"I have taken you in, lovers and strangers, under my skin.
More than part of the story, you are the ghostwriters, paper and pen."
-Me

One of the increasingly bitter ironies of cultivating a career in music, for me at least, is that I sacrifice a whole lot of time I would spend with my friends in order to really give this artist's life a fighting chance, when they are the ones largely driving me to create. My love for my people, for anyone really (you), is what makes me burn and what silently and provocatively leads me into these songs, these melodies. I want to get all tangled up inside you. But maybe we should back up a bit, shall we? These things can't be rushed, and I don't want to scare you. Well, maybe a little.

This is a season of letting go. But I have no intention of letting go of you.

We are packing up our belongings that make the cut, worth holding on to, and moving into town. This is a welcomed down-sizing. But it also means leaving the place where our first 2 records' worth of songs came into being, and where over the course of the past few years, we have found dozens and dozens of dear souls gathered around trees, tables and fire to get some relief, some companionship, and to so generously let their laughter spill out into that space we called home. So many moments in that house are ones I wish I had record of in a way I could experience them again. And there are plenty of others that I'm ready to leave behind. I got more honest with myself in that house than in any other place I've been. It's been safe enough for that.

These days are also slowly showing themselves to bear opportunities to let go of more of what I thought was true. This whole idea is one that doesn't seem to be leaving me. It started haunting me years ago when I began questioning what was then my faith, or my religious involvement I had maintained since I was too young to wonder about the truth in all of it. All of my questions since then have only led to more and deeper questions -- about the world and the truth about myself. And the only way I'm going to even get close to any truth in all of this is to be open to continue to let go. All bets are off now, about everything, or so I'm still trying to convince myself. I've said it before here, but it holds an even greater breadth of possibility today when I consider it: Maybe I am not who I thought I was all of this time.

I don't know a whole lot for sure, but I know that I've got to sing. I've got to create, and to connect with and without music, and I need a lot more of that than most people. I'm completely hooked on you. And because I have such a small fraction of my days and my weeks available for you directly, that means a whole lot of aching. But it's so good. This is what you do to me. 

It takes a lot of guts to live this way -- to follow where your heart may be leading you at every moment. Very few people have the courage or the awareness to do it, and it means saying no to a lot of more "responsible" things pulling at you.
These words of my former teacher returned to me yesterday. I know very well that this is how I want to live, and yet I forget and forget and forget, and before I know it, when I have a couple of free hours to myself, I'm doing the laundry and catching up on emails. So last night, I let myself fall back in. Into that flow that happens when I stop and ask myself, "what's really calling to me now?". The good thing about this is that once you've been there, you can choose to return to this flow any time you want to without much effort. It's not about effort at all -- quite the opposite, really.

We are missing so much.

So watch and listen. And breathe. Slow down. Walk like you're trying not to wake a sleeping child. Touch as intentionally as you can. Stay. And you're there.

I'm there.
The crack of the screen door closing behind me, the wood of the aging deck gently shifting under the weight of me, the crickets starting to tune up, the birds offering their sweet night songs, the old oak trees all around me doing their best to hide the bright Summer moon. . . . And I could sense the raccoons, coyotes, and skunks moving in tentatively from the forest behind me, but I still stayed. There on the ground, so completely held by the earth and the grass beneath me. And the first thought I gave attention to was, "How could I not be doing this every night?" So I'm planning on making myself available for these evening exchanges, having been reminded of the sort of life that is always ready to be given to me just outside of my front door.

Hi there. It's me again. I want to say these things to your lovely faces, but this will have to do.

There have been these ideas that have come to haunt me these days. Some thoughts and sensations altogether new to me. I have been writing with few rules, little structure or rhythm, and giving in to the pull to keep looking deeper. And I swore I'd never let anyone read what I write, but I'm breaking my own rule today.

If you had any idea just how racing and exposed my heart is now, how I'm letting it stay that way. For you. I wonder how you would treat your own.

This is important, so hear me. Maybe you are not who you thought you were all of this time. Maybe I am not either.

You (yes, you) are giving me something that I want. Without a request, other than the mindless messages apparently being sent without my knowledge or permission. What's happening here, really? Sounds and the seconds that still run through, wash over and in. Into what is here inside me, though I'm not even sure what that is anymore. It certainly can't be said. Not with words. And these words that I speak and I sing to you might be a waste, but I will not stop. These hours might be a mistake, but I doubt it.

If I walk you, slowly, by both hands, out farther away from where we can see the fence our mothers and our fathers built, will you trust that we will only get the kind of lost that leaves us a little bit more found?And it isn't just me here. The night air you can't help but take in now is working in our favor, plotting along with me. The blades of grass reaching up to meet our ankles are asking us a question (you can hear it so much easier without your shoes). Listen as close as you can, with a quietness and a breathing you can stay with for a while. Because few people have bothered, and even I have not quite caught their voices, but I am awfully suspicious that it's a question that will change just about everything we perceived as getting in the way, and everything we were so sure was fixed and set against us.