The Gypsy and the Poet

"YOU!!!!" he bellowed. "It's YOU!! The Gypsy! There she is!! The GYPSY!!!"

Suddenly he is high-powered sprinting toward me from down the long white corridor, a slim giant of a man with a beautiful bald dark shining head, huge wide black eyes, long arms and fingers extended in my direction, leaning out and over his own powerful churning legs. 

"GYPSY!!!" 

I stand riveted - young pale Trista in a bright pure red blouse, midnight blue pants, bright red shoes, and long black hair trailing down my back. The door is locked behind me and my key card will not allow me to quickly exit. Beside me is my charge, a scared-out-of-her-mind junior intern, looking to me for direction, hoarse-whispering my name with a questioning lilt. I feel responsible, I feel charged, I feel judged, I feel caught. 

There is no record of this incident in my journal. Details were not carefully notated. Feelings were not processed, at least not on paper. 

But it is emblazoned in my memory. I remember how it felt to literally have my back against the wall without an outlet for escape. How it felt to out-of-habit assess what I had done to trigger an attack, to quickly question what part of my femininity had threatened yet another man. How it felt to have to make a split-second decision to assure the safety of myself and others. How it felt to not know what to do, when there's no time to differentiate right from wrong. I remember how it felt to be in survival mode. How it felt to meet his eyes and not know our immediate and future fate.

I remember how it felt to watch strong orderlies in white rush out of side rooms and fling themselves on him from either side, holding him down and back. I remember the look in his eyes, full of fury and passion, when they dragged him away. I remember both the relief and shame I felt for having witnessed a takedown, how it felt to watch someone else in survival mode. How it felt to have Blame hang empty in the room without a resting place. How it felt to learn later that he was a famous poet struggling with a schizophrenic episode on a locked ward in the corner of a dirty city - a highly intelligent genius with broad sweeping vision, a man who is loving, creative, kind, beautiful.

I'm thinking a lot about misperceptions. How important it is to not jump to conclusions. To question everything. To suss out the truth.

I'm thinking a lot about how much we don't know about each other. How much we think we do, because for generations and generations and generations, people we've never known, over vast swaths of space and time, have unwillingly passed down to us their own fears, traumas, biases, and unexplored "truths".

It's time for a reckoning, say the Gypsy and the Poet.

 Are you ready?

~~~~~~~~~

Trista Hill is a professional harpist and fine artist, creativity coach, educator in the arts, and Board-Certified Music Therapist. What her formal degrees in music and art gave her pale in comparsion to the gifts she's experienced in working with creatives just like you. Visit her website — tristahill.com — for links to her monthly letter, blog, listening library & compositions, performances, and offerings to further you along your own glorious creative journey.  

Life Lines Up Like That

Here, arranged chronologically from right to left, are the journals I’ve written, illustrated and shelved over thirty plus years.  Over time, they have morphed from tiny cloth-covered lined-page notebooks to large blank-paged sketchbook tomes whose covers I paint myself.

She holds it for me -- a relic from a college-era nude body sculpture class tightens it up.

Over the course of my life, I’ve gone to great lengths to hide them from others, and even from myself.  After all, who wants that mirror?

Apparently, hell yes, I do.

The other day I pulled out that green one.  Because I date everything I write, I knew this particular book charted the amazingly painful waters of my music therapy internship in a large failing medical/psychiatric hospital that was poised precariously between wealthy pristine neighborhoods and the impoverished rougher part of a grey gritty city.  Day and night sirens screamed full-throttle into our unprotected 4th floor dorm cavern, and my entries waxed on about my doubt and achy longing for personal and professional connection.

I surmised that reading my own writing again, now, would help highlight how I can be fully present and open to today’s test-drive “Now Hear This!” event that I’m holding in just a few hours in my home -- a house that is stunningly similar to what I dreamily described on Super Repeat in that journal.  This gathering is all about careful music listening, storytelling, and the literal lightening of memories.  And that green journal -- among entries about brazen many-hour walks through questionable urban territory, an intense observation of a forceps (two types!) baby birth, and what I ate too much of at all hours -- included a particular entry about a very specific piece of music.  

This piece of music, when heard in a group setting among people actually listening with me, had suddenly shed light on who I was at that moment, what music truly meant to me, and the shape and color of my immediate future should I choose this or THAT (or some other) direction.

Except the entry wasn’t there.

Looking for it meant reading through the entire book -- shockingly, I could not put it down.  While that memory could still be hiding in some paperwork I have yet to resurrect from a bedroom closet, very slowly it dawned on me that the reason I pulled out that journal wasn’t for that entry after all. 

Past Trista survived and documented her path so that Present Trista, at least this week, could look back and appreciate, pull forward, share, and luxuriate in the very bits she once meticulously and tirelessly worked to hide.

You've experienced this, too?

Perhaps the experience of reviewing written periods of one’s life feels, oh, I don’t know, sickening, and invites “I’d-rather-[fill-in-the-blank]”.  Thoughts of zealous book-burning may come careening from dark corners.  

What comes up when sitting through that Hell for just one moment longer? No, the moment after that? Holding it -- the feeling, the book, the passage of time, the acknowledgement of change -- and realizing, Yes, it’s clear I am no longer that person, is nothing short of exhilarating.

Life lines up like that.  And on it goes -- a chapter shelved, another begun.

Helping others realize the rich value of those challenging moments and how they reward us NOW, especially through music and the arts, is an Amen Hallelujah Glory Be Hot Damn experience.

So today, won’t you help us hold moments for each other, casting away what is NOT,  and allowing glorious light to fall upon what we’ve been / who we are? Together we throw wide open the doors for new experiences to oh-so- gladly, good-wickedly, confidently and seductively usher themselves in.

Amen Hallelujah Glory Be Hot Damn.

~~~~~~~~~

Another imperfect post, accompanied by:
Peter Gabriel -- Secret World
~~~~~~~~~
Popular posts:
Philip Glass:  Breaking Through and Maybe Minimalism
Sense of Place
~~~~~~~~~

The Egg Project -- Self-discovery through metaphor
Trista's newsletter -- Read the current edition here

Get notified of posts to this blog
~~~~~~~~~

Trista Hill is a professional harpist and fine artist, creativity coach, educator in the arts, and Board-Certified Music Therapist. What her formal degrees in music and art gave her pale in comparsion to the gifts she's experienced in working with creatives just like you. Visit her website — tristahill.com — for links to her blog, performances, and other fantastical creative offerings.