ON DEJA-VU

the most intense feeling of deja vu that i've ever experienced was, as is fitting, a kind that happened again and again throughout my life. i still experience it occasionally, and it's always so familiar that it throws me off for a moment. the paradigm that i know of what is real and what is life is shaken and i am, for a moment, in some in-between realm, where time is irrelevant and where logical thought cannot enter. it's not a deja vu of a place, or of a person, or any kind of sensory experience. it's a deja vu of a feeling, and of an inner murmuring that is so tangible and yet unrecognizable all at once. it is a feeling that is very-much there, but as soon as i notice it, it vanishes, like a deer that has been spotted by a hunter and decided to run. as soon as i focus the inner-dialogue of my mind on it, it flees to some earthy cave where it cannot be seen. but somehow its presence echoes after it is gone. like the sound of perpetually-moving hooves.

the strangest part of the feeling which i speak of is that it is something living and breathing and seemingly organic, existing within my mind but not created by my mind. it enters via its own will and leaves when i recognize its presence. the best way i can describe it would be to compare it to some kind of rambling series of sentences, overlapping one-another, in a language that i do not know but which is somehow familiar to me. words that are almost discernable, but which are just out of reach, like a word that one tries to grasp in order to make a point but cannot manage to summon from one's mental dictionary. imagine standing in a crowded room with walls that cause the words of the people to echo, unable to make out what they are saying, but able to recognize that they are not speaking english... it's something like that. 

this feeling has come to me only at times when my mind is very relaxed and somewhat detached; in my most deeply meditative states of being. the most apparent time was when i had a canvas set down on the floor of my old livingroom at my mom's house in nevada city, some time in the cold of winter, on an afternoon when i was home alone. i had been painting for longer than i had in a while, hours for certain, and i had stopped thinking in sentences or thinking about my past or even thinking directly about what i was doing. i think my mind was absolutely clear, and my painting was directed not by my thoughts, but i swear by my soul. i've reached that sort of empty-yet-full place many other times, while playing guitar, or more often by composing piano pieces. i have one memory of writing a song at a point in my life when i was close to tears, on the piano, hitting the keys so hard that the joints of my fingers hurt, and whilst playing glancing out the window on the front door to see orange and gold leaves falling from the tree outside in a diagonal dance toward the earth. 

yet i have not experienced that FEELING during all the times that i've been in that place or state of mind. it occurs rarely. it's as if i am turning a radio dial in my brain to a station that picks up the sounds of everything going on the world, ever, at any point in time, all at once. or it's as if i'm hearing some language long forgotten that was used to talk about things that we can't possibly talk about in any language utilized today. i think the deja vu comes from the fact that i seem to remember hearing similar sounds in certain meditative states long ago, when i was a little child, as i was drifting in to sleep or as i was waking. i've experienced it since while waking or dozing off, and the stark familiarity of it is so apparent and certain that it shakes me awake entirely in its total lack of foreign-ness. 

i used to think a lot about how art is a more direct form of language that can be used as a filler for that which conversation lacks in its capacities. as if a child, before learning to speak, does not separate inspiration from love from thought from expression from emotion, but instead ties them all together and experiences them as one. perhaps if we did not categorize such things as expression and emotion and feel the need to either apply language to them or separate them from language, our actions would be truer to our earthly insincts or feelings. or perhaps our creations would be more directly linked to their inspiration, and would more directly affect the viewers or listeners or participants in whatever is being created or formed. 

it's not so bad that there is a dissonance between feeling and word, or feeling and art, or feeling and thought; because we attempt to amend that dissonance, and in this act of attempting, we form beautiful connections and we create amazing things. or in this act of attempting, we come up with ideas, or express ideas, and these things in and of themselves are catalysts for positive change, and connectedness, and for making sense of the self and its place with - and not separate from - nature, and other individuals, and energy and love itself.

i used to talk a lot about how good i am at missing people, and missing places, and missing towns or forests or hillsides or moments. i think "missing" is the wrong word, because it has such a negative connotation. it is because of the amazing people i have known that i am able to recognize amazing qualities in the new people that i meet. and it is because of the amazing experiences i have had that i am able to know what is possible in the world, and know what humanity is capable of, and not settle for losing that idealism that i think is the fuel for change and progress. and i think progress is too often linked to a forward-motion, when perhaps more often it should involve a process of recognizing what really matters, and what really is meaningful, and sweeping away that which is not meaningful to make way for the new, or to seek further inspiration, or to seek exchange of ideas.

i'm not looking so much any more for understanding, or for certainty, or for peace of mind. i'm looking to fully delve and jump into the confusion of everything around me and let it take me under like violent ocean torrents and spit me out where it will, because any place that the tide takes me seems to be a place that has something to show me or something for me to experience. i don't want to hold fast to anything in my life: a place, or a person, or a notion of who i am. i want to be able to adapt as a bird does to new climates, and yet i want to fully be in and experience every place where i dwell or where my feet leave marks in the dirt. i want to learn a kind of respect for things around me that respects them for being comrades in this big circus that we are all a part of. and i want to encourage growth in others as much as i encourage growth in my self, even if that means cutting the cord and freeing myself from some safe womb in which i find myself. i don't want to fly from something once it starts to feel comfortable, but i don't want to use feeling comfortable as a reason to cease adventuring and growing and being in an absolute state of awe.

laughter has become a daily ritual for me, and in this i find a lot of peace. strangely enough, the thing that brings me the most peace of mind as of late is just the realization that things will happen to me that i cannot anticipate, and that however my story will be written will be honest and real in a way that it could not be if i attempted to direct its course. a river that takes its own route is far more beautiful than one shaped by man in order to be more condusive to bridges or roads or towns, for reasons that cannot be understood. there is no exact quality about that which is natural that makes it any better than that which is unnatural. but there is a certain beauty to chaos itself, and randomness, and uncertainty. and finding familiarity everywhere in this uncertainty makes uncertainty not an unwelcome thing, but something more like a necessary and comforting thing, as if every swell of a river is speaking in an ancient tongue and saying, "i told you so."

(October 2007)