Folded and Unfolding.

"There’s too much riding on that, too much, too much, too much LOVE!"

This week has been an incredibly surprising one. It’s currently my fall reading break and where I was expected to be catching up on loads of excess thought, listening logs and ‘thinking about thinking,’ I was instead hanging out with family for thanksgiving, teaching my little cousins how to play v-ball and guitar, walking in the woods, road tripping it to Montreal and then Old Quebec, getting lost on the wrong side of the St. Lawrence, attending a Sufjan Stevens concert, late night bed chatting with friends, eating good food, drinking fine wine, smoking cigars, sleeping in past my alarm when I should have been at work, writing music and then actually making it into a shift for work and falling asleep to the Truman Show with my wonderful roommates. I guess you could say I’ve been LIVING this week. I’ve been becoming rather than just doing what was expected.

This is not a blog to suggest that we all just throw up our hands, drop our responsibilities and just give into our every desire in a whim – an unusual and unexplained sudden desire or change of mind – in case you didn’t know what the underlying meaning of whim meant. I love the word. WHIM. Whim. Whimsical! I love the way it sounds when it rolls off my tongue, how the ‘H’ in whim is so pronounced, the way it makes me feel like life is simple….Whim!

Okay, now that that’s out of my system I can hopefully get to my point. I know that we all have things in our lives that keep us where we are; our fears, inadequacies, responsibilities, comforts, familiarities and our assumed control. However, sometimes the best thing we can do for ourselves is to just let go. GIVE UP THE REIGNS!

While I was on the road with my lovely friend Vanessa this week heading east toward Montreal we spent hours just sitting in silence, listening to great tunes, pointing out the beauty that each of us saw along the way and of coarse going a bit off track. But we always found our way. This trip was slowly getting inside me. I was suddenly unfolding…

We were on the open road listening to a mixed CD when ‘Colorblind’ by Counting Crows came on and in one line both of us stopped breathing and teared up slightly. Sung was the line:

“I’m covered in skin, no one gets to come in. Pull me out from inside. I am folded and unfolded and unfolding”…

How did I get so folded I thought? Why did I need to be pulled out? When did I decide to get stuck on my insides? Who have I let in? Why is letting people in, really, to that place of honesty with ourselves and others so difficult?

It wasn’t like this in the garden. Eden that is, I mean Adam walked and talked comfortably with God. No skepticism, no mistrust, naked before God and Eve. We weren’t guided by our sense of morality according to circumstances, the knowledge of good and evil. Rather there was just LIFE. Full life! We ate of the tree of life; an eternal nutrients.

Whether you take this story as literal, or metaphorical or a bit of both it still holds great symbolism. At some point our hearts felt betrayed, like we were missing out and we decided that we wanted knowledge outside relationship. Alone. Independent of a helper. So we listened to a deceiver, a liar and agreed with its fear over our community of love. When we did this we hid. We covered up. We became folded!

Since we were driving for something like nine hours on our way back to Toronto. Franticly trying to make it home in time for the Sufjan concert at Massy Hall. My heart seemed to be searching for its hidden places and desperately wanting to open up. It’s not that I’m overly closed off or extremely guarded. At least not anymore, yet I still knew the places that I kept shut off. “Shocked softly” I became aware of some of my very obvious covered pieces and I’m not just talking about the bra and underwear I had on. I’m talking about the urge to run from a community that loves me so much when times get hard. I’m talking about withdrawing from reality of daily life, checking out, forgetting to be present because the past and future are haunting me like ghosts.

Sound familiar? If not that’s cool. I guess it could just be me. But that’s not probable, so I write.

While in Montreal I ended up playing some of my original music at Crowbar during an open mic session. If it wasn’t for Vanessa’s prying and some strangers encouragement I may not have risen to the occasion. I was caught off guard by how easy it was to play in front of a bunch of people I didn’t know and in turn who didn’t know me. I felt safer for some reason. I thought, man I could do this forever. Just drive around and sing for people I didn’t know who flattered me and made me feel important. It’s not that people I do know don’t do this it’s just that they also know my messy parts, the journey that it’s taken me to get on a stage, they may even be entangled in the lyrics I present. They call me on my crap and love me through it. Perhaps this is why being seen in a place that I’m known freaks me out. A bit exposing I suppose.

Because of this, I write.

I don’t want to run. I don’t want to hide. I don’t want to ignore my folded places. I want to live uncovered. I desire true intimacy (into-me-see:).

As part of this: Toronto open Mic’s here I come, EEEK!

When Sufjan sang away on Wed. night I got lost in the music. It was as if I were the only one in Massy Hall for a while processing the past few days of my trip. When the song 'too much' came on all I could think of was that there's just too much love waiting for me in this life for me to get stuck fearing it as well as for me to get confused by the illusions that try replace the true stuff. I want to be myself. I want to be known and understood for who I really am but this starts where you are. In the community your in now. It wont suddenly spring up by running to a new place. Sure traveling, mini-adventures and new experiences stretch us and grow us but we still have to come back to the now, the present at some time and face ourselves in the mundane.

There’s just too much riding on our beautiful lives to stay tucked away. There’s too much love waiting for us to just cope and sell ourselves short for counterfeit intimacy. There’s too much riding on our lives to be inauthentic and fake. There’s too much riding on us to give ourselves up to just anything in order to get by. It's time we start living instead of just surviving!

So where are you folded? Hidden? From what? From who?

Just let go, surrender, give up the reigns. Forgive so you can be free!