Morning. Unwanted pt 5 (a hymn of forgetting)

It started with my eyes.

Darting calmly between the soft, pink floor mat and the florescent light above. Half of my face buried drooling in cotton-shag. Lost in whatever stupor I had fallen into. 

I had lost the hour, when finally the bloodlines around my irises stopped throbbing in a wave of calm.

Coolness ran across my forehead like the gentle massage of loving fingers expanding through my face.

The touch, long and delicate reached back through my brain. Scratching, soothing down the cracks of my spine, across my shoulders.

Light.

Heavenly light. I could feel her. Across the country. I haven't known too many touches like this...

I felt still.

a relaxed feeling 

I've hadn't felt in how long? ... 

have I ever felt this calm?

how do I describe freedom of sadness? 

to be relieved of my knowing?

I looked down at the pink bath mat. As every molecule was cut from its gravity and I was lifted up. Off the floor away from the white tiles. Detached. Forgetting anything that held me to the ground. 

My right hand rose away from me, and like I was turning over in air to the ceiling than back to the floor as my legs hit the light fixture. My spine rolled up to meet it until I was lying flat against the ceiling looking down to the body below. 

There was music for him. Around me. Music for them. I heard the strum. And hymn of forgetting. The music of the stars.

And felt no fear for him. Always to be the face in the water... knowing what I am, and finally forgiving him... there that was a genuine smile.

to be cont.

-rene

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mood: Vivaldi: La Follia

• Sonata in D Minor, Op. 1, No. 12, RV. 63, 'La Follia': I. Adagio (feat. Giovanni Antonini)" by Il Giardino Armonico

Morning. Unwanted (Wake Me When It's Over) pt 4

Warning: some mildly graphic body sickness descriptions. So skip if you don't like that.

It's an ugly feeling being sick. Body failing. Feeling frail. 

Somewhere outside of Portland, my mind raced with odd ideas during the sickest night of my recent memory.

- I can't believe you drank that much - Rachel texted.

Did I? I did... It didn't feel like it... Maybe... But this bad? The chills. The strange empty pain I felt in my stomach. The ache all over.

- Ugh - I texted back.

- Do you need to throw up again? -

Even her words just about triggered me again. 

Suddenly I remembered vague hints of a few hours earlier when I was hit by the first round. I imagined the smell, the taste when so much dinner, and acidic, putrid water burned through my throat and out mouth and nasal passages.

- Ugh - I texted again trying to shut out the thought and closed my eyes.

Every time I closed my eyes I felt like I was falling towards the back of my head, and just when I thought my eyes couldn't go any further. I learned there was always further. Again and again. Rolling back into the void.

I swallowed hard.

Fighting.

Weak, but my eyes held tight, as if that could keep anything down, while my body feebly clutched to the hotel blankets unable to stay warm. 

First came the colors. 

Swirls of red pulsed open in the blackness of my mind as I feel into the center.  Like gravity folding me into my chest. From that dense red fear emerged a face.  

Or the skin of a face. Behind it heat swirled until the edges of that unknown skin caught fire and burned away. To reveal another face. One I knew. His mouth disproportionately large opened with a cartoonish set of teeth that held his same face again. 

His mouth opened revealing the face again, burning with fire. This all repeated over and over as I fell into the inexhaustible hellscape.

The flames spreading around me and all the while my body shivering. Growing colder and colder

Until my phone rang.

I checked it with one eye only - maybe you should try eating something? - she texted.

My mind took a second to think of the words, and suddenly my body found a surge of energy as it raced itself to the bathroom.

I didn't think there was anything left inside me. But again I was wrong.

For a few moments my body only dry heaved. I felt the pressure building in my throat with each push. Against my jaw. Against the back of eyes the desperately eked out a few drops of tears. Then finally, came a yellow liquid. Nearly transparent and tasteless. 

I only had a moment to think of what that was before it was followed by a small black mass. You could call it a lump? A cohesion of something? In my head I wanted to call it an egg. But it couldn't be. I hadn't eaten anything like it. My body had produced something egg like that now floated in front of me.

I slammed the lid of the toilet and fell back on the bathroom floor. Closing my eyes this time. I heard the hum of the vent above me. A low calm sound. This time there wasn't any rolling backwards. There wasn't any flames. I lay on the floor. On top of a black fuzzy mat. Feeling calm...

to be cont.

-rene


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mood: Wake Me When It's Over - Willie Nelson

Los Angeles... none of us get anywhere alone.

Just back from LA and I need rest... and music. So thankful to meet with so many great people and re-instill my sense that there are a lot good people everywhere. I love seeing people support each other.

There was a night. Clouded and humid. So much like Houston. I was waiting in line for a show with my friends. 

They were on me about a song I hated. 

A song that always irked me from an artist that irked me even more. They wouldn't let go of it. Singing it. Talking about it. And the more I fought them the more they went at me.

And maybe it was school or maybe it was the week I was having or a recent girl, or the pollen count but,

I snapped, and over-reacted to something that meant nothing to me.

Something that means nothing.

For me that night began an unraveling. 

A slow process of an impossible task. Trying to remove bias from my listening.

I forced myself to listen to things I didn't like. Trying to understand them. And though I could never enjoy them as authentically as others, I did begin to see why they existed. And the music I hated had less to do about the songs themselves and more to do with me confronting my opposites. These were twisted reflections of the things I loved.

I had learned to hate music in order to help me enjoy it more. I had a reason to be so vicious and vigilant. So protective of my identity. That perspective gave me purpose in rigidity. And the more I had invested into my own opinions the more I fell into this trap. 

This isn't unique to me, or my love of music. We are raised to see everything in opposites. But this journey has shown me that looking for subjective truths through a lens of dichotomy can give no understanding at all. It only sharpens the bias. 

Music (like most things in life) isn't a collection of defined lines. It's grey areas, and shades, and blending, and evolving concepts. We can't always have an answer that is good for everyone in every situation.

And being aware of this human deficiency doesn't mean I am still not susceptible of falling into the same traps again and again. 

I still see my opposites as opposing, but when I go back to the ideas and try to place them as a mirror of my own biases, I don't see them with hate but instead with absurdity and laughter. 

I've spent too many days alone. Spent too much time hating. I have no room for that anymore. There are good people. Even some with bad ideas. And none of get anywhere alone.

-rene

Mind Break Mood: Nico - These Days

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Morning. Unwanted. Pt 3

All sound comes from vibration and that only comes from tension. 

Even then, sitting in the dark of the stage while the rest of the band milled about the amps and cables, our tour manager talking to the club about merch, I set to put on a new set of strings.

There was tension.

Every time I change a string, I feel the tension. The resistance.

I don't know why I get anxious about it...

There was very little light on the stage. And darkness everywhere else. I was thinking of words. Words I had last night when I was alone that left me now. So I turned the strings.

I  like to start on the heaviest string. The E. Sliding through the body, pulling it over the bridge, the slide of steel as it passes, reaches up to tuner, catching on in a turn. Then I move to the lightest one, on a bass that's a G. Then fill in the A. And last the D.

It's the way I learned it from violin. I was probably 5 when I tried to string up my instructors violin. He had me practice on his. That made me even more nervous especially since he didn't talk as I carefully went through the directions he told me the week before.

Start at the lowest. Align the string. Careful not to move the bridge, which is a disaster on the violin, tighten slowly.

"Very slowly," my instructor cautioned, with the first word spoken in 5 mins, "you wouldn't want the string to break and cut back at you." He whipped his finger up to his eye.

Now slower than before, I tightened.

It doesn't take long for a strong to get enough tension to make a sound. The lower the tension the bigger the vibration and the sound stays low.  The more you tighten,  the higher the sound gets.  It's all very simple.

Tension.

Force.

Sound.

But even simpler to understand: too much tension and everything breaks.

"Are we ready for sound check?" I asked only to be met with a shoulder shrug.

The last part of changing strings, cutting off the ends to make it look nice. Four silver tines. Pointed up to the stage lights. Newly stretched and wound and bent. They came out of the headstock. With a set of wire cutters I snipped off each one. Listening to them rattle and bounce as they hit the floor of the stage.

It's a terrible feeling waiting for the snap.

Always makes me anxious.

to be cont.

-rene


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mood: Hiroshi Suzuki - Cat

Got A Date!

NYC I am so pumped. Idyll Green has a showcase date officially. We are moving things ahead. The showcase, the stage build out, the music.

Things are happening.

This is a beautiful feeling.

ahhhh!

We are still a ways off and many hurdles to go but it feels good right now. 

I want to enjoy this.

-rene


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mood:

Some Days - A Break

Obstacles.

I think that is what is in my head right now.

When I fight and try to get things going. And the world get's in my face and slowsssss me down to a crawl. 

I think that was going through my head on I-10 in the beautiful Texas 97 degree heat. Where it get's so bright it's hard to keep my eyes open. That bugs me more than the actual heat feeling. When I had to stop work for the fifth time today to drive in traffic and my phone is buzzing with emails I can't answer and deadlines I'm missing and a growing list of things I wanted to do but can't.

Obstacles

Between me and the computer

Or me and home

Or me and the idea

Or the idea and the tangible accomplishment

I was thinking I want the full story. Every detail. To jump to the end and say there it was. Sometimes I build on the chapter, sometimes the page, sometimes the paragraph, mostly it is sentence by sentence... but some days it's a struggle to think of a word.

I dream this vivid, complex, full story. A big picture. But how to find the right word to start it? That can be hard, cause at every moment there are all these small intrusions of life. Butting in and making turns and making changes.

Obstacles.

And they are bad things, or anybody's fault... they just happen. It doesn't make it less frustrating, just nobodies fault.

Just a rant. For all the self-actualizing dreamers out there. I know you feel it too.

right?

-rene


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mood: