There is
something that happens to me every time I see the Indigo Girls play. Right at
that part in the middle of a song, right when Amy is getting so lost in her
playing of the guitar, or the banjo or the ukulele, that she starts to bend
forwards, towards the violinist whose hair will be hiding her face by then,
right as her bow is moving so fast that parts of it are peeling off, flying
wild in the air, right when Emily closes her eyes in that circle of light as
she hits the highest note, it happens:
I am overcome
with the urge to write.
As a writer you
might imagine this happens to me a lot, and does happen sometimes, but if I’m
honest, an urge like this doesn’t happen all that often. Certainly not as often
as I’d like it to. Maybe it’s because I write to deadlines now, that I am
working on one thing for longer periods of time with less freedom – even as I
write this I am stealing time away from my novel. Maybe it’s because I write
out of discipline, routine, sometimes out of fear, that I am less reliant on
this urge to make me do it. Whatever the reason, I don’t get this feeling as
much as I did last night, the feeling that unless I write right now I’ll lose
something, some part of me, that something will be gone forever and I won’t be
able to get it back.
There are
things I know I will write about that have a different pull. Less of an urge
but a slow percolation. A clearing. These are things I know I will not lose.
Like how it felt on my wedding day as we heard the first notes of Seasons of Love play and began our
journey up the aisle together. Or about my cousin who died suddenly on a
Saturday morning last March. These are events that need time and space, things that
I know will come to the surface to write about, just not today. But the urge
from the concert last night is something different. Something immediate.
Something raw.
Me being me, as
the concert was happening I was trying to figure out why I felt that way. To
think it out, rather than feel it. But the answer isn’t in the thinking.
Watching them play, being part of it, is an experience. I am an audience member
but I am something else too, I am part of this in some way I don’t understand
or maybe I do. Maybe I always have. In the Beacon Theatre last night as in the
tiny West Hampton theatre in July or under the open summer skies in Central
Park, there is a feeling that builds, that winds its way around us, that before
we know it, is holding us all.
I don’t know
what the lyrics mean to some of the songs, I don’t know why last night, for the
first time, the line you’ve got to find
some goodness, some way, somehow brings me to sudden, sharp tears. But then
again, maybe I do.
A wise woman I
knew once told me that the longest journey you’ll ever take is from your head
to your heart. It’s about 11 inches,
she said, give or take. And she
laughed. I laughed too, because it was funny and what she said sounded clever –
the head and heart thing. And I kind of got it, I thought I did, but looking
back, I don’t think I got it at all.
Now, I think I
do. Now, I think it’s about not just knowing all the lyrics it’s about feeling
them, feeling the music underneath – the shape of the music – even when I don’t
understand what it all means. Especially then.
So, maybe my
urge is inspired by seeing this passion on stage, this complete in-the-moment
living of and being lived by music. Maybe witnessing creation makes me want to
create. Maybe it’s because it’s women up there doing this, gay women who are so
free to be themselves and share the darkest and shiniest and most hidden parts
of those selves with us for an hour or two. Maybe it’s because this music, this
band, these concerts are things that I have always shared with my wife, that
they are, in so many ways a touchstone for us. Maybe it’s because they play the
song we danced to at our wedding six weeks ago, and I can’t believe it is only
six weeks ago, because since then we have been through so much, and sitting here
next to her in her wheelchair, I am so proud of her and so full of love for her,
and so conscious of my own humanness, my own limitations.
Maybe it is all
of those things.
Maybe it is
none of those things.
Maybe it
doesn’t matter.
Maybe what
matters is just to feel it.
To let myself
feel it.
To feel it all.
