Fall Back Again…
I got to spend last weekend with my band (ahem... Dave Matthews Band). Again. It was, as always, the life-sustaining burst of intense joy and undeniably sacred communion with Soul that is at the heartbeat of so much of who I am.
Is this a post about that? About them? I’m not sure. Let’s see where it goes.
As someone who has, from a very young age, been highly attuned to the inevitable collapse of so many of the systems that we’re embedded in on this earth, I am used to periods of feeling pretty isolated. Sometimes I can handle the dissonance of living ‘as if’ everything is a-okay, and sometimes I cannot.
I am, at my core, a Seer. Not through the act of some mystical visioning process (although I love those, too), but because my mind is just really good at putting together likely outcomes. Over time, those likely outcomes become harder to sit with. Learning how to wrangle that ability without letting it consume me, plunge me into nihilism, or just wreck my ability to have ‘normal’ relationships has been a challenge I am only now getting perspective on.
The current astrology (for those of you who know the language, I’ll just note that I have both luminaries and all of my angles between 16-21 fixed) has brought this feeling of familiar but intense insularity to the forefront so strongly for me. I always carry a layer of Aquarian detachment. But that detachment has been a dominant feature for the last few months, although I understand that part of what it’s doing at this time is helping me/asking me to protect my life force. I am witnessing and holding space for really big things these days, personally and professionally, and so I have needed to be really clear and careful about how I’m managing my energy. Most of the time I don’t even know how to explain what’s happening within me to anyone in my life — which is not the normal style for my out-loud-processsor self. Instead, I just keep writing and going to therapy about it. So there has been very literal isolation as most days end with me just needing to let my mind float and spend time alone.
I felt that insularity -- that detachment from so much of the world around me, an inability to fully relate and connect -- so strongly this weekend at the shows. At the same time, I felt my unbridled, full force capacity for joy, love and complete and utter faith that... well, that everything will be okay.
This band... that music... just does that for me. That’s why I’ve gone to see them so many times. And that’s why, over the last 24 (!!) years of seeing them, each show is a better experience than the last (okay, there are some exceptions. I’m looking at you, night 2 of the Gorge 2018). Because my relationship with the music builds. I know every current of it with my whole soul. The songs have supported me through nightmare periods, through relationships, through illness and highs and lows...
And then there are the actual relationships that have grown through following the band around. People I’ve shared these experiences with over 2+ decades, who claim such a gigantic part of my heart and history. This weekend, many of them got to bring their kids to shows... and that just felt so special.
So many of the lyrics have this kind of “seize the day”, “don’t fucking wait around for the world to change, grab onto your love NOW” quality to them, and I know that really impacted me from the outset. When I really found the band -- and the community -- Uranus was conjunct my Sun/Desc and my brother was in the initial stages of being diagnosed with schizophrenia. I had an emotional breakdown that wasn’t related to my brother, but to some collapsing relationships in my own life.
It was like my heart was being cracked open to experience joy and pain in equal amounts all at once. The music jumped into my veins and refused to ever leave me to experience any parts of a life that has been blessed with so many tremendous highs and lows by myself. That band (through song, last minute concerts, nurses with stories, synchronistic encounters...) has appeared downright miraculously at the worst moments of my life.
That part of me that has been so acutely aware of the fragility of a ‘civilization’ built around annihilating the earth and its creatures since such a young age has woven the bittersweetness of “everyday should be a good day to die” into everything I do.
And in that, these shows could very much be a form of escape for me. But they’re not. They’re a taproot into pure joy and bliss, for sure. But also a gigantic dose of clarity and presence. About the state of the world. About what it is like to be unable to close your eyes to the cold, hard realities of this world we live in, while at the same time being entirely capable of holding space for active hope (thank you, Venus in Pisces)... and the devotional practice of dedicating your life to trying to help yourself and others navigate the whole thing.
About how unspeakably grateful and lucky I feel to be able to have the experiences I have had at these shows and through this band.
I also felt my age. Like...really truly, in so many ways. Including but not limited to the moment at the Portland show when Dave was talking about how they hadn’t played there since 2002. Which was, apparently and somehow, 20 years ago. It was a show I was at. I was 22.
When the people I’d been bantering with, who were standing behind me and who I was very sure were my own age, started cheering at Dave’s acknowledgement... I asked if they had been there in 2002. They laughed and said, “nope! we were in 7th grade then!” So there’s that.
