So anyone who knows me, knows I am a huge Aimee Mann fan. Most of you won’t know who that is. She was the lead singer in a band called Til Tuesday in the 80s. I liked Til Tuesday but really fell in love with her when she launched her solo career. She writes about breakups, alcoholism, drug addiction, mental illness, tortured souls and love gone so wrong...I LOVE THAT! Likely because I can so relate. To me, she is a poet and a songstress that has a way with word and we all know how much I love words.
Anyway, she is amazing and her music and lyrics have helped me through every break up I have had since the 90s. Given me strength and power at times when I felt like I had none. Her music moves me and comforts me. I know there is at least one other soul out there that “gets” me. She writes music and songs that communicate how I think and feel. I am sure you have your person...we all seem to understand and need the universal language of music.
So if you haven’t listened to her, give her a go. She is amazing. Perhaps not the most uplifting music in the world, but I am a sucker for a heartbreaker song. There is this part of me that really loves the sad, heart breaking story. I know a lot of people move away from that stuff, lest it be contagious, but not me, I have always moved toward music that has depth, is complicated and is inherently sad. I like Irish poets. I like twisted love stories that end. I am perverse for sure. But I have always felt like there is this tender place in our hearts that can only be touched and accessed by heartbreak and sadness. That if we avoid those things with all our might, we avoid a really wonderful part of life and in turn, our hearts. For me, I have only come to know love in juxtaposition to heartbreak. I have only come to know better joy, through sadness. I have only come to know elation, through pain. It is just my path.
Ok, so back to Aimee...
She sang a song called Time Stand Still with the band Rush. Yesterday while I was hiking, it popped up on my playlist. I will admit that I never really listened to the words before. But yesterday, I was moved by their poignancy and how germane to our world today. So today, instead of a photo I am offering you this song. May it move you the way that it did me yesterday. May you find yourself alone on some trail in the wild and let it move you to tears. May it perhaps be a new anthem for a new world. Time is in deed standing still. The whole world holding their breath praying the virus passes on...spares them and those they love. May this song remind you of what life is all about.
So in our collective Time Stand Still - take a moment to look around you now. Freeze this moment a little bit longer. Make each sensation a little bit stronger...We are in this weird and unprecedented time where the entire world is being given a pause. What will we allow it to change in us? Where will we allow it to take us on the other side? I know for me, I want to live deeply, with a passion and zest for my life. I want to really see my life, the people in it. I want to relish. I want to savor. Not just sometimes, but all the time.
I think this is why I love the sad music, poetry and literature. It is the broken places where the lights gets in. I see that now. It is in my brokenness and heartbreak that I have come to live this life more fully, with greater range, depth and soul. The hard walk is the gift. I see that and feel it now. It is in my willingness to feel the pain when it comes that I am able to feel the joy when it’s joys turn. The journey of self discovery does not just lead to the discovery of self...it is also the journey of how we discover others. It is in coming to know ourselves well that we begin to see that others are much like us. Perhaps in different containers but with the same basic, fundamental stuff. The more quickly we discover how we are alike with others, the better we come to see our own blockages, our own impasses. Seeing this is useful but it is also pain laden. But if we embrace it, then we come to know the fullness and richness of life in a new way.
As I walked the trail yesterday, cryking again (crying and hiking for those of you who just joined us) I was so grateful to be able to be overwhlemed with emotion and feeling. I felt sad, and happy and elated and a little unsure of what to do with it all. Like I am still searching for a container to hold it all. Then I realized it is my heart and life that are the container. They can hold it all no matter which emotional direction I am headed.
I offer this as a new anthem for a new world...
Here are the lyrics because I know some of you will not slow down long enough to actually listen to the song...perhaps read it slowly, like a poem is meant to be read, no destination in mind...
I turn my back to the wind
To catch my breath
Before I start off again
Driven on
Without a moment to spend
To pass an evening
With a drink and a friend
I let my skin get too thin
I'd like to pause,
No matter what I pretend
Like some pilgrim
Who learns to transcend
Learns to live
As if each step was the end
Time stand still
I'm not looking back
But I want to look around me now
Time stands still
See more of the people
And the places that surround me now
Time stands still
Freeze this moment
A little bit longer
Make each sensation
A little bit stronger
Experience slips away
Experience slips away
Time stands still
I turn my face to the sun
Close my eyes
Let my defenses down
All those wounds
That I can't get unwound
I let my past go too fast
No time to pause
If I could slow it all down
Like some captain
Whose ship runs aground
I can wait until the tide comes around
Time stand still
I'm not looking back
But I want to look around me now
Time stands still
See more of the people
And the places that surround me now
Freeze this moment
A little bit longer
Make each sensation
A little bit stronger
Make each impression
A little bit stronger
Freeze this motion
A little bit longer
The innocence slips away
The innocence slips away
Time stands still
Time stands still
I'm not looking back
But I want to look around me now
See more of the people
And the places that surround me now
Time stands still
Summer's going fast
Nights growing colder
Children growing up
Old friends growing older
Freeze this moment
A little bit longer
Make each sensation
A little bit stronger
Experience slips away
Experience slips away
The innocence slips away