Drugs for June 23, 2007

Today is one of those days that poets and songwriters use for inspiration. It is a perfect California day. It is sunny and warm and a gentle breeze off the ocean stirs the air and lifts my hair ever so gently to tousle it around my face. Perfect in fact. One could not ask for a more perfect day.
I think perhaps today is also indicative of my own personal weather. I have talked incessantly about ones own personal weather and how you take it with you everywhere you go.
Jimmy Buffett says it best in “Weather with you”
Walking 'round the room singing Stormy Weather
At Fifty Seven Mount Pleasant Street
Well, it's the same room but everything's different
You can fight the sleep but not the dream
Things ain't cookin' in my kitchen
Strange affliction wash over me
Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire
Couldn't conquer the blue sky
Well there's a small boat made of china
It's going nowhere on the mantle piece
Well do I lie like a lounge room lizard
Or do I sing like a bird released
Everywhere you go, you always take the weather with you
Everywhere you go, you always take the weather
Everywhere you go, you always take the weather with you
Everywhere you go, you always take the weather take the weather with you
Everywhere you go, you always take the weather with you
Everywhere you go, you always take the weather
Everywhere you go, you always take the weather with you
Everywhere you go, you always take the weather take the weather, the weather with you
Everywhere you go, you always take the weather with you
Everywhere you go, you always take the weather
Everywhere you go, you always take the weather with you
Everywhere you go, you always take the weather take the weather, the weather with you

My own personal weather seems to be changing again. It has absolutely nothing to do with things going on around me. I have no new news on the Aliens. I have no exciting developments in my life in any aspect. I am still struggling with the drug treatment and its side effects. I am still struggling to find my “worth” and value. I still have issues from out side interferences (and oddly yet again today after having my life messed with once again…

What is changing is deeper than all this crap though. What is changing is that personal weather. The ebb and flow of my spiritual weather has made its way back towards high tide….or at least away from the record low tide it has been residing at.

I have been feeling, well, happy lately. I have no particular reason to be happy, but I am just feeling it. I am sure a lot of it has to do with a large infusion of love and affection from my friends. I am sure that a lot of it has to do with a lot of things. It is a hard road for a little bit of happy to travel to get past all the ick that seems to clog the roads these days….but that little bit of happiness has kicked in the four wheel drive and is making serious tracks these days.

I am more than a little sure that a lot of this has to do with music. Everything in my life has to do with music. My life has its own personal soundtrack and it drives my moods.

I have mentioned being musically moody before. It is not just that the music I chose is directed by my current mood. It is not just that HOW I hear a song is driven by my mood. It is more about how music can DRIVE my mood. Well maybe not my actual mood but how it can drive something else.

No matter what kind of mood I am in music plays a part. Most recently I have been spending a lot of time inside my head doing battle with the aliens. I have been fighting turf wars daily struggling to hold on to as much real estate in my head as I can. There are simply too many living in my head. Like all good tenement buildings this means it is loud, crowded, and messy. There is seldom any peace and finding privacy for anytime is neigh on impossible. I need a vacation from this craziness. How on earth can anyone be expected to function with all this noise? How can one sleep when the building is never quiet? The answer to that, at least for me, is music. Music is my vacation. I find peace in it.

This effect is amplified with LIVE music and more so with GOOD live music. I show up and the voices in my head are chattering like old ladies at the bingo parlor. They nag about what I should be doing instead, they harp on the rest I am missing, they winge about time wasted, and all manner of things that simply must be paid attention to. The music starts and I find myself shushing them. They are reluctant at first. Then slowly I find myself listening to them with half an ear.

As the music works its magic I find myself concentrating more on the feelings if arouses in me and less on those voices. The music finds its way into my blood and is flowing through out my body like a drug. I feel it first in my extremities. It is slow to be recognized but then from somewhere else in my head my subconscious notices a finger tapping on the table in time to the music. Slowly the conscious mind recognizes it as mine. Then the finger tapping becomes a hand moving in time to the beat. As the drug continues to take hold of me I soon realize that my foot is now moving. Intermittantly at first it taps along with the music. Then it becomes more constant. A movement not to be denied, it switches from one foot to the other and back then to both. I feel the effects more strongly now. My hands and feet simply unable to be still as though shot with a massive dose of adrenaline. My brain is slow to recognize that I am now on my feet. Dancing along to the music. Once it does it also recognizes that the voices have finally shut up and a smile crosses my face.

The effect of the drug called music is slow to wear off. I carry it with me the next day and longer depending on the quality of it. The various tenants in my head lay spilled around the floor doped almost catatonic, quiet. Music is not only a drug for me it is one that builds up in my blood. It is the drug that is for now turning my weather sunny again…..on that note… it is a two-fer night tonight (on a three-fer weekend) so I am off to part one of two of Blues night…singing like a bird released…..