Live.

It took me too long to figure this one out, but it finally hit me. There's a reason why they call live music live music. It is because you are truly alive when listening to it. The difference between the two words is absolutely nothing. Live and live. Maybe this is because all of life is live, its always right now, always in the now. I have seen a decent amount of shows in the past year. (Consider the Source, The McLovins, Company of Thieves, Beats Antique, Fun., Phish, Santana, The Allman Brothers, Gathering of the Vibes fest, Yale String Quartet, and Suitcase Rodeo, with a few others.) A lot of it isn't just unlike the others, but on complete opposite sides of the music spectrum. What I have taken in is that I can be inspired in so many different ways. I can be inspired to laugh, to cry, to love, to hate, to everything. I've had the honor of being a part of so many spectacular live moments that it's like learning a new language. Eventually you learn more accurate words to describe situations and occurrences, so why would you ever going back to only using the first word you ever learned? The difference here is that the language I've been learning over the past year is music. It's not that haven't been able to speak it, but this is the first year I've gone to a considerable amount of shows, so I think of it as the first time I've really listened. Listening is important. For a perfect harmony there needs to be an even flow of giving and taking, listening and speaking. I've been getting closer and closer to this harmony, and musically I've never felt more comfortable in my life. I used to always wonder why people mindlessly bopped around looking like foolish baboons while music was being force fed to them. I always appreciated the creation of it, the composition of it. But where I was absurdly wrong was that to appreciate the music as a composer... a creator, you must appreciate it within the audience, feeling it with every limb of your body. It something much bigger than a single soul, something that should be deeply respected from within because from within it is felt. It's not what is being portrayed that makes live music alive. It is the fact that something is being portrayed at all, as simple or complex as one can desire. It's another language within itself, and now I find myself wondering how I could ever go back. Simple answer is that I can't and I won't. Emotions and feelings rise above language all too often, but what takes time to realize is that emotions and feelings coincide with the language of music and the arts. It is something us humans will eventually adopt as our primary languages because they are much more sophisticated, much more complex and detailed, but for now, we will carry on struggling with our basic, primitive words, sentences, and verbal haberdashery. We will remain who we are. Dead.

Exploration

I'm not really sure what i'm going through right now. I feel like ive been discovering so much... so fast... and the problem isn't that of what im discovering... its that of me... the mere fact that im not sure i can take it all in as fast as its being handed to me. For now I think I'm okay with the current pace, but I feel like I'm running with someone whos just a tad faster than me. I need my time to inhale, to truly comprehend, and then go forth yet again and discover even more. There is just SO MUCH HAPPENING. Its a beautiful thing don't get me wrong, but true growth has to leave the one who is growing much feeling of discomfort.  Musically, spiritually, intellectually, artistically, instinctively... just growing. (ex: listened to a song tonight that i first heard back in january of this year. in january i absolutely hated it. i didn't understand it, it hurt my ears, it was hard to pick anything off of. i couldn't even get through the first layer of it. but that was the problem. see i had been looking at it all the wrong way. i looked at the piece of music as something you had to penetrate back then. that a song was a cup of water, and to get into the middle of it you had to go head first. now when i listened to the same song again, i fell in love with it. i didn't see it as a cup of water anymore, but in my mind i split the water into different sections. i heard everything individually and THATS how it came together as a whole. it can be one hell of a task to separate a substance such as water into smaller substances of water, or music into small bits of music, but doing just that helped me understand, to appreciate, and to enjoy.)

You can't see the ocean and not see the waves. You can't see the waves and not see the ocean. Try it.

 Often times this extensive growth and discovery of self and surroundings has left me more uncomfortable than i'm comfortable with. weird thing to say i know, how can anyone be comfortable with being uncomfortable... but I know deep down that being uncomfortable only means that growth is occurring. What I have NOW learned is that constant growth is useless. There needs to be check points along the way (not to appreciate the growth, that only builds the ego) but to appreciate all that is. Life, living, and all that jazz. Often times I also find myself really missing that anchor in my life, something that I can always come back to and know that it's gonna be there for me, the same as it always was. There's a sense of comfort that comes with that, that I can't deny. I can't. I am one who gets easily disgusted with repetitiveness, constantly appreciating the "new", constantly begging for change, not for the sake of change, but for the sake of growth itself. But I need that something, I need that one thing. Not sure what it is yet. I'll get back to you. Hopefully...
The idea that happiness is only real when shared is becoming more and more evident in my life as well. It's something that has always hit a special note inside of me, but it just becoming more and more real. This being the case I expect it to be that more real as I continue to grow. However the irony lies in the fact that as I continue to grow, I have less and less people to share this happiness with. Less and less people understand me. Less and less people see my vision, share my dreams, my goals, my day to day aspirations. There's an impending feeling inside of me that soon enough, very soon in fact, that I won't have anybody to share the happiness with. The feeling that no matter what one may say, what one may intend, it's not them that will leave me, it's me that will leave them. I feel as though I am traveling at a pace (on my own path) that is just too fast for any soul to keep up with, losing myself further and further on my own trail of life. Losing myself in the sense implies that it's something that I don't want to be happening, and that's not true. I want to go down my trail as fast I possibly can! Who wouldn't? But at the same time the discomfort that I am feeling is coming from leaving my anchor behind. Leaving everything I've known into a constant unknown. Conflicted would be a good word to describe the situation. The inner turmoil which I am experiencing is not something I have any idea how to solve... only adding to the situation. I think... i think... (haha. i know jack shit.) i think... that one of the hardest things for me is the realization that i can't just share my life with someone. Think about it. what greater happiness than life... and if happiness is only real when shared (which i believe it is) than life is only real when shared. And how on earth can I be happy when I can't share my life with someone? Not for approval, not for support, just to be together. It's funny how simple of a concept that can seem at first but how many complex annotations it carries along with it. Be together. Even just the word. It's so simple... so basic in it's outer shell. Be. But deep inside it's everything that it bring along that makes simply being, not so simply being. Of course I understand that my path will cross into others eventually, and maybe paths can intertwine. But the fact of that matter is, any path who is headed towards collision with mine, is going to have about, at least 20 years of unknowing.
Has the past 19.5 years been filled with unhappiness? I don't think so...

Think... not know...


This leads me to think about whether happiness has to be shared with the same person for it to be true happiness. Maybe there are different levels of happiness. Maybe that's the ultimate happiness. Life. To be, and just to BE. together. I don't know. I'll never know. I'll only grow. Check back on this one later.