I’ve been having trouble writing an honest blog for a really long time. Probably because I have a few people who read my blog and have strong opinions about right/wrong that make me feel like I can’t express myself as honestly as I want to.
Ironically, the person who introduced me to the idea of hating a person was the person who taught me the most about love. Self-consciousness always gets in the way… of everything! I grapple with self-consciousness all the time. About how important “me” is and how much of myself I should let go of in the name of learning, feeling, and sharing. I’m definitely attracted to things that require you to surrender yourself for something bigger- I think that maybe everyone is. Playing music with others is one of these things. Dancing is another. Theater is another. The military is another. Spirituality is another. I’ve noticed this most recently in teenage girls trying to learn how to move and be in their bodies. I can’t teach them as well as small children or more mature gymnasts because they are too busy thinking about how they look etc. etc to really allow for freedom of movement. This is who I am when I am at my best – carefree, giddy, silly, focused. People tend to love me when I’m in this state (which is cool feedback) and I love myself too and I try to be there as frequently as possible.
But there are things that get in the way of me being there. These things are all fears. The fear that I don’t have a solid, consistent, core group of friends with whom to share things with. The fear that I’m not consistent enough myself – too unpredictable for people to accept or rely on. The fear that I’ll get sucked in to contributing something(s) that are less than honest to the world, that I’ll have offered a series of facades or episodes in which I’ll have introduced a self that was really not myself for some superficial, ulterior motive like security.
I’ve been attracted to musicians for a while now. Namely because you have to lose yourself in the music in order to play good music – transcend yourself. I've found some free-spirited dancers who are like this too, and I love them just as much.
This is what you tried to beat out of me- any iota of self-consciousness. You said it in so many ways and did it mostly with music. I have to make some decisions now, like where to move to, whether or not to be in a relationship, how I’m going to survive, what kind of direction I want to steer my life in. Really, though, almost anything is enjoyable if i can get to that place.
I’ve experienced some divine moments, some really loving moments. Some of them have stretched on for long periods of time. Others have been fleeting glimpses of bliss. But they all make me think about eternity. And I've experienced some really scary moments too - mostly those involving loneliness.
Bonnaroo was great, again. But there, just like in Cali, NYC, with any sports team or movement-based discipline or any group that has any sort of an identity at all - I could almost instantaneously discover the "formula" for what it took to become a member of the "music festival" gang or the hippie gang or whatever you want to call it- consumerism gives you a good idea of what you need to do to be a part of whatever it is you want to be a part of. ironically, the very thing that i was initially attracted to because it offered the appeal of carefree unself-consciousness, out-of-body, love and connectedness proves to be just another example of role-playing - namely hippie culture - listen to the grateful dead, participate in some drum circles, get some dreads, do a lot of acid, smoke a lot of weed, wear earthy colors and tie dye things, talk the talk, walk the walk - consumer culture gives you a pretty good idea of how to be whatever it is you want to be and other people let you know whether or not you are successful at whatever image you are pursuing by accepting/rejecting you through the manifold ways we have to communicate. But any time I've found myself gravitating towards fashioning some predictable/reliable imagine of myself is when I've felt the most empty - like a walking advertisement or a visual math formula - nothing genuine, nothing honest.
ironically, the jist of this blog is the thesis for almost every piece of academic work i've had to write for school - maybe that's why school was so enjoyable for me - because I wrote honestly about transcendence and connectivity and roleplaying and the many ways that different cultures/political groups/artists/other groups of people do it. But then towards the end, I had thought about this so much and knew it so well in theory that it started to make me angry that it was so pervasive and I stopped knowing it in practice.
Really knowing something is so painful. You have to be so brave, so willing to get hurt.
What I know is that I can feel when I’m in love – it’s effortless – and I can feel when I’m not in love – it’s when I’m focused on image maintenance or preservation of some scene. Sometimes I’m unable to get to a place of love because my mind is clogged up with so many different fears. Consistency is I guess my main concern at this point in my life. There was a brief span of time where I felt like life was about adapting. In order to be in a place full of love I need to surrender any idea of myself as maintaining some sort of image or being an agent in helping to preserve some schema. I guess this is what I mean by “consistency.” It’s what puts the majority of people at ease I suppose – but maybe that’s only because the majority of them are also trying to preserve some sort of scene, whatever it may be, because then everything is OK. And if that’s what it takes to have a consistent group of people in your life or a consistent anything than I’m not so sure that’s what I want. I want to be consistently in a place of love, surrender, sillyness. I guess that is ultimately what all of these quirky little fall-backs are for – blogging, callisthenics, music, theater, my box in the woods, spirituality, books, movies, games, whatever whatever – in order to feel good and have fun doing any of them I need to surrender and sometimes they help retrain me, refocus me on that ultimate task when I’ve lost my way.
I hope to offer something genuine to the world –whatever I do, whoever I’m with, wherever I am. I hope this blog was honest.
