Taking Control

I am a creature of habit and control. I am never fully at peace and find that even in the most intimate, life-giving, and intoxicating moments I am thinking upon the past, the present, and the future...two of which I cannot control. I relive moments with shame and hurt and joy, things that I cannot and will not be able to change. I imagine scenarios, things to come, improbable and wild. I fail to look at the moment, my moment, our moment, and see the great beauty - I only critique the insufficient and wanting. I must learn to live. I must learn to feel each breath and taste each mouthful of life with fearlessness and abandon. I must experience God in every moment of my waking and of my being. I must lay aside those feelings and desires to control...yielding to the will of one who knows what I need to live. I must relax and let Him in, let Him lead, let Him be in control.

The Elusive Muse

He comes as I sleep. The doors locked, the windows shut tight - my mind, my spirit barred against any unwanted, inconvenient truth or distraction. My dreams, my waking, my life so much easier when I do not have to think. Creation is tiresome - my mind calculates to perfection and the ever present nagging arrives. What next? What now? How comfortable it would be to slip into oblivion and never push again, waiting in my own mediocrity for ideas, rhymes, lyrics, and expressions I discovered years ago to be covered by a more driven being. My genius unknown and untapped, all my own and all together pleasant. But when day breaks, he has come and slipped away and left me with another thought, image, reason - and it drives me. Whether it be a song, a story, or a picture, I must seek him in the work. I must must seek his vision - I must answer and I must create. For while he is mine, I moreover, am his. He is my Muse and I his slave.

The Deep Sleep

It's as though my eyes were open for the first time. Scales had fallen and my body was filled with hot blood as it rushed through my veins - the kind of feeling you get when you realize you're enraged or in love. Time stopped, sound ceased, and a moment lasted a lifetime. My fingers nimbly touched the strings, forming the chords they had longed to play, but that had been forbidden. They clumsily grasped at former knowledge, old memories, forgotten dreams and desires. The time had finally come. I choked, my throat filled with dryness...but, I found my voice. I called to it from within and it came to me - the deep, throaty, rusty swell of a low E. I don't recall the words I sang or to which notes I added them, I only remember the feeling. It was a feeling of freedom, of love, of coming, or arrival. I was there...I was there...now, how do I get back?