Everything You Always Wanted to Know ...

There was a tremendous urge to tell, to rationalize, to put things into words and thoughts in order already long before I left Jussi in front of the bus station of Tampere, in the very early morning. How the week ended put these last days among the most intense of my recent life... to such a point that I can't decide if I feel too much or nothing at all. Night is now falling and stifles the luminosity of the thick layer of snow, while I'm playing again and again the same cabaret-tragic songs; but it is like notes had nothing to do with each other, playing from so far away, since I haven't slept at all for more than a day - can't resolve myself to end this day and this journey, not in this state of emergency either way. There was a first draft I couldn't determine myself to do anything with - wrong approach. The Duplais bottle on my desk looks quite appealing, certainly not a way to unravel what binds me now though. I came back from the frenzied week in Western Europe so drained, physically and emotionally, deep down to the very basic sense of feeling... Certainly not exhausted by the cold and moist void of Northern France, no; quite the contrary, by some unquantifiable amount of nice and wonderful things. No, in spite of my apprehension of how the ritualistic performance would work, if working at all, in front of an audience I hold as one of the very most down-to-earth and rational I've ever seen, and in this detestable part of the city of Lille I used to live for two years, full of gutted-out garbage bags and desperate people - even though I know quite well this judgement is tinted by a personal perspective, as the very place I realized in that the world had lost all colours. It actually worked to a very strong point, for myself and I think most of the audience, about fifteen people in this now well-reconditioned basement, conditions which suited the input plan even more beautifully than in Paris. We all stood there, and heard horns from behind the back doors...
It was dark and a very few people, I ended up as incense holder with a blessing cloth around my neck, stood very still and eyes closed, flown or fled on this harmonic tide, these smooth and slow waves - lunar tide ? I keep a strong vision of the sky related to this performance, in the same point of view as a scenery I was drowning and relaxing in, years back, to fall asleep: lying in a cradle made of rock, surrounded by poplars I could only see the crowns, without any animal presence, silence and a profound blue sky, stuck still in an eternal undefinite time of the afternoon, since as on a child's painting light was coming from everywhere and nowhere. Here this very vision of a sky circled with trees' crowns is turning from plain intense blue to sparkling multicoloured and timeless - sunset and dawn overlaying, and stars seen as clearly as if there was no atmosphere. Heavenly nectar, heights and void. Yes. Herds of caprid creatures slowly gallopping in the sky - not concrete creatures but their stellar symbol, their constellation... I can't account for how much it healed me. The hours before had turned me back into an person full of anger, out of grief and despair, as a wounded animal would be, but this all so suddenly vanished, as soon as I had recovered my full sense of hearing some minutes after the performance ended, leaning on the wall upstairs and feeling deeply in peace. The audience had applauded once the backing track faded out, remained half-embarrassed while the shamans were about to escape the stage and cheered after they disappeared, quite comically; we could still hear then their groanings from the hidden corridor. I am still wondering how people can remain sceptical and unemotional facing such an inner journey...
No, people have been really kind in Lille, Sylvie, Stéphane, Boris, which smoothed over all despise and greyness, downplaying my fear that the Finns would run up against some bad influence of the place - I can't either relate how deeply heartwarming, intimately soul-warming was to see those two worlds touching; how it was to realize that one would not purely and simply vanish colliding the other, would still exist and still work and last, that some magic could and would be brought, and that auras still shone transmutating the surroundings. I looked at the stars barely visible through the branches of the secret garden, and thought about concealed connections between Iceland and there.
From that point things rest beyond what I could and should express. The few days in Paris carried my comprehension forth and far beyond what it had been used to, exploded the ceiling, all gauges and indicators. It was loved faces and long-awaited ones galore, running up and down through the venue and talking exhilaratedly and exchanging smiles in the dark - snapshots again, images frozen in mind; a present I understood much later how precisely it was dedicated to me, from someone I hold dear, who was funnily exactly as I imagined. A bit too many people for me to concentrate enough on the ongoing performance, but I was so glad all came by all means and could have at last a chance to understand what I exerted myself so long to explain. Embracing audience and performers in a gaze was a truly impressive sight, for two planes were overlaying, their immense distance shrunken and bound into a few meters at the end of which materiality was breached - towards void, a void of known signs and marks...
A few hours brought the party to the breaking point toward absurdity and complete strangeness, we escaped most of the mayhem, upstairs and outside; downstairs things had lost all sense as we were back, but I was drowning in bliss and drinks - there happened an unforgettable improvised tango along French Cancan performers, and we were all singing and dancing, and - it felt so truly deeply good... The rest is to be kept deep and precious, between a dawn, cider and cigarettes; just know I might have never been shattered that deep, to the innermost being, as sweet blue morning and swift drifts couldn't be expected to do. Feeling home anywhere one is - Music lifts you up. Can you see now? I am no longer sad, for months now. I close the eyes and see the way up, whatever is on my own way and however sinuous it is I know I'm on this very way. It lifts me. I'm going forth blinded and foolhardily trusting. Music lifts me up - as it always did... Music is my home. It has stopped snowing, flakes immobile and now melting, and it is as if all pieces were spontaneously put in place after hours of swirling sentiments. I know deeply that I can go beyond these boundaries and invent a middle way between being here and from there, and get to the innate meaning. The wonder of an incredibly sunny February, the way back overwhelmed by this intense presence, the bus running in the night, all those words, the arch of branches which is the same, I realized, than the one I spent all my time under as a child, already escaping and not yet denying vulnerability, the same than the fascinating three-pillar one in the woods nearby my current place; everything is connected - lifted up and given strenght by music, being brought to tears, this tango intensely beautiful and happy, this tender blue dawn, lips shivering in the cold, being deeply happy...

L I B E R T E

...and I couldn't stop watching the signs in the stars...

Love.

Comments

[Everlasting]

Reading that while hearing Spiritual Front last album and having my own feelings floating at the surface, also friendship above all others, and also being in the sunny nature, it's telling me again how lightness, solidity, confidence or will are related. In der Welt sein, in der Welt sein.