It is more than my own dream. I hear a dream that sings in my blood. It comes from deep within the marrow of my being with a low chant that rises from roots grown deep. It rises to stir the cells and tissues and tendons and muscles like the wind stirs the leaves of a tree. A song rises in a dream from a primitive place asking for its voice to be freed through my throat.
How many of my ancestors walked a trail of tears? How many were not given a voice to live free, with their heads held high in pride for their being? How many longed to express their joy in living? How many dances were canceled, seen as a threat? How many songs were heard on the wind, then silenced? All the voices of my ancestors sing through my blood. I represent them this day, this moment.
I sing in the morning with the doves, I sing in the evening with the crickets. I soar in the night sky with the owl, under a quiet blanket of stars. My spirit, and that of my ancestors, sings out for freedom of expression. It is joy that is beaten down. It is praise that is silenced. It is this expression, this freedom where I stand and fight. Not the freedom to cut down, or to tear apart. That freedom already exists! Let me be, let me sing, let me dance, let me praise. Let me laugh, let me express my joy. I am hurting no one.
I consider my bloodline, that pool of outstanding talents, dreams beaten down. I am in the company of writers, musicians, dancers, and actors, painters, singers, and a midwife who brought babies in the world, and healed the sick with the sound of her voice. They only got so far with their dreams before the singing and dancing were crushed out of them. Before they went silent under a veil of judgment. How dare they rise! How dare they sing and dance, and paint! They belong here, or here, or here! All those dreams, I know them, I hear them...longing to be expressed in the world freely.
Under an iron fist of familial pattern, I rise to break it to free those whose voices I hear. Those who have caved under the enslavement of the work ethic tell me I should live like them. Those who are enslaved seek to enslave a creative spirit who longs to be free. How dare we not be like them! I see the dreams of their heart and seek to set them free in it, but they refuse.
We're taught in our schools, trained early for nine to five, and to mind the rules and regulations. Creativity and music and art are going slowly to their death, and in their place breeding competition. A pack of dogs fighting for favor. In competition there is always a loser. I'm not saying a good healthy game isn't fun, just as long as its done in the spirit of fun. Balance.
Look at our children, busting out at the seems, pushing at the boundaries set in place by a society whose only motive is money. As long as we are making money then we're deemed worthy. We who deem creative expression as All are seen as losers and failures. We who walk softly with our spirits, who see the moon and smile back, who play under the sun's rays, and chase the clouds, and then come in to write about it, or paint it, or sing it, are crushed under the all mighty dollar. If it isn't making money then its not worth a damn. For that matter neither is a flower. What purpose does a flower have?
So then we must market our product, our creative expression, make sure it stands up to muster. Competition. It becomes not a thing done for the sheer love of doing it, but for making sure its seen as worth something, so maybe we can get away with what we love to do...express. We have to go chasing our customers, our readers, our listeners, compete for an audience, and somewhere in all that our aim becomes askew, and the voice of our spirit gets lost in all the hype.
I don't do this for the money. I do it because I have to...because a song rises up in me when I see a glorious sunrise, and I feel my spirit dance to a deep rhythm in my soul that says I must express it. I do this because I am at home here, the only home I've ever really known. I do this to be a voice for dreams that were snuffed out because they didn't fit in with what someone else said they should be doing, how they should be living.
There is something that happens when the fear of death is abolished. Safety, and security become just another word. We will sell our souls to have safety, and be secure won't we? But when we put ourselves at the service of a dream, or love, security flies right out the window. Nothing is secure, the strive for it is ridiculous, with insurance bogging us down, playing on our fear, playing the what if game with us, to enslave a people and their creative expression.
He said call him when I have some pride. This is my pride. It may be nothing to anyone else, but it is important to me. That's the attitude I receive, and have received my entire life. Pats on the head for any creative venture, isn't that quaint? But that chant, that song within me just keeps getting louder and louder, saying the time is now or never.
A song rises, and I am singing it. In the act of freeing it, I am set free.
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1 comment:
the only appropriate response to this is, not applause... but silence. and i think, silence is always accompanied by reverence, else it is simply soundlessness.
one thing that i want to break the silence and say is... i felt, i would love to sit with you around a small fire, under a starry sky... and hear you tell such stories.
thank you, cynthia.
love/b.
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