It’s a morning in February. The headlines scream, the soft dawn has a new day on the table and slowly but surely, I rise to join it. “It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day” for some reason those words will always bring out the resonance of Nina Simone’s voice. I saw her once in concert, just months before her death, which was remembered recently. Lots of things in the world are changing, but Nina, she stays with me.
Voices and songs persist because they fuse the intellectual expressions of language with the emotional outpourings of music. Together, sung by a body, comes a three pointed basis for persistence. Of course, very little persists forever, and maybe everything persists forever, but in the way it rests here on earth right now, nothing persists without being subject to change, if not within itself but within its recollection. In short, memory and how we recollect is the key to understanding better how we move forward. Right now everyone wants to talk about mirrors and HD everything and meshed, netted and woven anything. I love this conversation, this current of dialogue and yet, being the perceiver I am, I like to take a moment within it all to pause.
Now, if I go back to the Nina Simone concert there’s a lot that comes to mind. First, there are all the other people in all the many rows inside what I remember being Carnegie Hall. We sat in the dark a while together, so it makes sense I remember all the people first. Then came the stage and the musicians sort of waiting for a moment or two or three, while Ms. Simone took to the stage. She was bold as always and complained immediately that somehow we were already, as a crowd, too asleep and too lazy for her to do much of anything with us. OK, so she got her digs in, spurred us along, no matter, because what came next was the song. Slowly but surely the engine of the diva powered all these many people to a place where tears, hand clapping and foot moving became the norm. We were engaged, in love, enthralled. We were witness and participant to the life and the voice of this woman who, at that moment, could have led us anywhere, not in protest or in defiance or vision, but simply as an expression of unified diversity. So it goes, with the power of song and so it goes when everyone in the room sings along.
That concert was some years ago now. It’s been a while since I’ve been back to Carnegie Hall although I pass it from time to time when I’m home in the city. I’ll always think of her and that night. It’s not the only time I’ve been there and maybe it won’t be the last, but for me Carnegie Hall will always be living, echoing the voice of that particular woman on that particular night. Inside there my feet are still standing in the back of the house, moving into the aisle so I could join the other free and moving people; dancing as communion, dancing as reflection, dancing with lots and lots of strangers. In this sense, those first timid hip moves, those first timid claps, were just loosening me up for this union, this joining and then finally, the contribution, the abandon of me as an individual. So, it goes with song and so it goes with dance. Everyone joining makes the whole, everyone joining in retains and yet donates the self.
I’ve spent a lot of time doing what I know how to do, which is simply, live. After the towers went down in 2001 I changed my whole life. I listened to my writing teacher and believed it was my job to pursue my voice, of course I was still a little too shy to deal in words so I continued with photographs. That year I lost my first job for the first time in my life, the economy was down and I was running PR and Marketing for a small shoe company. I had already run away from advertising twice or three times. I had completely lost myself when my liberal arts training in philosophies and literatures and things like human rights and metaphysics had entered the work place. I had no business skills and so when I took my first agency job at a tony hot shop I felt validated that at least I wouldn’t starve while I figured what was next. For about ten years now I’ve been firmly outside that world. Of course I’ve watched it like a hawk and I’ve re-entered for the right project, stepping my toe back in here and there when necessity, curiosity or even conscience dictated. See, about ten years ago I was polarized by fear. When that fear gripped me and when it walked with me, along the streets of downtown, past the empty retail spaces and the smoke plumes and later, when they shined the lights on anniversaries of those falling towers and many dead I was again, remembering and reliving the fear. Of course, within that I sometimes forgot the resilience, the joy, the light that existed within those difficult moments and within every moment. Fear has an interesting way of blinding us to balance, passage and the ever evolving present.
Last night two things struck me. One was the Pronoia of the happy oracle Rob Brezsny. I’ve read his Free Will Astrology since I was a teenager. Whenever I could get my hands on a copy of the Village Voice I was there, flipping the pages until I could find the Free Will horoscope. It was my free will moment. Of course, I get bored with everything and sometimes even Rob’s words have felt pollyanna, old school and somehow not so in touch with my own explorations of truth. Somehow though, last night I read through his website again and I found some really interesting ideas. Of course he was speaking of song, of suspending fear and most movingly, of his own move from the 90s consciousness of calling for wrath for the powers that be in media and mind control, and then his raise in vibration occurred, this change took him away from this course. In reading those words, detailing his shift, I understood why it’s also hard for me to participate in huge tirades or detailed examinations of scandals, trends or failings within our society. From my experience I know that most of the movers and shakers of today’s internet were predicted. I stood in rooms where my boss talked to all the blue chip companies and told them about the brands, the kids and the trends that were upcoming. Years before it was in the press I saw prototypes for integrated household and fashion items that were jacked to receive music players or to allow electric candles to burn on a cool to the touch tablecloth. I also saw the prediction of the “Brand Me.” So, here it is, amazing people using technology to compile, broadcast and aggregate their thoughts, connections and tribes. They’re leaving much behind but the branding buzz word seems to come with them. So, what is a brand? What is the logos and where will it change in the coming generations? Will branding become more like the shields of old warriors? And if I participate, which I probably will, which of my symbols, my art pieces or my photo imagery will I think is central to me? Maybe in this new age the shape shifting myth is what there is, but I like to think we’re all about to get down to something deeper, something that speaks of essence.
Reflection is a funny thing. There are many old proverbs that speak of this and for those first years after 2001 I was, in fact, preoccupied by it. As I fled the corporate structures and as I settled into a journey of the underground of nightclubs and other strange dark places I would often chant to myself, “Show me your friends and I’ll show you, your Self.” I did this for years and by doing this I went from security guards to bar backs and from cocktail waitresses to bartenders and photographed them and chanted this in my mind. I walked home late at night and as I wandered past one of the last factories on Houston Street I chanted some more. I went to places all over the world and chanted in those places, too. Of course, I was still racked by fear and much of what I chose to see was colored by this. It wasn’t until a much older photographer reviewed my work that she said I should remember joy. Joy? really? Joy amidst immigration problems? Joy amidst separations, disappointments, cancers, addictions and deaths? Yes. Joy, the one of being alive, of being witness and participant. The one of sole singer and chorus. Each word is a note. Each step is a note. Each one of us, is a note. The symphony might sound classic, drone, hip-hop or trance, but irrespective of your preference, the collective aspect is without a doubt. It’s amazing. All the world a song. Someday soon I’ll write about Leaves of Grass and the aspects of song that touch and inform me there. For now though, my day is calling and my fingers are tired since I haven’t quite stretched it all out and gotten the chi going.
Last year in February I was in Colorado. The year before that I was living on the East River, waking up to the Brooklyn Bridge and the tug boats. Before that was the Sahel of Africa and the year before that were the lush breezes of Bali. As far as traveling goes, I guess I’ve been pretty lucky. People see me as restless, someone recently called me a hot mess, implying some type of appreciation I guess, but ultimately I have tried to live in a way so I could experience and draw my connections wider and wider. Who are you? How do you reflect me? How does your song and my song work together? Where does the suffering go and where does the joy go and what are the balanced proportions going forward? How does my voice add to yours, to the people I don’t see, the places I’ll never get to? I’m not really sure. One thing I know is that drawing the connection wider and wider, reaching past age, gender, race and language, drawing the circle to include old ideas and new technologies, this has suited me personally. I never had to travel to do it but the way my story goes I just happened to travel. I guess it’s something I wanted to manifest since I was a child. That’s just me, my steps, my voice. Each year, each day, I try to just go with it. My life sounds exciting but by being so transient I realize that I am less able to help change the local politics of the town where I grew up or to help my parents who are aging, just like me and the rest of us. So, in this also, I look to balance, to making time in old fashioned ways where eye to eye and shoulder to shoulder, we live in a connected way. I also incorporate ultra-technology when I can, since a while ago I realized, that even the wheel was once new fangled. No matter what, it’s simply about suspending fear.
There’s a lot more I could say but for today I’m going to leave it at the place where my old seeking mantra met my next seeking mantra. I was standing in St. John’s Wood, in London. My friend had just passed away, my grandmother had just passed away, my teacher had also, just passed away. I walked in this very green place where a park with swings could be seen through the trees to my right and to my left was somewhat encroaching urban skyline. I sat in the quiet and read some plaques. Unfamiliar birds flew and chirped back and forth. In this place I began to sing to myself, while snapping pictures, “What do the dead see when the dead see us?” I hope when Nina Simone looks down she sees more people standing up for the basic living rights of all beings. I hope when someone sings Mississippi Goddamn or Lilac Wine or when a subtle line of My baby only cares for me…in some random café where suddenly her voice appears, I hope she sees the basis, the spark of the connection she stirred in the hearts, voices and bodies of so many of us. Here comes the sun, I think to myself. Here it comes, now watch me now…’cause when the dead see me, I’ll be dancing in my thoughts ever more free from fear. I trust you will be, too, and if we dedicate ourselves to such a thing, who knows where the dance into the next might take us. The beauty is we have no idea. What we do have is freedom.
