Join as One

Thumbnail reverently appropriated from Vertical, a collaborative zine created Nov 2017 in the BFA Vertical Lab at Portland State University

Note:

I found while transcribing the lyrics in this process song that it's a challenging one to certain parts of my personality.

Specifically it aggravates Destroyer Critic and Ego Pimp, two inner characters who would vastly prefer it if I could summon the willingness to present material that is more likely to be received well(-ish) by people, according to what these parts believe is necessary to be accepted and praised, and frankly, just not attacked.

Their main parameters are being pleasant to listen to, and that I demonstrate a certain level of skill, as though the main point would be to get the reaction "Wow, she's really good at playing the guitar". This song is not an example of that. What it is an example of is how if you let yourself mess around and explore chaos and don’t mind things being a bit noisy or in progress, something can be born that has personal meaning for you, that surprises and delights you, the maker.

Even though part of me still dreads re-creating the many artistic rejections I’ve faced when I’ve shared my imperfect art with people who don’t get the value of the imperfect, at the moment I'm feeling stubbornly in favor of keeping this song right where it is. Because in truth, in my heart I believe it is the right thing to include ugliness and oddity, mine and everyone else’s. In fact I should bring in more. Try to widen the parameters a bit for us all. 

I need to be loyal to the ugly, to the unredeemed, to the excluded. And for me, for now, that means keeping this here.

I love this song, love. I love this song! And what emerges, whatever emerges from the moment. Because anything emergent is just what it should be. Anything arising is right. Anything arising is just what it should be. And everything arising is perfect. Everything arising was meant to be.

I love this song as my chest rising, the moment coming out.

Now let it change. Let it be what it is. And don't hang too tight on anything emerging. Touch it feather light and don't weight it down. It shouldn't have to carry anything from anywhere else, or it can't fly. And it can't flow, it can't flow. It can't move free, it can't move free if you weight it down with a sense of "me". It's too heavy.

You know those overtones that shine through. Colors bleeding from another dimension. You know they want to move freely, freely in the heavy soul that weighs them down. There is heaviness in shadows in the weight of the light withdrawn, in the dead weight, of the dead limbs of the tree. Where all is ashen and gray. 

When the life leaves a body, it's suddenly happy and part of, and the liquid motion turns to dark, and the fluid aliveness withdraws from the material. The material was never meant to be divorced from life. Material was not supposed to be divorced from life.

But the shadows moved in, as the shadows were meant to do. And they cut the cord of life between these realms, and me and you. And we fell, we fell, we fell, into darkness. We fell asleep in that darkness. And we knew ourselves as rocks and stones and bones. And we moved only slightly in deep, dark scent of decay.

And we were there, some abnormality, never to meant to be. A terrible way to be. But someone had to do it, so why not me. So why not we. 

Cuts were made in higher dimensions. We are only what shows up downstream. And the shadow was cast between the earth and the sun, when the moon was placed there and she absorbed the light, and she reflected coolly. Though she was dead herself.

She impacted the waters on our planet. Someone remembers the day before these things were so. When the moon came down. And the moon came down, and blocked the rays of the sun from reaching us, we fell asleep. Cast in darkness. We started to decay. We lived in darkness. We fell asleep. Our energy got very low. Our wattage was very low.

And our consciousness grew dim. And while we were in this shadowed state, everything was rearranged without us. And when we began to awaken we found we were harnessed and chained. There was a heaviness pressing down on us. What had been done while we were asleep was horrendous. 

Now we moved like cut off beings in the half-light, without without our wings, without our tails. Along paths that were described and designed in closed loops. We moved in closed loops. We received the imprints of the stories we were meant to act out. 

This is what happened.

It can't hold forever. These agreements were not renewed. Some of us woke up and remembered how it should have been, how it once was.

And we grew free and we rose and shook off the bonds because in our true light essence we were greater than those bonds, and they fell away dissolving in the power of our essences that grew. And they fell away in the power of our essences that grew. 

What do you do now, I want to know? 

You can't keep holding to us. And we have the agreement with the soul, with the soul of me, and I have the forgiveness in my heart. And I have the agreement of the powers of darkness, to loose them now. To go back into the window you came out of. We will go back joining hands, joining atoms. We will go back joining hands, joining rays. Waves will meet the anti-waves and be canceled into nothing. Particles will meet antiparticles and join as one.