Day 352, March 2, 2021

Castles Made of Sand 

Today's soundtrack: Jack DeJohnette, John Scofield, John Medeski, Scott Colley, Estival Jazz Lugano, 2018

Collaboration is a wonderful thing. I have been lucky to have been a part of some incredible collaborations in the classroom, in research projects, presenting in conferences, writing partnerships, and in musical settings. For someone who is at heart an introvert, it is somewhat ironic that I find the most excitement in the energy and excitement I get out of working with others. 

Feeling Bowl

I suppose that has been part of what has made the pandemic so hard. We have all become introverts, whether that is our natural inclination or not, which is sort of the opposite of the way things usually are, when all people are pushed to be extroverts, even when your natural inclination is to be an introvert. 

I wonder where the roots of my collaborative streak come from. I have always yearned for a community, a sense of belonging, whether it was thinking about the beat poets, the Dark Room Collective, hippies living in communes, or the Deadheads riding around in microbuses. I always wanted to belong somewhere, but never quite found the right fit, or never was alive at the right time. Wouldn't we all love to be a part of a movement? I wonder how conscious people are of being in a movement when it is happening. Would I even recognize it if it happened to me?

I suppose I've had little micro movements, those big moments of change that happened in my life, they just didn't get written about, or the circle of impact was relatively small. Or it was undiscovered. As if someone, after my death, will somehow work their way through the thousands of hours of recorded audio on my basement hard drives to pick out the things that are beautiful, as if my basement were a Paisley Park. Ha. 

At some point, one needs to turn a corner and start organizing things, give structure to projects, define endings. As I start to imagine a world where we emerge from the pandemic, I have a desire to make sure I have produced something. As ephemeral as anything is these days, I want to do it not for the Keatsian sense of immortality, but to give creativity and collaboration a greater purchase in my life. 

I think I have taken creativity and creative endeavors for granted. There was always the opportunity for the next weekend of gigs, the next reading, the next project. I wonder if that was the wrong approach. I wonder if I should have been saying, this is the project of my career. This is the most important performance. This is the manuscript of poems. Instead, I have comforted myself in that there is always more, always the capacity to do something better, to experience something even more amazing. 

I suppose that has served me well. If life is measured by incredible experiences, the people you've loved, the songs you've presented to the atmosphere, then I suppose even my diffused and liminal approach has been something to be proud of. 

I am thankful for all the people who I've shared this life with. The absence of nearly everyone, at least in corporeal form, makes one look at the past with a fond nostalgia. I suppose, in as many collaborations I have been a part of, I have been in just as many endings and dissolutions of collaborations that I have left and moved on from. I suppose that is an aspect of that old yearning, searching for something where I belong, where it feels like I am a part of something bigger than myself, a part of a movement.

Maybe, from now on I'll name my micro-movements. The basement trio movement. The recreation of mom's cooking movement. The morning writing while drinking coffee movement. I'll just have to think of snazzier names. 

Take care and be well,

Leo