Sunday, April 26, 2009

Allowing myself to get carried away

These warm, sunny spring days get me thinking a lot. Everything about the human experience in spring is terribly nostalgic for me. I cannot pinpoint why. Many intense memories are from the spring, and they replay in lush colors. Old friends long gone, neighborhood games growing up, goofing around with my sisters when we were little, many hours spent laying in my high school parking lot waiting for graduation, practicing and playing shows with the band, catching a nap on the mall, seeing a special someone smile at me, mix cds, warm nights under a blanket of stars.

Life is a very, very strange thing. We are always seeking meaning or reason, when everything about people, decisions, what happens to you, what doesn't happen, things both in and out of your control, appear so haphazard and chock full of entropy and dissolution. Sometimes a Pollack smattering of absurd colors, blending in each other, connected but randomized. Sometimes a da Vinci, founded on order, math, science, and beauty, not cold but not entirely warm. Sometimes a Seurat mosaic, small dots each playing a part in a grand scheme masterpiece. Being a dot is humbling but important, I suppose. I'm ok being a small, unassuming dot.

There's something awfully concrete about words, what they mean, how they are strung together to convey concepts, notions, opinions, and attitudes. Sometimes, I feel like writing a song and organizing it into a cohesive, structured piece is limiting. I think the idea without structure has more liberty to blossom and grow.
But then again, where would we be without people committed to fleshing out their thoughts to release into the world? There would be no artwork to dazzle our minds, no literature to confound and teach us, no government founded on upright principles and justice. We would all be walking around with a lot of thoughts rushing through our heads but no one saying a word.
Still though, an idea that isn't confined by specific statements about itself can transform and change, be a quiet whisper while falling off to sleep, or a bold trumpet beginning a revolution. But, one thing is for certain: ideas are never one thing. Hard to grasp and harder to put into practice. Impossible to put into words.

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