harmony to the sound of heat lightning

(photo courtesy of the interweb)

I had the loveliest of nights.

Busy, busy day at work... lunch outside in perfect weather... busy until the 9th hour of the work day, when I officially threw in the towel and left. Ate a bowl of cereal, and met Meredith for a 7:20 showing of Sex & The City. My feelings on the show, and the movie, are pretty complicated...I'd like to come back to that at some point when it isn't 12:22am. In short, I have laughed at the hilarious lines and cried at the truly moving moments over the past decade of the show, but overall, the show and the phenomenon disappoint me on a fundamental level. It asks us to be shallow; credit is given to those who are fickle; the women treat men in the way that I would never treat another human being. When the men act the same way, they are thrown from the show into a pool of rotting, unmentionable shame, from whence their acting career may never return. The movie's writing was the worst I've seen in years, which surprisingly made me feel disappointed-- I had low expectations, but hoped it would be the female bonding experience that I miss from my gaggle of girlfriends I had to move away from. One of the things I've appreciated about my job is that it's reinforced the power of female friendships and female bonds, and even if it was from a manufactured sexual feeding frenzy chick flick, I was looking forward to making a few "eee, she's getting married!" dolphin noises and muffling a few sniffles with my fellow females in the theater.

I digress.

After the movie, I turned the volume up on the cd I'm trying to learn for an audition. I drove up the country roads, and parked at the church on Niwot Road & 95th. Huge clouds had built up to the East, all the way up and down the plains, so I sat in the car with no lights on... watching heat lightning flicker across the vast expanse in the darkness, listening to frogs croak just beyond the church, and singing harmonies slowly and carefully until my voice relaxed into a timber that I haven't achieved since the old days, when singing had any place in my life outside of the shower.

The breeze and the night was so docile-- when I got home, I sat on my porch drinking a Blue Moon and playing a few songs multiple times in my iPod while I jotted the lyrics onto a legal pad. There was just a tiny bit of light spilling out onto my porch, and I had my bare feet up on the railing. Heat lightning began to flash closer, and clouds billowed up over my apartment,but there was no sense of a storm-- just a lovely, Western, summer night with a light beer and some deeply beautiful music. I began singing the harmonies softly with one ear bud in to hear the melody line, and discovering the complexity of the lyrics, a knot welled up in my throat and I discovered why I've been so sad to be away from music for the past few years.

It's completely silent outside.
The flickering of televisions in my neighbors apartments has subsided-- everything is dark and calm.
There's a cool cross-breeze coming in through my windows, making the apartment somewhat less stuffy than it was all weekend.

For a year, I went to bed at 10:30, and now it's 1am or later every night, with burning ideas and stories and aspirations pounding in my ears.

My mind and heart seem to have blossomed with the burgeoning of spring.

and I'll sing in a quiet place
I'll sing you to sleep
I know all the words to sing to finally satisfy you
-Wadirum