reaching out

Yesterday I practiced guitar in a new room. At first I only saw how the light fell on everything, how beautifully and gently it brought the things around me to life. Then my attention wandered outside to the birds and the stirrings of a Sunday afternoon in the neighborhood. I realized that the sound from my guitar can be like light too, touching everything. And through it, the fingers of my attention, like appendages, reach out beyond me. How playing need not displace a single bird song or shift a ray of sunshine. That music can go wandering, barefoot, from the heart without bending a leaf or snapping a branch underfoot. How full and grateful this makes me feel. 

tango - men and women

Tension holds the dancers in place. Intention and direction get them moving - one active, one receptive, but both equally empowered. Music guides the way. 

Color Improv #3

from a minus to a plus

Today my guitar practice served as a reminder as to why discipline is so important: You hold it in place when you are able. When you're not able, it holds you. I watched as it pulled me through a hormonally-charged, two-day-long negative mood in a way nothing else could. Afterwards I felt a surge of creative energy and was able to channel it into finishing an old drawing. A minus became a plus.

I have, however, been a little shocked at how resistant I am to my new practice regime (I've been taking lessons with Curt) when, after 10 minutes part of me was ready to give up - and not even the bit I was struggling with but the whole of Eye of the Needle. I suspect this a good sign. The 20-30 minute practices I had been doing on my own, aside from being insufficient, were stale. New challenges wake you up a little. Yay for new challenges.

As a side note, the need for a new approach/commitment to the guitar became apparent to me in Mexico this past February when music visited and, as beautiful as it was, left me painfully aware of how little I deserved it. So the question was raised - can I turn what is now a wish to connect with music into will?

Strange that only moments after having journaled that very question I was invited to join the staff/kitchen team circle for a silent meeting with guitars. These are much better players than I. Sucking already and tired to boot, I didn't feel up to it. Walking back to my room a chance run-in with Curt reminded me of what I had written and how missing the meeting did not support my connection with music as an Aim. Leaving him I literally ran to get my guitar. The meeting was as painful as I expected it to be, but there was a moment of trust and glimpsed potentiality that continues to inspire me. How easily I could have missed it in favor of comfort and sleep.

Color Improv 2

alchemy

I've been working on the Prelude to the Third Suite for Solo Cello on guitar in my "play" time. With Bach there are so many damn sixteenth notes. It's easy to want to jump over or hurry through those that are difficult or whose phrasing isn't your favorite.

A few nights ago my approach changed. Looking at the music the notes began to remind me of people. A crowd of little heads on sticks. What if they were people, embodying the same complex relationships to each other, the same depth and range of experience, of characteristics? What would I want to bring to them? How would I want this to go?

It sounds cheesy to write but, at that moment, I decided what I wanted most was to love each one individually, to give it it's due, to listen to what each had to tell me, rather than imposing my will on it or rushing through to the parts I find interesting or which express more closely what I want to say. Keeping this in mind, I began. The difference was immediate. A transformation had begun beneath my fingers. Rather than simply pecking out on the instrument what my eyes read from the page, they responded more and more to what was heard. 

There is an ocean between playing notes and playing music I am not sure it is possible for us to cross. At least, not without help. We endeavor to play music, but perhaps it is music that plays us. I was amazed to find that each note really did have a life of its own, a rich life at that - independent of any meaning I could give it. How many more dimensions this piece took on when approached, sincerely, in this way. It was the best kind of magic. 

Color Improv 1

these are mine

Today I performed for the first time since Italy.  It went better than I expected and certainly better than I deserved. As a result I am, again, a member of an Orchestra in which I play cello.

blood from a stone

Something happened recently which caused some concern over whether I have the propensity for brutality. LJ assured me I'm not brutal in a malicious way, just that I'm not satisfied with veneers. I want to know what's really there, what's beneath, so I apply pressure; I give people a  little squeeze and watch what comes out. Like tubes of paint. Some are yellow on the inside, some green, others you could wring until you're blue in the face and still, nothing. 

The tube metaphor is over-simplified but, right or wrong, I've noticed I can be judgmental of the ones that seem to come up empty. The colorless ones. The holes. Perhaps there's nothing wrong with being empty. It may, in fact, be part of the natural order of things, of decay. But I've had a different experience of humanity and can tell you without hesitation that most people don't have a clue what or who they are - how valuable, how utterly irreplaceable, how color-full - and I can't help but feel this a terrible waste. It's a fucking tragedy. 

I suspect some readers might balk at my description of the empty ones and my assertion that a lot of folks (not you, of course) are ignorant of some very basic things. Who the hell am I? How can I tell? Holes are often obvious. The incredible lengths people go to to cover up what they view as their deficiencies make them so. These deficiencies, real and imagined, are like landfills where people dump all kinds of shit: their shit, other people's shit, but mostly bullshit. It can be smelled for miles away in any direction.

People who are full of shit can be annoying, but there are few things I have less patience for than people who pretend or presume to have experienced something pure or sacred when truly they have not. This is evident in those of us who label ourselves artists and poets when we have nothing to say (having been present so infrequently as to be unable to bear witness even to our own lives) and no craft with which to say it other than what we graft or imitate from others (which is no craft at all, but mimicry. And toddlers do this with more zeal and accuracy than most adults). 

I include myself in this category. I have, at various points in my life, considered myself a musician when I was and am not. I may not even be a poet. But I do aspire to poetry. And to music. And to honoring those whose contributions to these arts have been real - even if the only honorable contribution I can make is silence.

gesture in ink

work, frustration, joy and sometimes solace

Can you lose your virginity twice?

The obvious answer is no. Another answer (as I may or may not have understood it) might be that certain folks have acquired the ability to experience things which are novel as novel - every moment being different from every other. Perhaps for these few there is no such thing as a repeat performance. Every time is their first.

My question now is this: could a person experience something as new not out of some achievement of willful presence and remembrance of self, but because they have forgotten themselves so fully that their repeat performance is experienced as a first? And how to tell the difference?

I'm plagued with a sense of my own inability to decipher whether or not I am improving or simply cycling through the latter of these two scenarios over and over again. And I feel strongly that if I don't work my ass off this will be the only story I ever have to tell. Not the story of my life, but the one of my slow death.

I must remember to remember.

public and private

the doors were open. were dusty.

you had already squeaked your way back through the mud.
with the others. with your instruments.

lamp-light from the street outside. a lone chair.
a cello. I closed my eyes.

whatever you heard, you heard from the proper distance -
(perhaps walking away) and it was me as I am. 

not everything else.

testing for green belt

This semester ended much the same way my green-belt test ended when I was eleven or twelve taking karate lessons. The test involved performing a series of complicated sparring combinations in front of a panel of teachers. I lost my concentration half-way through and made a few bad mistakes. The more upset I got the worse it went but, instead of dropping out, which would have been natural and less embarrassing (I was red-faced and teary), I stubbornly persisted through to the end. They awarded me my belt not so much for my performance, but for not giving up.

Not giving up has its rewards - artistically, spiritually, etc. Just when you think you can go no further, a door opens. A few days ago I spent the night on the fifth floor of the art and music building at Georgia State. It was just me, three bare white walls and floor-to-ceiling windows. I swept, spread out my work, hung it up, arranged and rearranged it, communed. Alone with my drawings, I was surprised to find I was okay with them, proud even, where before I had felt embarrassed and incompetent.

There's something special about staying up all night - a peaceful quality to the city you can't experience any other time. A quietness. Solitude. Not scary at all. When the streets are empty, what does it matter if I swerve, if I cry, dance and scream? Alone, I draw closer to myself. I remember to listen. I've needed waking lately. I'm too in love with sleep, with fiction and fabrication, expectation, the past. It seemed right to fast from it. And the place and moment were correct, were purposeful. It's hard to find places that are self-reflective rather than imposing but that night, that studio, the walls, the art, everything was me - even the blood red sun as it rose from it's sleep.

graphite or charcoal

The need to vent my depression is asserting itself.

Don't hate me because I'm avoiding.
Two and half cups of coffee later: a blank page and I need to pee.

I'm frustrated. I want to create something beautiful but it's just not in me. Bills are in me. The past is in me. The question-mark future. I've spent the last few days looking and am dissatisfied. I've tried to become fascinated by the weather, by my lower lip, tendrils of hair, the circles and triangles of the face, but it's no use; I'm tired of looking. What I really want is to be touched. Rendered. Kissed by graphite or charcoal (lightly then heavily). The closest I get are black smears where I unconsciously swept hair away from my face or set my palm down on a self-portrait. I thought drawing would fulfill some tactile need of mine. Surprise! It's created one instead.

not the peacock I think I am

I've been lacking Humility lately. It's no wonder my drawings are falling short, my prayer as well. Paul's looking for artwork that poses more questions than it answers; art that looks and listens, keeps its own mouth shut, leaves its images unsolved, searches for a constant despite the wiseacreing of the eyes. An admission of ignorance is, perhaps, simply more honest. Lines that move (on paper) are beautiful in their honesty. They resist self-satisfaction, the fixedness of dogmatism and the false certainty of subjective perspective. I used to take off all my jewelry before entering Khanegah. I wouldn't wear makeup there either. I didn't want adornment. I wanted to come as a babe would come, naked and uncontrived. The more you try to hide your ignorance, the more naked you feel revealed. I keep thinking I can draw my own face and am consistently embarrassed with the results. Is it possible something I've seen/studied almost every day of my life could still hold its mysteries? Yes, of course.

burrow

Our final critique for Drawing I was yesterday. It went well, but one thing bothered me. One of my classmates made a video for his final project. In it, he had a stuffed bunny sitting in the road. Obvious, right? He's going to have it run over and then that's going to be his statement about innocence lost, or the environment, whatever. You see that image and you know the bunny's going to get it. I protested. The basis of my disagreement was that the image was too predictable, but this was only part of it. He told me later that he had a problem getting the shot because everyone drove around it. That's what gets me. That's what made it feel so wrong. People lie, cheat, steal etc. All of us. All the time. Thousands. But nobody runs over stuffed bunnies.

why I love Dallas

I was invited to play cello for a televised Sufi celebration in Dallas a few years ago. Play and also recite a Hazrat Pir poem in front of about 500 people. I was so nervous when I got off the plane I had to sit down (and almost vomited). It was an incredible honor.

The night of the performance was probably the best in my life. The spoken word was flawless, or at least it felt that way. And my two cello pieces - some of the best playing I've done. My instructor was there, present with me throughout the experience. I met his wife, his children. I felt carried throughout the night by an unseen force. What needed to happen did without my interference. I had a purpose that I filled and filled well. I even mingled during the reception. I practiced my Farsi. I floated.

That was when it happened. I was standing in line to get more food when a fit of laughter erupted from me. I couldn't stop it and didn't want to. At that moment it struck me how unbearably lucky I was to be there - how unexpected, how beautiful, how brilliant the whole thing was. I was so thankful I didn't even try to hold onto it - any longer than I was supposed to.

That's what love is meant to feel like. Unfathomable joy. Joy you didn't even know to ask for, because you couldn't imagine its existence.

Joy that can't help but express itself in rapturous giggles, even though in doing so it draws stares.

on a bus in Chile

Pet Your Confusion

You set bowls of milk out as offering.
It eats, then curls up in your chest.

Every moment I spent in Chile was stolen. Stolen from a life I was trying to hold onto at home. A non-life, really, as the only thing that was missing from it was my self. David, my boyfriend at the time, basically forbade me from going. His jealousy, fully manifesting itself in our relationship at that point, punctured any happiness I had once felt and kept him in a state of suspicion. He had abandoned himself to his suspicion, actually. Our evening phone calls (they were really interrogations) while I was in Chile left me crumpled, wet, and ruined.

Ruined, but free. There's something liberating about being in a different hemisphere from the source of your pain and self-loathing. Especially when you've been swept from the throws of Winter into beautiful, Chilean Spring. Those ten short days abroad were some of the best of my life. I was mopey and alone. I separated myself from the group every chance I got. I picked flowers and prompted a spontaneous daisy picnic. I was so alienated that any openness or happiness I experienced, was an unexpected gift. Was an experience of Grace. Chile was indescribably beautiful and our cello choir concerts, intense.

There was the concert in the rose garden in Santiago, with white banners streaming. The concert in the ruins of Mora(?) Island, where I had those amazing cherry pastries (there were cherry orchards on the island), saw the school-house and its flowers, and got rained on. The stray mutt I left on the banks whose fate was mine, the black volcanic sand of the beach, and our 18 cellos bobbing up and down in dingy boats across the water - some bizarre procession. Eighteen casualties - our instruments in their black caskets.

There was also the concert in the Catholic church in Valdivia, which was magical. We made sacred music there. Music that was careful not to break the silence too completely. And then there was the unforgettable bus ride along the shores of Valparaiso. Window open, knees wedged between my seat and the one in front of me, hair flying, blue skies, water that stretched from rock to horizon.

Moments like those make you beg whatever higher power exists to kill you, right then and there, because it doesn't get better.

I've experienced other moments of joy like that, and gratitude, when my heart asked to lift itself clear of my chest and join itself with whatever lies beyond.