ten thousand lives
We had an old friend over recently. He’s moving to another part of the country, and we were glad to see him before he left. Who knows when we’ll see him again?
So, we were sitting on our candlelit back deck, talking and drinking whiskey – well, not me, I was drinking a good Cabernet – and he looked at me, his head slightly tilted. “Do you sing anymore?” He asked, a little wistfully.
“No,” I said without hesitation or remorse, and took a long sip from my glass. He looked sad. But I wasn’t. I wanted him to know that I was fine with it, that I didn’t need it, that it wasn’t necessarily me, anymore. That the person who came in at 3:00 in the morning, who subsisted on very little food, who held crazy parties, who cried late into the night, playing guitar and writing poetry – that person was here, but not here. Gone, but still abiding.
In my life, I’ve had so many different lives rolled up into it. I’ve traveled many miles, have been onstage in multiple theatrical productions and singing engagements, have lived by myself in near poverty, have ended unhealthy relationships only to start new unhealthy ones, have pushed myself to the limit morally and philosophically, have landed squarely at bottom and come up on top, somehow.
And, don’t we all do this? We all have many lives wrapped up in our one, many phases and elements and intricacies woven in our one life’s blanket. I’ve used the term “crazy quilt” before, because I think it succinctly defines the workings of a life and its components. I was that, then. I am this, now. I am a rough sketch of realism, I am a fluid dream that survives the morning. I am that stubborn wreck of a girl, I am that soft spot on the wall. Crazy.
Surely the two don’t have to meet – but in a sense, they do. It’s a thread of time that is divided and shredded, but remains entangled. A life that moves from one stage to the next with no more thought than the humming wings of a mosquito, but with so much beauty and refinement that one might think it divine in its song, its carelessness taking my breath away. There’s no order to it. It’s chaos. But, it’s supremely choreographed.
I’m not sad that I don’t sing anymore. In all actuality, I do sing. Every day. But I don’t sing for people, on a stage. I sing in the small corners of my life, in the kitchen, by the front door, in the shadows of the trees at the edge of the lawn. My creation is there, and my emotional response. I’m present in myself there, and don’t need anything else. This is my possession, now – that impenetrable, insubstantial piece of myself that merely calls out to the world, without caring if anyone is there to hear.
It’s enough. At least, for now – in this moment, as it happens. The next space and time might turn with the wind, which I’ll ride in the heart and beauty of the storm, taking my place among both the extraordinary and the small things.
