When Music Heals

I left this past year in a puddle of sweat and tears on the concrete floor.  I made sure not to step in it on my way out.  I texted Nicole as we walked back to the car: "That was AMAZING.  I think i birthed myself into a new person. Holy fuck wow." 

Guitar strings poured noted waterfalls over the crowd.  Our hands up, up, palms open, letting the notes wash over us.  The saxophone sang.  The drum echoed my heart - with beat, beat, beat, beat- I am alive.  I am alive.  Lyrical perfection, my story, our story goes unnoticed; the worn map directing this music.  This jam.  This experience.

The sweat rolled, dripped, streamed, soaked.  Both my hands in the air moving opposite my shoulders, hips, sway, sway, swoosh, and feet tap, tap, swivel, tap, swivel, swivel.  Eyes closed, because this is mine.  This moment is mine, alone in a crowd of thousands, and I can't see past the glowing red LIFE alive and vibrant under my eyelids.  I'm watching pain, fear, disappointment slide down my body next to the beads of sweat sliding, sliding, pooling, pooling at my feet.  Cool blues and greens falling way to gravity.  Lightness rising, filling, exhale and inhale.  I might be that yellow balloon floating, floating, floating away.  I've left it all on the ground there beside my feet.  Now a transparent, gray, grime, puddle.

I didn't give it a second look when I stepped over it to walk out of the venue.  I knew it held every. single. difficult. moment. of the past year.  I have memorized the intersection of my bedroom wall and ceiling, shadowed in the one a.m. light of insomnia.  I know the feeling of the hard wood floor after sitting on it for hours, just looking at each other.  Puffy, swollen cheeks that come after things fall apart without a promise of falling together even better.  I didn't need to see any of it again to know I would still remember it.  Honor it.  So I left it there.  I left this past year in a puddle of sweat and tears on the concrete floor.  I walked away lighter.  I walked away a new person.  And I haven't looked back since.

LISTEN HERE

Here, Now

I'm determined to keep these thoughts at bay.  "Not until we land," I tell myself.  Of course I think I'm clever, because I know once we land we'll be in such a whirlwind of air trams and subways and commuter rails that I won't have space for these worries.  And once I get home I'll collapse from exhausting travel, jet lag, and the lack of cheese fondue.  I won't have the energy for these worries then either.  So I tell myself, "not until we land," and almost believe I'm tricking myself.  Sure, it takes a little more than that phrase on repeat.  I watch a couple of movies and take deep breaths during the lulls.  Blame the number of deep breaths on the poor quality of the movies.  I pull out the sudoku book I haven't touched since I purchased it in the airport before our flight over.  Hours and hours of flights and trains where I've let my mind ceaselessly wander and drift.  Miles of footsteps without a single worry. 

We walked through city valleys and stood on trains chugging over mountain sides.  We leaned over the sides of river bridges and watched the sea crash into rock walls.  My thoughts roamed free.  Darted through cars and in front of metros.  Rolled down mountain sides, claimed the point of mountain peaks, plunged into the cold sea.  Returned to me refreshed, exhilarated, and airy. 

The air on the plane is stale.  My head is threatening to ache.  I remind myself that it is impossible for the walls to literally be closing in and that I'm never claustrophobic in spaces this large.  A wave of anxiety rushes over me: unemployment, living back home, student loans, summer boredom, too old for this...  "You can handle this."  It's an abrupt voice.  A strong voice.  "Handle this."  Steady.  Calm.  Insistent.  I obey. 

I don't trust my ipod, so I flip through the in-air music selection.  Find a cover song by a favorite artist.  Something I haven't heard before.  Press play.   Lean into it.  Feel my muscles relax, my mind settle, my breath steady.  It's an acoustic lullaby without a promise of anything.  Steady strings and a smooth voice.  Without a repeat button, I hit the back button, time and time and time again.  I settle into a liminal state.  I'm somewhere over the Atlantic.  I'm somewhere in between.  I'm here, now. 

In Which I Am Not Sixteen Anymore

I have to change the radio station to the adult contemporary station because I can't listen to hip hop at 10:30am.  The combination of bass and high-pitched-synthesized notes irrationally irritates; I hit the "tune" button harder than I intend.  And then the same with gas pedal at the end of my driveway until I realize the bush on the corner now obstructs all view of the gravel leading to the neighbor's house.  Too late to hit the break, I am actually relieved at the empty driveway.  If a lead foot and a loud bass made me feel better at sixteen (I'm not sure it did), then I'm going to have to find a different outlet at twenty six.  I'm not sure why this surprises me.  Or why I'm surprised at the lack of weeds springing up in our concrete driveway.  Or how much I still dislike the adult contemporary station - I spent too many hours listening to it in the orthodontist chair having my braces tightened.

What has changed, and what hasn't?  How long am I going to be here - do I have to figure this out?

I'm fighting sixteen year old irrationality with adult choices, like going to Big Y and purchasing my own coffee pot.  Because if I have to work my way out of this new maze, I'm going to need some coffee.  If I am going to transition HOME, I am going to need some coffee.  If I want to feel twenty six, and unemployed, and nearly addicted to 90210 re-runs, rather than sixteen and seeking summer employment and nearly addicted to 90210 re-runs, I am going to need some coffee.

"You are not sixteen anymore."  It's nearly an out-loud chant before I look around my car.  Black steering wheel, not gray.  Dark seats, not light.  It's not my '82 Toyota Corolla of ten years ago.  The coffee I was drinking on my way home last night still sits in the console.  Gross, sure, but also reassuring.  I find the CD I've had on repeat for the past few months.  It's still there.  Right where it was yesterday.  Right. where. it. was. yesterday.  I pop it in.  Take a deep breath.  And then I'm twenty six again, running to the store to fill a coffee addiction, listening to an arrangement of notes that didn't exist ten years ago.  And I remember: I am so many things I wasn't ten years ago.

Little Voice

I spent days with Sara Bareilles and sweat dripping through every bodily crevice that summer.  Scorching hot D.C. weekend afternoons with Little Voice crooning and soothing and rocking my hips, my shoulders, my heart - peaceful and bursting in the same moments.  All those sun drenched weekends with slathered sunscreen on the tip of my nose, sunglasses and ipod creating a solitary world of running notes and companion thoughts, I walked and walked and walked through the city streets.  Shimmering concrete under blue skies, I felt each step forward and the growing strength that comes from a dedication to joy.

I baked in glorious sunshine and cooled my toes in the fountain behind the sculpture garden.  Shifting breezes sprayed the arches of water over my dewy skin and wet ink.  Drying together by the end of the song and the end of the page and the end of that thought.... When the heat became almost unbearable, I would duck into the Museum of American Art and the air conditioned Kogod Courtyard with the glass ceiling and the overpriced-but-worth-every-penny coffee, with my blue leather bound journal and write and write and write under the sun in the chilled air.  I would walk through the halls of new and old exhibits with graffiti spray-painted walls and oil-painted landscapes, memorizing feeling and breath and running notes that would carry me across the city that summer.  To Eastern Market, through the brightly colored jewelery, past the old man saxaphone player who became the only reason I would ever press pause on Sara Bareilles, behind the fresh fruit and to the painted glass, ceramic bowls, collage wall hangings, and oil canvasses with my summer stretched across the frame.  Bright reds, yellows, greens, blues, and purples.  Vibrant and alive.

Weekdays held professional vocations and weekends delivered independent joy, vibrant and alive.  I loved every. single. moment. in D.C., but I am deciding not to start my next chapter there.  I believe another city that will hold my joy this season.

Twenty Ten Begins...

High hopes for flying dreams and grounded stability, twenty ten begins with an early morning visit over snow covered roads for coffee and conversation. Quiet conversation of past memories and unstable relations that created false impressions of steady architecture. Structure that collapsed, leaving us amid destruction until we flew as phoenixes. Rarely do we land on branches above to reflect on the deserted ruins, but today we do, quietly. Peaceful sadness together. Rare moments standing still together, looking down, until we dry solitary tears and fly away. Leaving behind the years of the decade past and steering towards new years with the wind carrying us forward. Swooping towards both the sky and ground, reaching higher, relying on the steady horizon where ground and sky meet.

Patterned notes of melody and beat, lyrics and strings, twenty ten begins with a single song, played again, again, again... steady and quiet. With undertones of uncertainty, fear, passion and honesty - similar to the undertones of my twenty ten beginnings - intertwining to form the powerful, simple, quiet strength of melody and beat, perseverance and hope.

Goosebumps

[9/4/07]

Goosebumps tickle,
a hollow stomach cavern forms,
from resistance to shivers,
traveling up and down and out,
head to toe.

Air conditioned dark space wide open almost empty,
and too cold for late August.
Thunder claps outside, and he sees a flash,
but rest assured, it's not lightning.
I am - lightening.

My heaviness evaporates and rises;
I would follow it up,
into the bright lights,
but shivers hold me to the floor.

Rock to the guitar's rhyme,
three melodic voices,
and an out of place "shaker."
From Cuba?
Cold shivers and music's tingle combine,
inseparable.

An arm around my shoulders -
warmth to the left, warmth to the right.
Familiar friends -
it has been too long,
a new tune in an old soothing voice,
highlights of new sweetness,
sugary touches of chorus.

The old and the new,
sweet combination of warmth and chill.
Lightning outside.
Lightning inside.