Wearing White

Dear heart,

I remember when you first cast your songs into that star mirrored lake. You waited three months for a reflection. Just when you reached the point of the point of no return, cleverly anticipating failure as protective mechanism against the storm of belief, the echo arrived.

Your songs were very good, he said.

You fell apart anyway. It was over. It was over.

What?

Read it again. Read it again.

Take it. Take it in.

'First of all, your songs are very good.'

This was the beginning of something you had longed for for over half your life.

And just as you became grateful for impulsive wishes that never manifested though you desired them at the time, as time proved itself constant in change, revealing temporary fixations as nothing more, humbling your strikes at divination, you became equally grateful to set out on the footpath at the base of a mountain having nothing but your misjudgment of distance and a trust in your walk.

You camped alone many nights. You tucked in early to outsmart the dark but consciousness had you beat most of the time. Vigilance, an ally, though fear masquerades myriadically having studied its every detail.

So, after you were worn through the night on the intangible string of uncertainty and self-doubt, resuscitated by dawn at the ghat of your stared down ghosts, feeling debilitated by embarrassment for looking back at all the people you engaged trying to get your questions answered, when the only answer was you, and trying to deliberate who among them already knew that, you came to the end of your dark night and surrendered to the fact that there were others who had decided to be on that trail with you.

They too, on a clear day, had set out to climb this mountain and just as it is not your job to critique your performance, it is not your job to try and understand why they are there.

Your job is to keep your channel open and live with them while they are there and create while you can.

Dear heart, I feel a little strange telling you what your job is.

I know that you have been deeply, devastatingly disappointed in the past and I can see that you are still tracking disappointment as you extract yourself from it, as though disappointment may provide some comfort in facing this new unknown; that of believing in yourself and expanding beyond the relapse of doubt. I want to remind you that although you are clever, it simply will not work to manufacture disappointment as a way of safe-guarding against it.

I saw you try to do that this past Thursday when you saw your vinyl record jacket for the first time as a tiny printing imperfection tried to seduce you into myopic sabotage. There will always be imperfections. Fall apart if you must, but know now that if you do, the substance of your work will still be there when the weather breaks, and break it will, whether you accept the conditions or not.

Listen for the light through the thunder. Move knowing it is bound to be revealed.

Listen beyond what you will. In believing, it becomes.

Thank you for having the courage to wear white as you stood there on the peak, on the night of your album debut performance. For wearing the ring your grandmother left you after years of keeping it in its tiny red satin heart shaped box in hopes of finding the right one to marry even though it is still cut and that right of passage you waited for never arrived in the way that you dreamed that it would.

I don't know anyone who eloped with a belief in themselves to a brightly lit stage in a barn full of people sitting shoulder to shoulder listening intently to what songs you had to share with them from where it is you are taking hold.

It makes me wonder, where your honeymoon will be...

Love,

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