The Hum Of Being Human

Not so long ago I was training beverage distributors for a well known company, mostly in the midwest.  At first it was novel but the work load was monumental.  Paper work, travel arrangements and event planning piled up.  A lot of it was done in hotel rooms in between trainings and traveling from airport to airport. It was rare that in the three months I was on the road, I was home long enough to be a comic.  To be a creative person at all.  During this time, I had obligated myself to a weekend gig as the host for a small music festival that was organized by my friend in Lowell, MA.  I don't remember if I was nervous.  I'm not even sure how well I did.  I just remember being in the middle of some really amazing musical performers.  Got to watch them from the best seat in the house, two feet away from the stage.  I think it saved my sanity.  For one weekend, I felt me again.

There are some religions in the world that forbid dancing.  They monitor music.  See creativity as suspect, a direct route to carnal desires and the devil.  I never could figure out how something so obviously coming from God could be misconstrued. Creativity, to me, is the voice of the soul. Music touches us because it is basic, part of our fabric. Even the simple rhythms and noises from the world can be turned in to music in the right hands.  The musically gifted can pull it from the world and manipulate it into something the rest of us can hear too. That can move our bodies and souls in all sorts of directions.

I am one of those people that need music.  If I can't find it, I will make it myself.  But I have to have it in my life or it is too quiet.  Discovering new music is discovering a companion that I will take everywhere with me, in a hum if the electronic devices are not readily available.  If I don't have it, I feel deprived of something essential. Like that with that job that sent me to the midwest? It wasn't the constant flow of work that drained me. It was the constant flow of work with no creative stimulation.  No heart.  Nothing new to find in the sounds around me.  Just the drilling of normalcy, pounding footsteps to the march of duty, movement forward with no heartfelt guidance thumping a beat to flow in. Like a dead person with motorskills. Never again.