NOVEMBER 8: (admitting that NaBloPoMo is pushing me well beyond my comfort zone...and rambling about Josh Ritter)
(Josh Ritter*)
As a person wildly in love with words...with sharing stories and listening to others' thoughts, ideas and feelings, it would seem that blogging, in general, and a challenge like NaBloPoMo, in particular, would be as easy for me as breathing. Except for the fact that I've never (ever) been an everyday sort of blogger, preferring instead to peek out from behind the curtains once in a while to tell you--my favorite strangers--about something glittering in my peripheral vision that I want you to notice too. My blogging waxes and wanes often. Sometimes I want to split a vein a bleed the deepest truths from inside of me, others I just want to tell about a book taking up residence in my head or on my desk. She has been doing some fascinating musing about blogs this week...and why we choose to exercise our creative muscles in this public way. I have also found other posts on the topic of blogging and/or connections from several other blogging women lately. I am thinking a lot about my relationship with this blog right now...everyday posting will do that to you, trust me. I have cycled between a desire to blog anonymously elsewhere and deleting this one or pressing on as is for about a year's time. In the end, I remain for the very same reason I have saved all of my old journals and notebooks bound in thick hemp twine in stacks beneath the bed and spilling out of my closet--the sincere effort to record my truth from here. Getting on-screen every single day has been a challenge for me, but it is forcing me past some self-imposed barriers with being open and I am fascinated to see how this continues to develop for me this month. Thanks to each of you for reading along...
Last night, we went to a Josh Ritter concert...driving through the grainy city streets, steam rising from grates like countless early-winter ghosts. I felt my heart suspended in my chest when the house lights went down and the stage lights went up. Something about a live music show--that exchange of energy between the artist and the audience--gets me every time. Josh Ritter was the happiest performer I have ever seen in my life. He was completely into the music, smiling wickedly at the shadowed audience and telling stories...a person doing what he (clearly) loves most in this world. My sister-in-law (to be) said, at one point, "God, I wish I loved my work so much." And I nodded, thinking that in my own way, I understand this delight of Josh Ritter's...I don't stand before a sold-out show with a guitar and my heart on my sleeve, but I get naked on the page again and again and whenever an email comes my way from someone who has read something of mine and felt it resonate--or a generous comment from a reader--I understand this. Even beyond the audience, I imagine that he sits in his room sometimes, writing new material, watching a quiet snow fall on the Idaho fields through his fogged up window--a liquid joy flooding his veins because he knows he is tapping into the melody. As it should be, there are more moments of this silent internal pleasure from writing for me than I get through interacting with others...moments where I am putting it all down and getting out of my own way, ones where the words lay on the page as they fall without my censors saying, no you cannot say that--you cannot admit that thought--that's not very nice or logical or professional. For two hours last night, Josh Ritter poured his love of music out onstage. I walked away with that smile of his tucked into the back pocket of my jeans, a reminder for me about how fortunate I am to have found what it is I love to do most.
*photo c/o Steven and Rhonda Bill, 2005*
(Josh Ritter*)
As a person wildly in love with words...with sharing stories and listening to others' thoughts, ideas and feelings, it would seem that blogging, in general, and a challenge like NaBloPoMo, in particular, would be as easy for me as breathing. Except for the fact that I've never (ever) been an everyday sort of blogger, preferring instead to peek out from behind the curtains once in a while to tell you--my favorite strangers--about something glittering in my peripheral vision that I want you to notice too. My blogging waxes and wanes often. Sometimes I want to split a vein a bleed the deepest truths from inside of me, others I just want to tell about a book taking up residence in my head or on my desk. She has been doing some fascinating musing about blogs this week...and why we choose to exercise our creative muscles in this public way. I have also found other posts on the topic of blogging and/or connections from several other blogging women lately. I am thinking a lot about my relationship with this blog right now...everyday posting will do that to you, trust me. I have cycled between a desire to blog anonymously elsewhere and deleting this one or pressing on as is for about a year's time. In the end, I remain for the very same reason I have saved all of my old journals and notebooks bound in thick hemp twine in stacks beneath the bed and spilling out of my closet--the sincere effort to record my truth from here. Getting on-screen every single day has been a challenge for me, but it is forcing me past some self-imposed barriers with being open and I am fascinated to see how this continues to develop for me this month. Thanks to each of you for reading along...
Last night, we went to a Josh Ritter concert...driving through the grainy city streets, steam rising from grates like countless early-winter ghosts. I felt my heart suspended in my chest when the house lights went down and the stage lights went up. Something about a live music show--that exchange of energy between the artist and the audience--gets me every time. Josh Ritter was the happiest performer I have ever seen in my life. He was completely into the music, smiling wickedly at the shadowed audience and telling stories...a person doing what he (clearly) loves most in this world. My sister-in-law (to be) said, at one point, "God, I wish I loved my work so much." And I nodded, thinking that in my own way, I understand this delight of Josh Ritter's...I don't stand before a sold-out show with a guitar and my heart on my sleeve, but I get naked on the page again and again and whenever an email comes my way from someone who has read something of mine and felt it resonate--or a generous comment from a reader--I understand this. Even beyond the audience, I imagine that he sits in his room sometimes, writing new material, watching a quiet snow fall on the Idaho fields through his fogged up window--a liquid joy flooding his veins because he knows he is tapping into the melody. As it should be, there are more moments of this silent internal pleasure from writing for me than I get through interacting with others...moments where I am putting it all down and getting out of my own way, ones where the words lay on the page as they fall without my censors saying, no you cannot say that--you cannot admit that thought--that's not very nice or logical or professional. For two hours last night, Josh Ritter poured his love of music out onstage. I walked away with that smile of his tucked into the back pocket of my jeans, a reminder for me about how fortunate I am to have found what it is I love to do most.
*photo c/o Steven and Rhonda Bill, 2005*
posted by Left-handed Trees... at 12:18 PM
10 Comments:
I am happy you have stayed here. I can't say it better than that. I get the feelings you say you have-- I also do. But I stay, too. In the end. For the same reasons...
:)
love your wordless wed. post.
")
it is tricky this blogging every day, it forces us to think about it, really think about why we do it ... like you i am not an everyday blogger but i am enjoying the push to say something ... and i am enjoying the creativity pushing out of everyone i read :) xoxox
PS I had to write and tell you I am listening to the Iron and Wine concert on NPR and I can now totally understand why you love them.
so good, if you haven't heard it head over to NPR/music
your keeping on is such a gift to us all. thank you for offering your truth and wisdom and beauty to this bloggie world.
Yes! this is a good thing about posting every day~it is pushing us to uncover our truth, to reveal more, to be more ourselves...all if we allow. If we allow ourselves to stand in the open instead of hidding. Oh how it is all too easy to hide!
After reading this I'm sitting here wondering why I don't write more. Because, really, that joyful connectedness is the gift - the moment when you know what you've written is true and whole. To be able to capture that in a job would be heaven.
It's so good to see you here more often. Finding a new post from you is like opening a gracefully wrapped gift. Every time.
If you feel blogging this much will force you to stop blogging permanently, then you should step back. But I hope you can keep going.
For me, December seems like the natural time to pull back, so I'll be a little less frequent next month.
I'm just eating up your delicious posts. And now, I'm off to download some Josh Ritter.
I am always pleased to find a post here - so this month is a real treat. Yours was the first blog I ever read and fell in love with.
Blogging is such a new experience for me, sometimes I wonder what an introvert like me is doing out here in cyber world!
hello D! what a treat to see you out here - daily!
live music really is something special, i loved the way you wrote about it.
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