music

Some days lately are bookended with music. Music seems to bookend my best days, the days where I lay my head down with the kind of peace that comes from rightness and knowledge of where I am in time, in life, in home and heart. My best days are the days that I’m aware of the new breath my life has, a slower breath where accomplishments are of the soul and not the pocketbook or prospectus. On these days I begin and end my days with music. I usually find the world to have both too many and too few words. Too many words of surface, of speaking, or telling, and too few words of listening, of honesty, of substance and connection. I think sometimes after a day filled with conversation, a day filled with events and speaking and places to go, I end the day feeling empty because I always crave a deeper connection. I crave a connection with the words that were not spoken that lie behind the words that either were or weren’t. Words are too easily held back. Words are too easily used to attack. Despite my love for them words often feel inadequate. Music fills the chasm.

I grew up playing music, I matured listening to it, and I use it for every creative pursuit I try. Now more than any other I use it for the creative pursuit that is my life. In the early early morning, hours before the sun rises, after I put my son down for his last episode at night I slip downstairs, plug in my headphones and pick through notes of old songs and new, remembering how to play not just with my fingers but the ache within me that reaches past common words towards the truth I find so slippery to pursue. At the end of my days I bathe in water and listen to music, usually allowing myself the luxury of two songs. I put the headphones in, turn the music up far too loud for my ears, and drift back into that space that somehow lies within me but is only accessed through deep connection and emotion. I wonder at how music carries me into it so quickly. Especially when I try so hard to find it with words spoken, words shared, words tried.

the idealist

Beneath my deep pessimism I am an idealist. I'll admit it. I've heard people disparage this word, this concept, idealist. I've heard people infer that someone who is an idealist is childish, inexperienced, somehow not grounded in reality. I think people sometimes think these people who are idealists, especially politically, have not been tested, have not been tried, and have in some ways surely had an easy life. I don't agree. To be an idealist is to dream of a better way. To be an idealist is to hold humanity up to a higher standard. To be an idealist is to know in your heart that better is possible. And in that way I think it's possible to get a broken heart when the world appears to have let you down. But to be an idealist you have to be tenavious, stubborn, persistent. It's easier to let the dream die out. It's easier to say, well - that's not possible so I'm not going to try, I'll just work within reality. But just because something is easier doesn't mean it's the adult way of doing things. In fact, I think it should be the opposite.



I've felt tempted to let reality break me, to avoid it breaking my heart. I've felt tempted to let reality lower my expectations. But I don't think I can. I've said before that having a child makes it impossible for me to consider giving up. That's maybe the most amazing, overwhelming and inspiring change my son has brought me. I won't let myself rollover and give up until I know with certainty I've done my best to provide for him, provide food, shelter, love, safety, reassurance, creativity, awareness, grounding and possibility. So I will fight my own pessimism to remain open to the possibility of change. I won't let one lost election, one absent paycheck, one prejudicial decision, or one leaking roof lower my expectations for the world and the life that is possible for him to have.

"Our moral instincts are immune to the explicitly articulated commandments handed down by religions and governments. Sometimes our moral intuitions will converge with those that culture spells out, and sometimes they will diverge. An understanding of our moral instincts is long overdue." Marc D. Hauser

A Woman's Nation: Reclaim Your Right To Birth Right

A Woman's Nation: Reclaim Your Right To Birth Right
from Huffington Post