thin places

"...music is about as physical as it gets:

your essential rhythm is your heartbeat; your essential sound, the breath.

We're walking temples of noise, and when you add tender hearts to this mix,

it somehow lets us meet in places we couldn't get to any other way."

- Anne Lamott

I make music. For a living.
Sometimes I forget how great that is.

Because, truth be told, there's a lot that's not so great about it.

There are moments, days, weeks...seasons....when I question what I do. Why don't I just go get an office job that wouldn't demand so much of me...that I wouldn't care so much about...that would actually give me a decent salary, and dare-I-say-it....benefits?

My hours are long...and irregular. It's not uncommon for me to work 12-15 hours a day, 6 days a week. I often wonder what it would be like to work 8-5 and actually leave my work at work and have...a weekend. When I don't have a gig, I have rehearsal for a gig...or I should probably be practicing for said gig.

My work is never done. At this moment in time, I am responsible for roughly 400 pages of music. So really, when I say I make music for a living, what I mean is, I juggle music for a living. I live from one performance to another. I've barely got time to celebrate one recital, before I'm prepping for the next one.

I am constantly being critiqued...by my colleagues, employers...and myself. I struggle to remind myself that while my daily performance is important - and while I should absolutely strive to bring my best to everything I do...my worth is not found in how many right notes I play, or how dazzling my technique is. I struggle to remember that I am more than a musician.

It is not easy to be a musician in today's world. Musicians (and artists of all kinds) are forced to burn the candle at both ends. We juggle full schedules of rehearsals, lessons, performances. And when we're not practicing, rehearsing, performing or teaching - we become advocates...trying to convince our society - and sometimes even ourselves - that what we do matters...that it is necessary.

I make music. For a living.

Sometimes I forget how great that is.

Even as I sit here, I have begun and erased at least 2 dozen sentences, as I attempt to express my wonder, my joy - my sheer delight in the fact that someone actually pays me to do what I love. I honestly don't even know where to start.

I get paid to interact with poetry and melody. 

     To absorb it - let it affect me, change me, become part of me.
I get paid to create. 

     To paint with colors of sound.
I get paid to collaborate. 

     To journey with another - and cultivate something new together
I get paid to tell stories. 

     To give voice to another's, to reveal my own.
I get paid to express. 

     To speak hope, joy, freedom, comfort, truth.

The Celtic mystics use the term "thin place" to refer to a sacred space - one where the veil between the material world and the eternal world is thin. 

Poet Sharlande Sledge describes them this way:

"Thin places," the Celts call this space,

Both seen and unseen,

Where the door between the world 

And the next is cracked open for a moment

And the light is not all on the other side.

God shaped space. Holy.

I think I am beginning to realize that my work is one giant "thin place."

I spend my days on the edge of the divine. Of course, we're always on the edge; the divine is always present - all around us, within us.

But somehow, when there is poetry, when there is music - when they swirl and resonate together - when we add the tenderness of our hearts to the mix - the veil becomes so thin, you forget it's even there.

and the light spills out from the other side. 

I make music.  For a living.

Sometimes I forget how great that is.