43 days, 1032 hours later

“Sometimes
Making songs
Feels like living to make songs
And sometimes
I get an uneasy feeling
That I’m doing something wrong
‘Cause nothing really feels like home

And I just want to be alone
Calculate the hours till the power in the well goes dry

I’m watching as the stage goes black
How long until we all go back
To being nothing at all
Nothing but a spark in someone’s eye

Am I giving all that I can give?
Am I earning the right to live?
By looking in a mirror

There’s nothing more sincere than selfish art.”

NOAH GUNDERSEN

It has been 43 days and approximately 1032 hours since I got here.

Where is “here”?

“Here” is another point in the path that life is, presenting the reception of a different perspective on life itself . “Here” is not outside or external; it is an inward place and is within yourself. “Here” is the differences I see between myself and others; but “here” is also the over arching similarities that overshadow those differences, causing them to  diminish in size and stature.

“Here” is that feeling and realization that we are all the same, desperate for the same grace. “Here” in my head is human history; the past the present and the future, truth; knowledge, conviction and belief, humanity; the human race and the human benevolence, mapped out within the path of life for all beings existent and human, in a motion that connects us all in a circle of life- the circle of life.

All go to the same place. All came from the dust and all return to the dust-  that circle of life.

“Here” is not California. “Here” is not Kampala, Uganda. “Here” is where I’m standing on that circular path that  presents me the way I seem and the way I am; through my culture and nationality and ethnicity, and “Here” is where I meet different people from another side of the world standing at a different point, in that same circular path and constant motion, enabled and energized by that thing we all crave the most- hope.

“Here” is where Luganda and Spanish and English emphasize a similarity and not a difference; communication being the object and similarity, and not content and structure being the emphasis. “Here” is where the color of my skin means I am human; as human as the man in his white skin and as human as the girl in her brown skin. “Here” is where I’m learning that we have so much more in common than the things that differentiate us- Human. Mortal. Anthropological. Vulnerable. Ethnological. Fallible, that’s who we all are, and so much more.

So what I’m saying is it has been 43 days and approximately 1032 hours since I got here. It took me a while, huh.

The past month has been such an enjoyable exposure to different musically creative processes of expressing conviction with words, with melody and instrumentation but especially with the intricate dynamism that exists relationally among all those elements and many more, as arranged by artists, who do so in such a way different than I usually would; because we are at different points of the proverbial life circle- different and the same, different but the same.

We hear the same music, we sing it differently. We talk about the same life principles and conclusions, we write about them differently. We have similar dreams for our communities with our art, we go about achieving them differently. We want the same or similar things, and we need the same and similar things. All these longings and desires and ideas exist in different people and are expressed throughout the world in different contexts and systems. When you realize how in depth this sophistry is, you begin to wonder if the point is the “How” or the “why” or both? Your mind begins exhibiting the depths of its selfishness; the ability to decipher, but not the desire to understand.

A few weeks into everything, it can get a bit confusing when your myopic human eyes dart to observing those differences without a supporting context of the similarities that therein tell you you don’t stand alone, but collectively with others. You may begin to feel overwhelmed by all the details that could come out so overtly in your understanding and sound so loudly, not just in your subconscious but in your every knowledge that you are and that you exist. The opportunities you had versus the opportunities they had. The way things have turned out here versus the way things have turned out there. What’s easy about here and what’s hard about here. That which is disdainful about there and that which isn’t that disdainful here, and the matches and competitions go on, playing out in your head.

Your heart is already cringing in anticipation of the result of a plausible cognitive dissonance and mental entropy. Why does there have to be a here and there? Why do they have to be the same? Don’t you see the essence of diversity? The rationale of difference?  The heart is scared of hurting because of your selfish mind thinking about the display of its abilities without thought to where its vain exhibitions lead everyone and everything else; your heart, attitudes, decisions and eventually your art that will glorify the avid descriptions of the self inflicted pain you endure, in yet another expression of typical human self centeredness. This is all the mirror that is art will be depicting; the truth of your selfishness.

The unfruitful comparisons that are trees and plants occupying precious space in the garden of your life, tiring out the used-to-be fertile soil with a lack of productivity and redundancy, cause you to stop growing, so you start dying.  When you stop growing you’re not just stunted, you are dying. You feel that kind of death begin to fester. You have to yank those plants of comparison out of you to live. You have to plant new trees. You have to decide to chase the choice of being blessed. Your flesh reaps what you heart sows. Your mind can decipher this, but you need to understand it and desire to understand this, to accept it and act upon it; we are all blessed. Blessed differently and blessed. Blessed to bless each other and blessed to bring something useful and relevant to the table with all that we are; even and especially with our art- with my art.

The artist is a person. So their art is the embodiment of who they are; a mirror pointed up to their faces and the description of not just what they saw, but what they are as well.

You ask yourself, “Who am I?” and more importantly “Who am I supposed to be?”

“I am what I do, what I say and what I think,” you answer. “But who are you supposed to be?” you ask yourself again. You dig deeper for a few weeks and answer, “I think I’m supposed to be more like Jesus.” You nod in a satisfaction with the answer but focus to ask another question, “Why?” You are momentarily confused so you clarify the question for yourself, “Why do you think you are supposed to be more like Jesus?” The answer spewed out of a place in me  I had been suffocating and stifling.

“Because I am a wretch and I don’t want to be like me.

I want to be less like me. I don’t want to perpetuate what I am, but that thing I could be. He gives me the hope that it can happen and that it will, and that infact, it already has in a way because,

We begin forever now.

Because we make it heaven or we make it hell.

Because the choices that we make, make us.

Because everything that we do, could be magic.

Because my mouth is an open grave, but I’ve heard stories of history bringing death to end.

Because he could speak and spring up life again.”

“Ok then.”  I said to myself in a fulfilled resolution and opened my heart and ears and eyes to write and sing. I would sing because I sing, like I am because I am. I would sing the song of hope that existed in my every dissension, because we have enough dissension but not enough hope. I would talk about my brokenness, because in that place is the hope that I can be made whole. I was going to be a much more deliberate gardener. I would strive for life, and then I would live and not just be alive. I would thrive and not just survive.

Yes, so much I have been through has changed me. But I am changed and changed to remain me. I am an Abel and sometime ago there was a Cain, but in so many ways too there is an Abel and I am their Cain, that must confess to their brother. The “making” is what makes “it” what it is. Love goes with loving and hope goes with hoping; faith goes with conviction and belief. Maybe I can start trying to try, trying to grow up and learning that I may indeed learn what is real and what isn’t. Maybe I can return the eyes of my heart to hear the sound of light; for I realize that we hear, with our hearts and not our ears. Maybe I can sing this song of hope to now belong to the the truth of the message, to the truth of the truth, to the song of my history, to this song I allude; the song of a strong, strong compassion.

 

It has been 43 days and approximately 1032 hours since I got here.

And I’m finally glad to realize that there is a here.

Here is a place of hope.

We need hope.

Hope is the motion.

And it is by this hope that we are saved.

ROMANS 8:24