Until a few
years ago, my “wires” were totally crossed.
I had spent decades and decades trying to like things and places I
really didn’t like, and trying to avoid the things and places I did. I was blessed to have encountered such
wonderful people and learned so many life lessons, in unlikely places. And yet the “desert” of Montana was the final
straw – it was so clearly wrong for me on so many levels that I had no choice
but to start the tedious, and sometimes confusing and hard, task of getting the
wires (“what I love” and “what I don’t love”) back onto their respective
spools. Like a child in a fairy tale, I
slowly learned to follow the crumbs (clues) of “what I love,” and walk in the
opposite direction of what I don’t.
There seems
to be an interesting thing happening right now; the momentum of the process is
picking up. More and more things that I
love and that fascinate me are literally coming to me. I’m not actively seeking them out, exactly, it’s
just that I see them on Facebook or they come in the mail. Yesterday, a late birthday gift came to me
from England, a photo book about English country churches. At first, I couldn’t even look at it, because
the sense of attraction to its images was so strong. My old impulse is to look (and move) away from what I love. But yesterday, I forced myself to leaf
through it, and I got goosebumps viewing the pictures. Now, what is
this? It isn’t exactly a religious thing
of wishing to worship in these spaces.
And most of the churches pictured are too small to be a venue for my
beloved choral evensong services. Yet
there is something about the architecture of these buildings in their landscape
that just sends powerful shivers down my spine, as if this book is part of a
key to where I am headed (literally and/or figuratively.)
Then online
only hours later, I saw a link to an article in The Atlantic, “Mapping the Acoustics of Ancient Spaces,” and got
goosebumps again. This is about several
scholars who have been trying to make sense of how chanting sounded centuries
ago in Byzantine churches, and how that resonance interacted with the visual
artwork in the sacred spaces. With my
dual art and music degrees (including my master’s in early Christian chant), my
whole body was buzzing. Does this mean
that I will be pursuing academic work in this area, or writing, or just
travelling? Is it about Herbert Howells' music and future writing about it, or starting a multidisciplinary creative work? I don’t know yet. This whole process of remaining magnetic and
attractive, not proactive, is new to me, and yet it is working, so I resisted
the temptation to send off emails and do a lot of research, at least for the
moment. As these clues get closer and
closer together, I feel like a unique contribution to the world is beginning to
appear out of the mist. I cannot even
begin to imagine how this contribution will support me financially, but I
cannot let even that stop this
process. Concern about money has sent me
down the wrong road too many times before.
Instead, my “currency” will be the electric current of joy, the thrill
of discovering that passion is still alive in me. With just a little more receptivity, I’ll
know without a shadow of a doubt how to proceed with it.
