What do you do when you realize that which makes you happy is both the easiest thing and also the most difficult to sustain? I come from a line of accountants and reality adhesionists. You go with what makes sense. Perhaps this has been one of the grandest struggles for me, the long journey away from this truth. It’s not a universal truth, but it is a truth to many. So maybe it’s just a regional truth, and the region of my brain that holds my path is just due west or south of it.
When the kindergarten teacher told my mother over her desk during a conference that she had never really encountered a child who had such disregard for adults and what she was supposed to do, that was a primer for what was to come, right? Which is this. What is this?
I do know that when I am amongst the others of this tribe, I feel a support, an affirmation that it is ok. Not just ok, but supported and celebrated. Is it songs? Am I the defender of the importance of songs in the history of the human race? I’m trying to imagine telling someone this when they ask what I do. Does anyone really give a fuck that I have taken on this job that isn’t considered a job? Sometimes it feels like a sad secret, knowing this necessity that everyone can tend to treat as expendable. Other times it feels like I am holding the keys to a glorious kingdom and my time here is just a flash, so I need to act accordingly.
So I go out onto the stage, and I look as many people as I can in the audience in the eye and sing my heart out, even if my heart sings a little out of key and croaky as the bullfrog pond from a childhood memory of mine. I did love that bullfrog pond so I’ve taken it with me. I am the sole representative of all my memories; they DO depend on me to spread the word. I love this. And when in love you feel elevated and a tad invincible and no matter which way you turn it’s a battle of foolishness, foolishness to pursue such an elusive thing but foolishness to leave something behind you can feel is the core of your happiness. And happiness has truly been pushed aside way to many times by too many. We are a complex nexus of time and events but happiness? Happiness dwells in its own region.
For the tribe, this region is the center of the wheel on a rambling wagon that makes no promises and guarantees no futures. We are reality abstractionists, sound distortionists, and imaginary constructionists. And we do all we can to get to you, from town to town, compromising endlessly reality adhesionist truths, so that we may transmit a spark of the eternal. It is our grand nod to that which can't be harnessed but felt totally, humanly, and fully.
love, bird.
