Nothing To Defend
Raw From The Road, May 4, 2017
Nothing to Defend
When all one requires is that perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite.
Stephen Chbosky
(Excerpted from a previous blog entry, 2013)
I’m learning that I am just the vessel in which these things flow through and I realize that nothing can ever be forced.
Last month I had the flu and as I wrote in another entry, it was a bit of a vision quest, since I couldn’t go anywhere and had to be still and quiet.
During this time, I was dealing with some personal family stuff that was very emotional and painful and full of growth.
One day, while bundled up in my pink fuzzy bathrobe, sitting on the couch, I grabbed my husband’s guitar (which just happened to be sitting there) and started playing.
He usually plays with a capo, so I left it where it was and starting picking… pretty arpeggios and before I knew it, words were coming to my head and out of my mouth…
I have never ever written a song where I didn’t write the lyrics down first and then sit down to write the melody… but on this day, an hour or two later, I had the bulk of a song written… and memorized (of course, I recorded it on my phone because I didn’t trust my memory to last to the next day or the day after…).
And the melody that came to me was one I never thought I would choose, nor the chords, which I still don’t know what some of them are…but I play it once a day… and still… I have not written down the words (which I will eventually do).
It brings me such joy to play it, and sing it, because the words came from a place in my heart and the song reminds me there’s, “Nothing To Defend.”
I believe it’s a gift from God, Great Spirit, The Universe, or whatever one wants to call a higher power… because I can tell you, it certainly did not come from me.
It was a beautiful lesson… and reminded me and taught me that if I get out of the way, I create a space for something beautiful to come through.
If I fill that space with a bunch of gunk, then it is clogged and nothing can get through and I am stuck needing emotional Drano to clear the path and disintegrate the blockage I created, which is the good news… because if I created the gunk, then I can get rid of it.
Sometimes, and maybe always, it’s as easy as sitting down and saying, “OK, if ‘you’ have something to say or create through me, I am open and ready, let’s do it. If not, that’s cool too.”
The main thing is, I am learning to let go of the attachment I have put on just about everything… and of course, I want to let go of the attachment to the pain and anguish of those difficult times in life, but it is another thing to learn to let go of the joyful things, or accomplishments… and trust that there is no shortage of those and that if I allow them a space to enter my life, time after time, they will come. Like Pema Chodron says, it’s learning to walk in the middle.
Not getting attached to the pain nor the victories.
If I never write another song again, it will be ok, I feel fulfilled and look forward to one day recording this new song that would make me happy to share.
A new song… such a metaphor, and metaphors… make great songs.
Here’s to healthy detachment!
Robbie
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