I’ve decided, after dozens of walks through the neighborhood, where conversation paced around in search of direction, emotion raging and subsiding like tide waves crashing, retreating, and repeating, beating down the shore, kneading the earth like masa, the dough of my grandma’s tortillas, some combination of flour and salt and baking powder and shortening, measured out by hand, this many fingers and this much palm, all put together in a bowl and made to combine, made to become one where they had not been before, this coming together and tearing a part and rolling out and applying to heat, fire electric turning the idea of something into the taste of something, the experience made real in my mouth, on my tongue and in between the inside of my face, through my throat into my body and then becoming my body, my memory of smell and taste and emotion and experience, all a part of a simple food, a simple intention to nurture and nourish, to love and make whole a creative soul who would grow to write and sing, love and be loved, question and inspire, and one day possess the gift of discernment, his inner voice saying, “turn here”, or, “wait”, or, “go”, or, as it speaks to me now, “This thing which you have created, while good, and inspired, and full of possibility, has seen its day, and now you must re-imagine your life, your craft, and re-work the balance.”
Yes, I’ve decided. Songcrafting needs to be something different.
With change comes question, and question leads to more conversation and neighborhood walking, phone calls with confidants, day dreaming and night dreaming, flashes of vision, all random bits of inspiration shouting that the birth of a new thing cannot begin without the conception of new thing, and that the moment of conception is profoundly private, and intimate, and sacred, and that the gestation of new life, new things, new websites, forums, and communities takes time, and requires patience, and happens outside of view, inside of wombs, cavernous minds, and open hearts, and this shouting grows louder when ignored, and it has been shouting for days, in each hour and minute, shouting me out of my restlessness, shouting me into focus, and as I write these words to you, my readership, and as I place each of them delicately down on the screen as not to break them, or break you, or break me, the shouting turns to a whisper, and the whisper a breeze, and then there is peace, and I know that I am on the right path.
This decision brings with it a sadness, the kind that comes when summer camp ends and each new best-friend returns to their respective life, taking with her the memory of something shared, some new emotion experienced, some revelation realized, and leaving behind in the space where she once stood an awareness that her best-friend-ness was both perfect and circumstantial, whole and partial, like high school cliques disbanded, year book signees offering goodbyes and have a great summers, some of them sincere, their friendships lasting, and others just filling space, but all of them bound to live their lives alone, alongside others, in their heads and in the world, with the memory of what once was.
Change, a platform, a promise, an inevitability, has come. Songcrafting is on hiatus, perhaps for a short while, perhaps for longer. Please stay connected, either through Twitter (@mattmorrisfeed), MattMorris.net, or any of my other portals. Sign up for the Newsletter, too.
Be well, friends.
Matt