past due - part I (of only II, i swear.)

I can only go so long without writing an introspective blog. That's what you get from a introverted songwriter. I guess I don't need to explain, otherwise you wouldn't be here.

That rather apparent insecurity is another artist's perk.

So. Lots on my mind, but mostly I just want to tell you about this book, called Eat Pray Love. My friend got it for me as a birthday gift last fall, a couple days before I moved. She understood things about my heart that others had not, since we walked the same road for most of last year, and even now. The book was featured on Oprah, which of course caused in me a natural aversion toward the book (because I'm marvelously inconsistent with deciding on whether I love trends or if I want to resist them). But I trust my friend, and gave the book a try. AND I LOVED IT. But strangely, didn't finish it. Not yet. I couldn't put it down, but after I finished the first third of the book (its made up of three distinct parts), I put it down and haven't stopped thinking about what I have already read.

Its about getting knocked flat on your face, and getting back up...and not just picking up where you left off but instead choosing where you would like to begin again. And not having to have a good, logical reason or a three point presentation explaining why - or better yet, realizing it doesn't make that much sense but doing it anyway.

That idea has been guiding a lot of decision making in the past 4 or 5 months, and I've made an effort to start saying yes to things, more and more. I (apparently) have a history of being unable to accept generosity...which I've come to realize is lame.

And you receivers...assume no weight of gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives...For to be overmindful of your debt, is to doubt his generosity.

I guess the fear is that people offer things but don't mean it, and then when I accept I become...a burden? But who am I to think that it has anything to do with me? That's one thing I've learned in the past year about myself, and people in general. We assume a lot of things have something to do with us, when in reality, most things have nothing to do with us.

I'm not sure exactly where I'm going with this, except that I've been trying to embody the posture of this book: doing things because I can, because I should, and mostly, because I want to--and allowing that to be reason enough. Its ok to bypass the "how profitable will this be?" part of the process. I realize it makes some people anxious, but that's kind of the way things have been going lately..going places and making decisions based on desire rather than logic (why logic and desire are often painted as opposites, I'm not sure. It seems that doing your desire would be the logical thing...)

Sometimes you just have to do things.

My friend, Daniel, wrote this great song and in it says, "But the sparrow knows, she knows when its time to fly down south and out of town. And when she finds a branch - at last - she is a stranger, but belongs there."

Don't worry so much about doing the right thing. My dad recently commented here in response to this post and said something really simple but profound, "Every destination has potential for good. God is a God of multiples."

Don't worry so much about doing the right thing.

Inside the front cover of Eat Pray Love, my friend wrote this, "Life is so complicated and full of conditions and exceptions. I think God knows this, too."

But all that I've written here, of course, is the romantic within me speaking. This is all lovely in theory and in principal. Actually doing it...following my heart...being the little sparrow...not worrying so much...resisting the instinct to spew out polished answers to defend my lack of structure and general apathy toward logical culturally-acceptable planning practices...

Its not so easy. But gradually, I'm becoming that person. (I like to think.) Its with this in mind that I've begun to show up in places like NY, MI, random places between the two--and little things like strangers' homes and the salon and church...and this past month, NJ. Its not that I haven't taken risks...risk taking is what landed me in Mexico for four months, and what landed me in Africa, and why I dropped out of college, and risk taking is what lands me on stage over and over. Its just that all of those things had/have great answers to "why this will be profitable".

Not so much lately.

From Eat Pray Love:

Italians will tolerate hideously incompetent generals, presidents, tyrants, professors, bureaucrats, journalists and captains of industry, but will never tolerate incompetent opera singers, conductors, ballerinas, courtesans, actors, film directors, cooks, tailors... In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down. To devote yourself to the creation and enjoyment of beauty, then, can be a serious business--not always necessarily a means of escaping reality, but sometimes a means of holding on to the real when everything else is flaking away into rhetoric and plot.

So anyway, last week after many conversations in MI - including one long conversation in particular (with a friend who is ALWAYS right, dang it), a friend offered me his place in LA for two months.

With all these pretty ideas in mind...what do I do with such an offer?

I buy a plane ticket.

That's what I do.

[Thank you/Thank you.]