... later that same day...
sitting in clements, botanic and listening to a just purchased copy of Midlake's 'the trials of van occupanther'... i just know this is gonna be on constant play for days... it feels like the best music always does, like you've always known these melodies, these words, a soundscape that has been long forgotten but now comes flooding back in a greeting that is more like a reunion than an introduction...
thinking of someone i love who i'd love to hear this but they're not here and yet the 'protagonist' of this album is so like them...or perhaps like the me i see in them... the lyrics infused with so much to share in their beauty and honest poetry... where to start...a landscape that tells the story of the inner life we share... of togetherness that seems just out of reach... like two houses on either side of a ridge separating two valleys, each little cabin overlooking their valley while the other is there just up and over the hill behind them... one facing east, the other west... one watching the sun rising, the other sees its descent...with longing they hope to one day see a sign of life in the land below them...the practices of their days so similar... busying themselves in staying warm and not going mad from not being known...writing conservations like love letters to an unknown other who understands... sometimes catching the smell of wood burning on a fire and yet never seeing smoke rise from the landscape and so thinking it's just their imagination... their longing come to life... there they stand back to back on that hill as the seasons pass and see no one coming... and so they wait...dwelling in isolation... if only they had ventured up into the woods above them... but no... they only see the land outstretched before them... from the perspective of the great expanse of the universe they are so close their shoulder blades are almost touching and to have found the other out would be as simple as a glancing move of a hand backward to feel the fingers of the other... but the lonely always think themselves alone, never imagining another could know what it feels to be always waiting for someone to come and love them...
::
what is the feeling of your feelings...?
::
i spent the weekend on the north coast in company and conversation with members of the Corrymeela community and james alison... it left me drained in many ways... hours spent wearing something like my most capable face... yet conversely a strange bubble of the unfamiliar... a known quantity of folks away from my ordinary days... separate from my world... and so to return was more anxious than to have gone... to come back to the day to day and recognise how much is filled with doubt... to return and recognise the things that grieved me last week grieve me still... but this time of learning gave me much to think and feel my way through... and friendships were forged in its midst...
::
if church was more like A.A. would we turn up...?
::
returning, i shared something like the danger of confession of daily doubt with friends who feel the same way... made mutual commitment to weave with tenderness the kind of friendship where we don't pretend we're not scared by so much in our days... a stranger? no stranger moment full of quiet courageous intentionality...
::
...we cannot think our way out of feeling... to avoid emotion is like scaling the bare cliff face to avoid walking through the valley...
::
head home - midlake
no one seems to be around
today they must have all gone off
without me again
i think i'll head home
maybe i'll find them
gathered 'round my doorstep
oh to sleep in a comfortable bed
i think i'll head home
no one seems to be around
today they must have all gone off
without me again
i think i'll head home
i think i'll head home
bring me a day full of honest work
and a roof that never leaks
i'll be satisfied
bring me the news all about the town
how to struggles to help all the farmers out
during harvest time
well there's someone i'd like to see
she never mentions a word to me
she reads Leviathan
i think i'll head home
::
put your boots and courage on and run*
LB,x
(*songs and lyrics by tim smith)
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