Fighting

In the past week, I've explored a dozen careers/lives I should have, could have, might have explored before - and how to retrench back to those truncated paths to enliven them again. I've been gasping through ideas of what I should be or do - like I just pulled a chord that poured down on me a thousand thoughts. And now I'm wading through hundreds of options - stymied by the surfeit of what I could do and be. Every day, I'm picking one up and examining it - then grabbing another. As I duly feared, the "what ifs" are nearly suffocating the "what is." But, that's a little too pessimistic and reductive.

Lisa, George and I went to see Bela Fleck's documentary on his travels to Africa to explore the roots of the banjo, and advertently or not, to glean inspiration from playing with new people, new instruments. At parts, I found myself struggling, not because the film doesn't have enough levity or joy or beautiful music - it is chocked full of that - but perhaps because I was trying so hard to "be" in the experience, to consciously remember each moment, that I was memorizing the experience instead of fully partipating in it. I was holding my breath. And when I finally let go, when I breathed, it was like the world around me grew full and vibrant, became lush and complete. And, because fighting oneself does not just evaporate with a moment, I would again be watching and hearing something so beautiful - that I'd try to sketch as quickly the moment in my mind, and as time and film are want to do, that moment would almost immediately turn into another moment, and then I was running to catch up to it.

But, in the end, I was giving of myself more freely over to the moment. Could it be that, as Oumani Sangare, "the songbird of Mali", said, Bela is not so great with speaking with words but through his banjo he is completely clear? Could it be that music is a medium that transcends worlds, languages, your own questions/struggles, that gently prods you, guides open your metaphorical arms until you feel yourself standing, arms outstretched in spite of yourself, welcoming all that stands before you?

I have lately been awed at how similar people's experience is. How alike we all are at heart. Differences in housing or job or geography are just different colored cloaks that cover the real basic needs and fears and hopes. Bela Fleck spoke about how evocative the phrase "throw down your heart" was. It was the phrase that Africans used at ports before boarding slaveships - they cast down their heart on the soil where they were born and loved. They would be dragged away, but their truest self, their most abiding faith and memory would remain unravaged by the brutality of others. And yet, Bela said, falling in love has a certain component of tossing down your heart - willfully giving your most tender self over to someone or something else. The heart - this throbbing, odd shaped thing inside us - molded in our mind like two melded teardrops, two equally shaped halves joined together, is actually a workhorse, the tangible powersource of life that we also imagine is the powersource of feeling. Robust and delicate, joy and sorrow and a thousand other contradictions. Sometimes, I feel like I'm trying to hammer a "P" shaped puzzle-piece into a "U" shaped one. The real problem is that life is not that succinct, not that linear, and not that neat.

After the movie, we got dinner and talked about it and concert experiences and dreams and work - and the world felt stretched out, expansive and encompassing again. Deep into the night, riding back on the train staring at the dark Hudson water, my thousand ideas undulated and felt rich and possible.