June 28, 2013
Even the loud old fridge is drowned out by straight-down-rain. Not sheets and thunder and driving – but a rain that will drench us for days, soaking the soil, swelling the creeks, rising the shoreline of Georgian Bay above the sad sorry rocks that appeared this spring, covering their nakedness once again. It is 12 minutes from midnight, and in this place water rules the world.
After days and days of standing sweat this is the moment we’ve felt was coming. Come it has, all the way from the Rockies and the Purcells. This same deep rain has fallen down through the foothills of Alberta into the basements of Calgary houses which are now buried in the mud and the death of water, their downstairs dens & offices rendered useless, their keepsakes now garbage-bin bound with the reminder: nothing is forever.
Three vast Canadian Provinces to the east, we are nowhere near a floodplain. Our houses are built on the bones of ancient sea creatures, layer upon layer of them still pushing up through the soil along the northeasterly curve of the Michigan Bowl. Half a mile to the east of this table lies the cold and deep of Georgian Bay, fed by a thousand thousand rivers, swelling now in ever-generous acceptance of more and more and more. Here, we are nourished by the same deep rain.
This rain comes from God – from a place where the details of human life have no meaning. This rain, heavy on our metal roof and our gardens is the consistent, inexorable kind of rain that erodes illusion and denial, lays bare the bones inside of a feeling. What is laid bare becomes an honest offering on the altar of Acceptance: Ah. I see, now.
I’m almost cross-eyed with tiredness after a long long day of listening to music, tweaking arts business strategies, watching baton twirlers, karaoke tweens, future head boys (also a few who could command world change but opt instead for just pitching in to the school talent show for now until they’re good and ready to save us all) – teach, rehearse, promote, schedule, rehearse, cajole, listen, play, insist, back off, stifle two yawns, spark a few ideas, accept two challenging projects, steer clear of others…. a day in the life of all who work in the vast, unquantifiable ocean of The Arts. Always satisfying, sometimes enthralling, mostly just a lot of good, clean, decent work.
The idea that diverted me from the sleep I should be in right now hovers around the concept of muscle memory.
In the process of teaching the fingers of my left hand to think differently so that I can play the fast bits of the Faure Elegie, I’ve learned that my mind has also developed deep muscled habits that no longer serve well. Several of these were paths laid first in my childhood, and are now like canyons…
Ah. Yes I see, now. To change my mind – this will take a great deal of steady steady work.
So, tonight in the deep dark rain I stand before the Altar of Acceptance, and on it I offer my love – for the terrible, astonishing beauty of Change.