A single song, A single belief
Play this, then read: “https://open.spotify.com/track/5xcunlfaZvD9BDQsLONI7A?si=a3a2a049f8314723”
This past week I had a song in my head. A song from my past. I hadn’t really listened to it since I was a teenager. For some reason even though it kept entering my head, I avoided it. I didn’t search it on spotify.
Through a series of interesting synchronicities I had to go back to ecstatic dance in SLC. I needed to retrieve some objects I left. I started chatting with the duo partner djs about their set for the day. I explained I was off to lunch with a friend and I might come back. They lured me with promises of some nostalgic vibes.
I started driving past the Clubhouse on my way home. Something said “you’re right here! Just pop in and dance a bit and stay for the closing circle”. I didn’t bother changing my clothes. I took off my shoes before entering the dance space feeling my barefeet on cold wood floors. “Halcyon On and On” crept into the speakers. I know it from the Mortal Kombat album.
The world stopped. All the dancers disappeared.
I completely froze and my hands shot up to my blushing face and eyes already brimming with tears. How??? Is this real? I look around for a second. My hands coming back to my face as I try to process that this song was in my head all week and now, amongst the ecstatic dancers its playing. Its real.
My eyes still covered I see nothing but darkness and I feel a flood of memories. Trembling I sink in.
When I was a teenager I was told sad stories about myself. I was told I had anger issues among some of them. After I got out of a psych ward I listened to this song on repeat and sat legs folded on the concrete floor of my bedroom. I painted a few murals on that floor. I would sit listening and trying to let go. Let go the rage of a household filled with violence, lack of care, things breaking, cops at the door. Attempted suicides and drunken rages. Lack of food. bills shut off randomly. So so much. Fuck. There’s literally so so much.
This was one of the mural images I painted. It was maybe 4ft across and turned out pretty cool. Im sure it was a flipped image. When I was first learning to draw, I often drew images reversed. I’m not completely sure why but most things just came out flipped.
This song on repeat everyday. Breathe. Breathe. Let it go. I WILL leave here and its all up to me to figure out how.
Looking back I behaved much like a destructive teenage boy. I still graduated with honors. To some people’s genuine surprise.
Today, 24 years later, I stood on the dance floor and felt all of this like it just happened. I moved. I cried. I felt my insides screaming! I could hear a voice saying “I refused to internalize their bullshit, I externalized it!!” Of course that showed up in defiance to any authority figure in my life. Except my grandmother, my art teachers. No one could get to me. I still feel this a bit.
They played the whole 9 minute and 27 second song.
I shared this in closing circle, again tears streaming down my face.
On my drive home I listened again. Allowing my minds eye to look around. I found something. The start of a belief I held my whole life from that time in the psych ward on. One single belief: “There is something wrong with me”. That held belief haunted my entire life. It followed every chance I ever took. Every failed relationship. Every time I bled each month not conceiving. Every time I followed my heart and people thought I was “crazy”. I don’t listen to people anyhow.
Maybe there really wasn’t anything wrong with me? I knew today on that dance floor the Universe said “We see you. We care for you. You are connected with the Love, the Great All”.
I cried for that bright teenage girl nearly demolished under great wheels of pressure and a gauntlet of horrific events but she looks at me with intense coal dark eyes and says “We fucking got this, we did all along” smirking, a shifting of hips and arms up ready for a fight. Her mixture of playfulness with dead seriousness is both terrifying and amusing.
As my Mother Hawk did to me a few years ago, I tuck her under my great wing. She can smell my clean feathers and feel my warm soft underbelly. We regulate our hearts and breath to one another as I exude safety, peace and security. I preen her as she falls asleep.
