and we sat in lawn chairs, in my kitchen. One, living in a refurbished school bus, said how the building materials I’d given him were providing better heat retention; one hailing from a tiny house, said he was looking forward to helping me set up a new work station, so that he could bring in his talented friends to record soon. They didn’t stay long. There was a mountain to climb, and waning daylight. They discussed their imminent route up the ridge, on split skis and snow shoes. “It’s a great run, “ Brian said. “You don’t have to come down it feeling like you can’t stop”. That said it all. I haven’t felt like I could stop much, in the past few years. It’s been a tough ski. Perhaps now, with the sectional come to its critical resting place, we can all pause together, take a load off, and reframe the future. Because there is a lot of new framing, of the internal kind, that needs to be done, to dispel our inbred tendencies to isolate in despair. I would suggest that even an unwieldy couch, can be a healer. That even the hardest nuts among us, seemingly stuck inside impossible corners, can find simple, novel ways out.”
