Thursday, June 9, 2011

In pursuit of truth and healing

We've completed our 2nd east coast tour! We played 14 shows in 23 days, between Washington D.C. and Boston. A hearty thank you to Gabe and Anna for coming along, to everyone who came to hear us, who hosted us in their homes, and who shared bills with us.

I am sitting with some of the words I've received from people throughout the course of the tour -- re-reading emails, remembering conversations. My goal with this tour was to create space to encourage people to open doors in themselves that they don't normally open, because they are too painful or difficult or inconvenient or simply inaccessible most of the time. The reason that I feel compelled to create this space is because of the times in my life when I have felt this space created for me, and opened these doors in myself. These are the times that I've felt the most profound healing taking place, and these experiences have been very valuable for me. Opening these doors tends to be painful, and it also tends to be truthful, and good, and necessary. I see it as being connected to the deepest truths (I think others would describe this same phenomenon as being connected to "God" or "Spirit".) For me, it often coincides with feeling some of the deepest love I've ever felt.

In revisiting some of the words that people have shared with me, I am aware that this tour was successful: we reached people. Every night, with music as our medium, we reached people. Maybe it was one person, maybe two or three. I know this because people have been kind enough to tell me, either face to face or through email. But it happened every night. It is good to acknowledge this, because the tour wasn't easy -- it was a lot of work, and sometimes the crowd was smaller than we'd hoped, or less attentive. Sometimes I felt like I was sharing things that are too sacred, too personal, to just cast out into a room of mostly strangers. But all of those challenges and frustrations and vulnerabilities are dwarfed when I remember that for at least one person each night, we created that space, and a door was opened. That's all that I had hoped for.

And to all of you who've shared your stories with me, who have let me know how my music has effected you: thank you. Your words have affirmed me, and allowed me to feel good about what I've done with the last month of my life. (Believe me, I've second guessed it a lot.)

A couple of nights ago I was walking around Cambridge with a dear friend of mine, a biologist who is working towards his PhD at Harvard. I told him all about the tour, what was good and what was hard, and his perspective comforted me. Effectively he said that although you may be doing what you love, much of the time you will probably still think "What the hell am I doing? Why the hell am I doing this?" But that's okay. It's not going to make sense most of the time. That's just part of it. But sometimes, maybe rarely, it will make sense. And at those times it is mind-blowing and marvelous.

Here is a video from our tour (thanks to Quinn Miller-Bedell for filming.) We are performing in Zaria Forman's home/studio (see her beautiful drawing in the background.)

"Washington" by Sonya Cotton from Quinn Miller-Bedell on Vimeo.

1 comment:

  1. Just received the download code for your tribute album - sublime. I hope you consider releasing this commercially.

    ReplyDelete