...and in the park tucked between tall and wise evergreen trees I'm glimpsing Sam Beam, his beard, his guitar- taking in the acoustic side angle and falling down the spiral toward Wonderland, absorbing archetypal stories amidst my descent. I turn each one around in my brain and derive my own meaning, while still fixing my eye on the words that lie there on the stage (page). They're there. And they may be literal. But all around has fallen away. I slip into my day-dreaming.
Behind the tree today, my own versions of each word become incapacitating, inspiring, frustrating, limitless. I want to exist omnipresent-ly that I may simultaneously feel and experience all the moments that I conjure with all the people I am wishing were 'neath the tree with me. Recalling each reference, eviscerating each relived or newly-created moment. And (as usual) I'm thinking.........
I often wish I were a better storyteller, that I could generate a sort of ephemera or ambiance or mood...a guttural feeling, a wave of emotion that sweeps over one, few, or many as I divulge experience, thought and action in such a way that they feel connected to it on some primal level: love, faith, loss. (In my visual narratives, stories fall short when they become too abstract). Too, I wish our (American?) culture had a sacred story or stories with nuances and familial excerpts that only ancestors knew, passed through generations 'round fires...and that words were only stored in verbal transitive forms at times when history required they were best preserved as so....like tee-pee hopping with your parent's parents in a loin cloth and headdress.
What is it about narrative song writing and a solitary guitar that is hardly personal yet speaks strictly to you? ...And on days when you seem to need only that exact conversation too...
Perhaps the human-ness of the vulnerable one-man-show invests us all in his authenticity. Without the glitz of the back up vocals, drums and bass acoustics, we are allowed to see that he is but one of us.
In my world artists/albums, like intentions, get stored in vertical files while I continue to repeat the same beloved but tired songs. By nature our species follows habit: we sit in the same chairs each time we enter a familiar space, we park our cars and bikes in the same spots because they are familiar, and we even vote for the same political party as our parents did or as we have been brought up to do without questioning the value of the others sitting on the shelf. They may have exquisite notions and refreshing tunes but we are deaf to hear them.
Until the sun gleams through the meadow and reaches the other hillside to allow for seeing clearly for just a moment...long enough to dig out a forgotten tale...
~So may the sunrise bring hope where it once was forgotten~ S. Beam/Iron & Wine
No comments:
Post a Comment