Shared voices

Well, yeah, I should likely go to bed instead of writing, but I've gotten into a habit of ending my day with this, so maybe it's good to continue.... the juxtaposition of this being my private thoughts in a public forum is starting to get to me 'cause as I write more, more of the internals come out, the good & the not so good & I'm starting to fall into the trap of wanting to be impressive again... I sort of want people to like me & to think I'm like, maybe sane, & maybe a really great guy & as I spin off into really talking through the stuff that goes on in my heart, well, I'm not so sure I can claim sanity or having it together anymore....

...maybe one day I'll fully shuffle over to being 100% convinced that I'm loved as I am... honestly, I'm way closer to that being a reality than it was in the past, but I still struggle with it.

And yeah, I find today that I have internal rumblings that just can't be shared in a public forum... so yeah....

... got more sleep last night & was more alert & happier today. Car got fixed. The 'sway bar' on the car broke in half. I didn't know what a 'sway bar' was & still am not so sure, but $500 later, my car doesn't make the nasty falling apart noises anymore, so I'm happy....

...or at least I was... after work, got out on the road to kill time before stuff got started at the community house. Went to A&B sound to look for music from artists from the Before the Music Dies videos. Picked up a CD by the Roots & another by David Gray (isn't on the video but gets mentioned). Saw some of Erykah Badu's CDs, but I'm already working through one of hers that I found at the 2nd hand shop (along with a Doyle Bramhall II CD). They didn't have any of Doyle's CD in the store & this sort of left me vaguely upset.... in the B4MD documentary, you really get to see this guy's story of moving from being the heir apparent to obscurity & depression & the walking-death of an artist who has lost hope, vision & belief in themselves & then you see him built up at the end of the show & receiving accolades from legends like Eric Clapton... you see in his story that he is, as Erykah describes, one of the 'first kind' of artists - one who experiences pain to do what he does. The first artists are the ones where their art nearly kills them. They have to create, but no one gets it & so they spend a tremendous amount of time in life-support - this near-death place where they feel so desolate in their creativity & then get these moments of inspiration only to have it crash down again & then they keep trying & keep waiting for that wave of inspiration to hit again & yeah, they persevere through it, not 'cause they really want to, it's just that something inside drives them on & they can't resist it....

& since the car was fixed, I could now listen to the radio, so had it tuned into CKUA to catch some more independent, listener supported radio. On the drive over to the community house, I caught a piece that was interviewing Joni Mitchell. As part of it she made mention of how she has now 45 open tunings that she uses in her songs & she describes how the complexity of her chords are made to mirror the complexity of her emotions. "My joy", she says, "is never fully complete. There is always a little dissonance in it." (or something to that effect, she says it better)....

... I missed large chunks of the next 10 minutes of the drive thinking about that & realizing how much that one statement 'fits' me & explains things in me. I feel not so alone in this because, hey, Joni seems to have the same complex emotions apparently - joy that is always touched by a tear (to borrow a line from David Ruis), sadness that is never complete despair, always a thread of hope running through it....

...but what this resulted in was that I was in sort of psuedo-depression by the time I hit the house. It's odd lately. I've maybe been thinking too much, I've been in a low mood pretty much every time I've been at the community house (or my house for that matter, I guess)... but yeah, c'est la vie....

In leaving the house, I heard this poem by Rumi read over the radio and again, it somehow explained a part of my spirituality that I have not been able to find words to describe for years:

Love Dogs by Rumi

One night a man was crying,
Allah! Allah!
His lips grew sweet with the praising,
until a cynic said,

"So! I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?"
The man had no answer to that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.

He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick, green foliage.
"Why did you stop praising?"
"Because I’ve never heard anything back."

"This longing you express is the return message."
The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.
Your pure sadness
that wants help
is the secret cup.

Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
that whining is the connection.
There are love-dogs
no one knows the names of
Give your life
to be one of them.

This for me reflects the power of art. I've felt for years that my spirituality, my prayers, my heart are defective 'cause I'm not getting that answer, that response from the heavens. That was the torture for me at the gathering was this sense that everyone else was getting a 'response' from God except for me & from it, I felt very, very isolated & like God didn't like me... That's been mostly worked through (I'm maybe still bitter in some places), but for the most part, my spirituality has grown through that & I really like God & am less mad at Him & more caught in just longing for him.

So tonight, listening to this poem read over the radio, my eyes well up with tears & it almost feels too good to be true & so I resist the reality, that maybe I am not defective & aberrant, maybe I know something that some medieval poet knew & maybe if he knew it, too, maybe I'm not so alone/odd...

It's amazing how healing connection is, how much it helps to hear someone tell a story & you feel like they are speaking your story back to you. It is so freeing to feel understood, even for a moment.... we long to be known... by someone, anyone. We most of all long to be known by those closest to us, but there are days where we're OK with connecting with a stranger, so long as someone 'knows' us...

...and yeah, maybe this is why I get to share my less than impressive stories here. Why I get to articulate struggle & fumbling & searching for something which I don't know what it is exactly, nor where to find it, but I'm looking....