Hope, again.
(Listen to this song while you read this, listening to it, inspired this post.)
This is a song about the stories that connect us to one another and to this day. Penny and Sparrow gave us a song about their stories and reminded me of mine…
I spent some time with my favorite person, wandering the hall of mosses and the beaches of Ruby. The Hoh Rain Forest and the beaches just south of there are sacred for me. They restore me and remind that I am a piece of a star, just like those beautiful spruce with their lichen friends entwined amongst them. This beautiful world will heal us because it is us. We all have a place that refills us, it may be a whole slew of places or just a few… but you have them.
These are pieces of the stories that brought me to this day…
Stories…
“If you ain’t got love tho, does it even matter….“
Stories are people
When Penny and Sparrow released this song, they dropped these paragraphs of explanation.
This hit me, right between the ears, it rolled me up against the wall and asked me… what are you doing?
I am not sure when a song has rocked me like this. I was almost eighteen the first time I heard John Lennon sing Imagine, sitting in an old boat of car with my friend Floyd. He had told me it would undo me, and he was right. Floyd matters…
This song digs deep like that, even more because I have so many stories now, so many stories. I am getting good at painting with charcoal…
Andy and Kyle are telling us what love is and that it matters. They are telling you about love by giving you stories that belong to them, showing you what love means to them. The stories of your life are the pieces of the love that has made you. The good, the bad and the glorious. Andy and Kyle are reminding us that today is the day our story is written. As long as we have breath, it is the time to write.
Who are the people in your story? Are they making you better or are they just taking the love out of you?
How many homes will have a photo hanging in the front room of someone on a Suzuki, with no clothes? I have a friend named Jonny… I think he’d be up for the shot. It would look just fine on my front room wall.
This is a really simple, and gorgeous song… three chords… three beautiful chords that live to make space for the stories in the lyrics… this is such beautiful magic. It reminded me of the rounds we sang in grade school, its tempo and measure. But it never repeats itself and it just keeps slithering across your soul. Yes, I did play my bass along with it and it sounded beautiful.
You don’t know the future and I don’t know the future, but if we’re honest, we know the past. We have our stories and if your very lucky you have your ancestors stories. We have no excuse in making the same mistakes over and over. But we do…
So many tales to bite and connect to.
I raced into adult life thinking I knew it all… just like you. I found out slowly and sometimes suddenly, I knew nothing. I still know mostly nothing. But I know joy…
We all have a string of tales that brought us to today. The snakes tail, in the snakes mouth…
“Was it a placebo?
Was it a distractor?
Tell me how the wind blows
Tell me if it matters”
I was an ice cream truck driver who broke the 20 MPH rule…
I made some stuff out of fiberglass and I’m pretty sure there is still a Freightliner truck out there with some of my handiwork holding up its hood.
I hated that farm, and it didn’t really care for me. I found darkness there, darkness that nearly consumed all of my song.
it only mattered in how I drifted, and it mattered in who my children turned out to be.
I loved the ditches and canals of block 18 and 47. I got my first glimpse of what a man like me might look like there. I wish I had paid better attention, but does it really matter?
I searched the spirits, and they gave no sound…
I broke through the bondage of Christianity and I really thought it mattered…
I tumbled into a world that I believed was forbidden to me. I never got to be a college student, but I walked around the halls of education for twenty years.
but what did I change….
Now I write stories that explore the magic that music gave me when that piece of a star broke away and said I will be Rusty…
I find hope in following Susan through the trails and shores that we are blessed to be surrounded by.
I find hope in my coworkers as they navigate this chapter of their story. I am a soul that matters in this chapter of their life, our permanence does not.
You have this moment to create, give hope and find joy… that matters
I am not going to try and explain the stories that Penny and Sparrow sing about in this brilliant song because those stories belong to Penny and Sparrow. They are singing about the pathways that they snaked through to get to this day. You don’t know Nemo, you don’t know Esperanza…
You have a series of stories that have brought you to this day, no one understands them like you do. Some of them are terrifying and some of them make your heart swell. We all made choices that pushed us to today. I believe the universe would be happy if you listened to this song and found that you matter, because you do….
“I don’t know the future
Shout it from the rafters
You don’t know it either
I don’t think it matters”
I wish we were better at letting our understanding of the past guide our ability to steer us into the future. But then, that would require us to be honest about who we are and what brought us here…and we are not.
We control some of our story, but more often than not, we are just washed up on the shore to drip and sputter and try and figure out why.
Pause a moment… look back over your shoulder and look at your trail… look at your story. You rode a river of stories to get to this day. Look at them, they are medicine for you. They are medicine you can give.
I am surrounded by humanity finding their food, every day I am at work. How primal is that? It is medicine for my soul. People just running from one story to the next at breakneck speed. Most are good and honest people who could create so much joy if only they knew they mattered. I get to tell them they do… We are all hope, you, your friends and the one who bagged your groceries today. All of us create…and it matters. All of us create joy.
If we don’t create, how do we have hope? With everything we see around us, how do we find hope? If we all give up, then what, where do we go?
Listen to this song with your heart wide open and soak in it. There is magic here, really deep, crazy good magic.
Penny and Sparrow, thank you. Thank you for listening to what the music was telling you. Thank you for such good stories that made us smile and recall our own. There is beauty in knowing that the moon might crack open while you are staring at your shoes, and yet, you still got a chance to say pull the goalie…
Listening, learning and growing…
A Connoisseur's Lullaby 