Grief

One of the big life experiences, grief is a natural fit for creative processing.

As a younger person, I carried loss around with me like a second spirit. Different from depression, which I also suffered from, this was a feeling of deeply loving and missing someone, of seeing reminders of them everywhere, of feeling sadness that always seemed on the brink of dissolving me completely.

My invitation to you: memorialize a loss you carry in an art piece. Give expression to the sad feelings related to that someone, something, someplace, that you need to grieve.

Don’t try to be less dramatic. If anything, be as dramatic as you need to be to cry it out. Make it as big as it needs to be, maybe bigger than it really is, so that you can really get the full experience of loss. Sadness is one of life’s most deliciously minor emotional chords.

Even though part of me chuckles at some aspects of this song (because of how exaggerated it is), I also honor it as a genuine expression of the great emotions I felt as a young adult.

Lyrics:

I heard the news - well all good things come to an end, and you were no exception.

I am loose. You pull out the pin. I’m flying low to the ground. I am crashing through the clouds, with my flaming wings. I always a burning thing.

The death of winter is marked by small brown birds, building homes beneath my eaves. With grass and string and other pretty things which they weave into their rooms, with their mouths as a loom. They fold their wings, and when they see me they sing: “we’ve reached the end of our vein of gold. Our hearts have turned to ashes, coming up our throats.”

The wind blows in from the eastern part of town, where everything is quieting down. Down by the water the ducks are quacking louder, they stretch their necks across the sky. And I need not ask them why they sing a song that knows the pain. I know they’re calling my name: “we’ve reached the end of our vein of gold. Our hearts have turned to ashes, coming up our throats.”

Recorded in Big Sur by Jamie Fordyce with the Interludes in 2007. Jamie on banjo & lead guitar, vocals, Ken Lee on violin & vocals, Sami Jo Buffington on vocals.

~~