Concepts and conversation… Updates from the Sates: Day....
At approximately 11pm east coast time, after countless hours of pointing the steering wheel between two endless white lines, my friend and I take our seats for our first all night american diner experience.
Clareece our waitress has a deep yet feminine voice that soothes my eye lids, relaxing me into the cold conditioned air of the restaurant.
Without thinking a sleepy comment escapes my lips….
“Clareece has so much to give it makes me sad that this corporate giant will see more of her life than she will”
Note to everybody… sweeping social statements should be taken with caution when sitting face to face with an educated and coffee wired French woman.
And so with broken Franglais the debate starts to boil, back and forth through sloppy points made with tired tongues.
“Some people enjoy the work like this … if she is happy there is nothing wrong.."
Resisting our frustration with each other and our own lack of communication skills, the conversation starts to blossom and some personal truths emerge for us both.
I won’t say much about my friend but for me I found some deeper understanding of my self.
You see the problem with thinking about the world is this…
We all have a feeling about this place and trying to understand that feeling through words is difficult.
Words are just concepts after all. The word apple cannot quench your hunger but we all understand what is meant by the word.
So realising this, it seems that it is actually impossible to perfectly describe how you feel about the world/universe/god with words.
Even to yourself. Hence why generations of us have written, sung, painted and danced. Educating ourselves with religion and science and philosophised throughout the centuries.
I think this also begins to include meditation.
Submitting to the fact that not even your self can understand how you feel intellectually, let alone strangers, friends or lovers is subtilely liberating.
What we can do is constantly revise and condense our ideas to obtain greater accuracy and hope that it strikes that chord within other people.
I believe this is where art has the upper hand over intellect.
“When I perform my music it is me in my most honest form. No masks. And it is in those moments, when the melody and rhythm come directly from your heart/soul/being/core without any attenuation or consideration towards how others will comprehend, that yourself and an other can actually feel as you do. Resonate without words.”
To understand how somebody feels about themselves/the world is the same as love.
It is below (or above) an intellectual definition which will rise and fall in every situation. Like lapping waves of comprehension.
So that “feeling” you get with certain people, the most amplified example with the person you love, could it possibly be a non intellectual understanding or recognition about how the other belongs in this world? Is it that resonance between people what we term unconditional love?
My attempts to put forward my ideas and observations and be understood by a french girl, tired and with a lesser mastery of my native language bring about an epiphany.
I really have to focus my words to be precise and direct. She asks me…
“but what about children? if you are not prepared you will have to work like this waitress and maybe more than one job to survive, do you want that your child knows this for his life?”
I hold my tongue to give a moments consideration to my response.
When I reach my answer it is probably the first time I have ever managed to manifest some truth about my anxiety intellectually.
“ I have two options I say. I can pursue a career where I work as much if not more than most for no financial gain but I get to put down my mask whilst I work and be true to myself. Through this I will always get better, meet and make connections and one day in my gmail inbox I will receive an invite to tour with a much larger artist leading to a bigger fan base and an income stream which will enable me to finally have a home, raise vegetables and share that home with my children and the people I love.
Or in 10 years time I continue to play my heart out to the world in the same small venues, travelling and making little amounts of income to find I might never get that email. This outcome scares me to death."
The shock of it sets like cement in my gut, that feeling of inertia between where I am and the things I must do to progress.
You see I am shit scared of always having nothing but I am even more scared of loosing myself. These two forces battle inside me daily.
I am too open minded, intelligent and aware to continue to ignore the man made wrongs of this world and also not to seek out the wonders that our planet has to offer.
My blessing is that above any financial success I have love. In abundance from the people I admire most in this world.
And although I do not wish to live by the generosity of others the dream of helping them all one day and seeing the pride on their faces when I walk off stage to the roar of 10's of 1000’s of fans is what keeps pushing me through the cement and fear of failure.
I already have their love and pride. But I want to reward their belief in me as soon as I can and as big as I can.
Finally our plate of grilled frozen veggies arrive and the sound of grateful silence takes over our debate.
In the close to midnight hour and the humid heat of the endless roads our food was just perfect.
The only veggie option on the menu and the only restaurant open for miles. We put our European standards aside and lapped it up along with the comforting voice of Clareece who must have thought we were stupidly mad and completely lost. Which, I suppose we were.