Is with the tide vnto an other brought:
For there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought.
~ Edmund Spenser, The Faeire Queen
Last weekend I went to spend some time in the country. I had not been home since April or May, so I was looking forward to some quiet, peaceful time imbibing Nature.
Eternal sigh.
Sometimes a peaceful weekend at home is just that: peaceful. At others, it is the anti-thesis of peace. This particular weekend was....well, guilt is not the opposite of peace but it sure robs the soul of any that it had! The worst kind of guilt is guilt due to sin ~ the knowledge that we have done something wrong. But a close second is mother/father guilt. Father guilt is actually worse than mother guilt, at least from a daughter's perspective.
Ugh.
Anyway, this post is not about my family angst. The point is, that although it was a lost weekend in terms of a peaceful getaway, my trusted friend was waiting for me, patient and beautifully in tune. No song ever written is more true than Billy Joel's My Baby Grand. Mine has definitely been good to me. I sat down, played a few bars of a couple of unfinished songs and then promptly composed a new one.
I cannot remember the last time I composed a whole song from beginning to end in one sitting. It has been awhile. Stagnant. Uninspired. And here I have this new show to put together. Which means old songs to polish and new ones to compose. I have had two unfinished songs mocking me from the stand for weeks. Now, all of a sudden, I have one new one composed. Completed, ready to be critiqued and polished and one of the unfinished ones now also completed.
Maybe I just had not been suffering enough.
Byron said that a man can see further through a tear than through a telescope. That is certainly true. Suffering or pain, strips away the non-essentials and one can see more clearly what is really important and you cannot hide from your emotions or from relationships any longer.
Ahhh, relationships. Yeah.
Anyway...the newly finished song is about regret: wishing that I had said something about how I felt, wishing that I had even known how I really felt....only it's too late. You've moved on, or you can't forgive me. The new "new" song is about the last thread of hope, the last attempt to make things work out: "Maybe it's not written in the stars....But what if we let go and opened our eyes?"
The new song is where I'm at now. The newly finished one is where I don't want to be. I would much rather regret something I did, rather than something I did not do that I should have. But it seems like I am forever missing my cues. In the case of relationships, either I am interested and he is not. Or he is and I am not. Or as is more often the case, he is interested, and I am interested, but neither of us knows the other is interested and then we both lose interest due to lack of real, concrete encouragement. I feel seasick just writing that!
It is sort of like stage fright. You know you have talent. You know you are good. You know people enjoy your music. But that knowledge does nothing to stop your leg from shaking like a leaf every time you take the stage. (And darn it all, it's the leg that's attached to the foot that I use for the damper pedal!) So, I know I should be open, I know I should be vulnerable and step out in faith. That does't stop me from being afraid. And right now, being afraid does stop me from truely enjoying the ride. Don't blame me too much, my journey isn't over yet.
Meanwhile, being crossed in love has been good for me in that it has given me many songs. One that I wrote in college, which thankfully is lost to both memory and bad filing, was even called You Were Good for a Song. Hee!
What can I say? Music is my first love and if heartache be the Muse I have been given, bring it on!
It's totally worth it.
Oremus pro invicem,
Mikaela
