Song of the Sea

And the prophet raises his staff engraved with the secret letters of the name over the waters and the sea splits. The people walk between the waters on dry land, carrying the memories of suffering, struggle, hardship, and the drip of beauty that mingled within days of darkness. The sea creatures of the deep eye the walking beings from their translucent worlds. To sit still, to tight rope glide forces irreconcilable and turbulent, for so long the cause of suffering, now pacified. That achievement is always an immeasurable mixture of devotion and grace -- how we make it to the sea.

In that place the urge arises to sing. It’s a song of ecstasy. The sea herself performs the feeling of being outside of one's former being, no longer constrained by the laws of assumed natures or tired histories. The women took nothing when they left the narrows except their drums. We face the climaxes of life possessionless, nothing required but a rattle and a song. The great mother who gave us life in a beating heart -- she rocks now to the song of her children, the incessant beating of life, suffering and praise, melody and groove.

Great songs are whole. Happy or sad they may be, but a melody that is true holds dark and light together as life does. The scale ascends one way, descends another, major on top, minor below, modulations made with delicate mastery, angels turning demonic and back again. Melody with and against the drum, spider man between skyscrapers. Dum dum dum, tak tak, rest, tek tek.

The human heart is not unlike water. Though a cadaver’s organ may be the size of a grapefruit, the heart can hold worlds. Joy, sorrow, bitterness, anger, confusion, the encyclopedia of feeling goes through her with remarkable fluidity. What is a song? A song is a vessel for the ineffable, the feeling of metamorphosis appraised and bottled. A djinn birthed to an infinite eden. The artist works the container with fire, a menacing hammer and fine instruments. The gift to all those who were there, and those who were not, a way back to ecstasy.