Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Harmony

Sometimes I just want to harmonize.  I want to mesh my voice with another and not have any plans of where it's going or what we are doing. The composers and arrangers who give us predisposed parts and chord progressions are beautiful and I enjoy interpreting that art, yet there is something I have longed for, longer than I can even sense. I want to make mistakes with someone. I want to have a vague feeling of what I am doing and where we are going and just run with the rhythm like a mighty river that just takes you in, and just flow with the music. There was always something captivating to me when watching a jazz combo play and improvise. The sense that the musicians know eachother and just feel a common energy that is leading them all to one beautiful moment that will never happen again. I was told it takes chemistry and it takes practicing together to build that chemistry so you can feel each other. I wanna guess it also takes openness and acceptance of one another, flaws and all. While the rhythm section keeps the heart beat, and the rest feel the melody, one body a single organ creating its own child. I have never gotten to experience something like that, though. I have rehearsed with someone usually for one performance and we both or all have a predetermined road to take. To make music out of a moment with another, however, that I long for... to just wait and feel it and have that freedom, I long for that. Sometimes when I am singing in a car to a tune everyone knows I get a sense for it... but I can't sink into it... Then the song ends and the moment ends or there is an interruption. It's five thirty in the morning and all I can think of is wanting to feel the music with someone. I want nothing more than to hear that song that follows me like I feel when I am alone with my guitar, yet have the beauty to hear it with another person, through another person and unite our heart beats... Alas... Tonight or this morning is a weird one. Sorry I haven't posted in so long. Life has been more external contemplation than internal and that makes for less writeable moments. Is that a word? Welp, just striaght thoughts here.
You know there was this church I joined once based on that feeling, and I have never joined churches because of arbitrary or superficial things like well they set the stage like this or their building is this or the music is that... I would choose based on theology or where the spirit was moving me at the time. Regardless, I remember following this feeling of synergy that was shared amongst this group of musicians that seemed familiar, hinting to something eternal that follows me. I think there is a magic in synergy, and the thing about churches is the crowd joins in the concert and I won't get too much into that here; they call their concerts worship. Anyway, when I felt that shared energy I felt more than alive. It's been a while now and I haven't seen or felt chemistry between musicians like that since then. I wonder if that is what makes some music feel dead to me, or maybe it's just lonely. Maybe all the musicians have talent and all the technical things are there, or maybe the musicians are obviously flawed and have no technical knowledge but that chemistry, that grooving together is there and I don't hear the actual notes I feel the spirit of the music and what it is meant to be and where it is supposed to take me and all of us.
I have this deep longing for home, my theory is we all do, that we all long to be home and unveiled to our creator, to have that deep intimacy with the maker of all things, to tap into the universe and take root. This is what music should be, and all the arts I believe, but many of the arts aren't as communal and I think some of its communal sense has been lost as we became "civilized" but dance and music are the two that I can easily say bring you to feel our creator, in the moment, and feel connected to another human, whether they are weak in the moment or strong, you feel one another and there is that wholeness and reconcile to creation. We are vagabonds whose home is within us and around us... but we choose to not belong or we are forced to be homeless wanderers. We don't feel the energy of creation that is in the earth and the sky and every living being. We close our hearts and guard our souls in fear, in pain, in guilt, in shame. I want to sing with someone unveiled and unafraid...

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