my muse, the mud, and the lotus

Finally, I'm about to finally compose a new song, but first – in humility and awe of the creative process, I write this message this morning. From tears and chills, from my humanness, sadness, and even from a sense of celebration for what is and what is to come, I am allowing the full spectrum. I want to share the inner realms of WHY I make music, of why I am compelled to sing. IT IS WORK. It is an HONOR. And, it is a DUTY, a SEVA (SPIRITUAL SERVICE), to Life, to my Communities, and, to Love. When I feel, and I mean really FEEL the suffering and pain, at the edges of my edges, I resist the Muse, until . . . I do not. Then, from the quiet, a songbird arises out of the shadows of the earliest dawn, from the inky sludge of another night of process, and the melody hums my body into wakefulness, into a YES for living another day. YES, I can arise, and Yes, it may be that I am Here to make music. I roll up these sleeves, and I go to the pedal, to the mic, and I start to churn and stir the sorrows and grief, memories of those no longer in my life, forever in my heart, the blessings, the traumas, and the gratitude – I stir this ALL into simmering melody; each note is a spice, each harmony, that secret ingredient, and . . . slowly, as the Alchemy has its way, the pain becomes beauty, the resistance becomes allowance, the shame and rage becomes a pure flame of expressive inspiration. All of my ancestors are singing with me, and it is the medicine brewed from timeless codes, and so I offer this: the whole breadth of the song becomes a bow to the intrinsic and the ultimately unavoidable experience of. . . Surrender to the Fullness & Beauty of Life.