Ever wonder why songs get better each time you hear them? It’s because they weave a pleasureable groove in your brain and that pattern starts to have a familiarity that feels “right” and there’s a knowledge of that feeling, and you want to feel it again.
You can’t go backwards and be unfamiliar with something that felt good to begin with. That is why, if given the chance, most people wouldn’t want to give up their memories. It’s why Eve ate the apple and then decided not to throw it back up. But with that new knowledge, comes complexity.
Life never seems to get less complex, although it’s a conundrum because the basics are always so simple: like a good song.
Embracing complexity or change means also agreeing with the patterns that feel good, rather than resisting them. It’s gotten us into a lot of trouble only because we can’t deal with the lightness of just being.
That’s why it’s not enough to just write, or garden sometimes. I have to make money, to complicate the whole thing. I have to keep putting myself out there and making connections that didn’t exist before. Longing and surprise drives us.
You never know unless you try, huh?
I like the music I heard last night because it’s so simple, yet so complex. I always hear something new in their lyrics and can apply it a different way at this time in my life than last year. Their old songs cut that familiar groove in my brain, and that feels amazing.
But it wasn’t what I expected. Gary Louris plays the guitar like he’s sawing on wood. Mark Olson is much more animated and feisty than I imagined. He smiles a lot more than Gary. When Gary plays, he squints his eyes shut so all I could think is he’s in back of his eyes in darkness, so that it’s just him and the music.
Nobody in the audience knows why these two guys never hit it “big” but then a mess of talented people never get well-known. They’re just doing what comes naturally to them. That’s the beauty of it: you couldn’t stop it if you wanted to, and of course you don’t want to stop doing something you’re good at.
Keep doing what you love; somehow it will all work out alright. Maybe it’s not what you expected, or even what you thought you wanted. I believe we’re all G-d’s seeds: he put us here to grow a certain way, and we either plant ourselves where we’ll be fruitful and fulfill our destinies, or we can’t find the nutrients to get all the way there.