Over a period of just six months, eminent jazz vocalist and composer Nnenna Freelon’s life changed irrevocably. Her soulmate and husband of nearly forty years, the renowned architect Phil Freelon, passed away from ALS, her sister Debbie succumbed to cancer, and the family dog, Basie, died as well. In the immediate wake of these compounding losses, Freelon could not find a way to process or understand her grief and lost the ability to read, sing, and improvise. The inner melody that had vibrated inside of her since childhood went silent. She then realized that the only way to move forward was to lean into her grief.
Part love story, part homage to jazz, and part guide to creative practice within bereavement, Beneath the Skin of Sorrow follows Freelon’s difficult and personal journey to healing. Calling on the improvisational skills that she had built over her forty-year career as a jazz singer, Freelon crafted her new reality by improvising—thinking about grieving as a series of small, daily engagements with the world around her. Slowly, Freelon regained the pieces of her musical sensibility, realizing that flowing between words spoken and words sung allowed her to understand what could not be fully realized in either realm.
By improvising a new life, Freelon forged a new companionship between grief, art, and daily life. In the essays, poems, lyrics, and explorations of jazz standards that comprise this lyrical and elegiac memoir, Freelon shows how thinking about grief as an exercise in improvisation can lead to a creative coexistence with grief in all its forms.
- Cover
- Contents
- Prelude
- Rubato
- First Movement: ’Round Midnight
- ’Round Midnight
- Beginner’s Madness
- Not Death
- Phil and Nnenna · A Beginning
- Notice
- Not Listening
- Phil
- Listening
- Skipping
- My Sister’s Ashes
- My Dog Too?
- Sorrow Song
- These Bodies
- Dear God
- Grief at the Door
- Not My Leg
- Assorted Beginnings
- Respect
- New Recipe
- Second Movement: Stolen Moments
- Stolen Moments
- On Be Coming
- The Train
- Balm
- There Is a Balm in Gilead
- The Wedding
- Silences
- The Moon and Me
- The Turtle
- Cricket
- Dwelling
- Container Garden
- Dry Toast
- Onions
- Dragonfly
- Breakfast with Billie
- Third Movement: A Love Supreme
- A Love Supreme
- Black Widow
- Widow Song
- Moon River
- The Light
- Love Cobbler
- Just You
- Absence
- Just Sweet Enough
- Oatmeal
- The Dishwasher
- Blue Skies
- Holding Stories
- These Stories We Hold
- Uprising
- Applause
- Loving-Kindness
- A Strange Place · New Song
- The Altar
- Other Woman
- Fourth Movement: Time Traveler
- Time Traveler
- End of the Garden
- The Celebrant
- Honey
- The Book
- Beneath the Skin of Sorrow
- Loving-Kindness Tea
- The First Page
- Spirit Pencil
- A Dream Letter from Phil
- Zip It
- Ode to Zipper
- Cufflinks
- The Bag
- Recurring Dream
- Your Ashes
- Happy New Year
- After Time
- Remember You
- Ask the Old Woman
- You’ll Know
- Coda
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
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