I was at Big Ears this past weekend. I am home. Technically I suppose I was always home as Big Ears takes place in Knoxville. And yet the festival offers an opportunity to check out of the routine of normal life and to step into something different, perhaps unknown, definitely unexpected. I suppose that is one of the things I love about this experience. I am not convinced that I am the best judge of what is new, or "avant-garde" or even good, but what I love about this festival is the opportunity to step through the looking glass in a way, to just go, to listen, perhaps to be surprised by joy, to let your world be filled with something perhaps unexpected.
Anyway, I wasn't really planning on writing about Big Ears in this post. I may do so in some future post. I am still processing everything in my head and heart. I've written about my experiences at Big Ears following every festival, and it seems to almost foreign to admit that I may or may not do so. And yet, look at my record this year. There has been much I intended to say that I have not. Despite that, I find myself oddly content.
Life is not about the writing, after all. To make one's mark, to write, to post to social media, the attempt to claim one's presence and worth -- this is all too human, this striving. But life is lived with or without public acknowledgement. One has walked x number of miles whether or not one has worn a smart watch and recorded the same. This year, despite multiple, broadly expansive to-do lists, I have mostly not done, and have been content, happy even. I can say that honestly even though in some ways it has not been the best year, certainly not the year I was hoping for.
But happiness, and whether or not life is good, actually has nothing to do with the things that happen all around one. It is an internal thing, perhaps a state of acceptance. Many good things have come this year. There has been time with family and friends, although perhaps not as much time with family as I might have hoped. I have traveled, and read, and played with textiles. I have been lost in thought slowly drinking a cup of coffee or tea. Mostly I have been in the moment, even when those moments were in the hospital because my heart went back into flutter, and the one thing I did not want -- more time in hospitals -- came to pass despite my protestations. I am ok now. I remain content even though I have been trying for a week to open my new bottle of eye drops and failing with every attempt. I am happy even though I am behind on more things than I can count. I am happy and healthy, at least in so far as any almost-64-year-old can claim to be. I can choose to be happy, to celebrate the good that has come, or I can hold onto bitterness over that which has not come. I think I choose the former.
I may yet write about music and the discoveries of Big Ears. I may yet write about that trip to the literary festival back in January. I may not. I may do less, but I hope to enjoy it more: to savor a properly made coffee Americano: to exist in the moment of idle chatter with a friend; to spend hours ripping and re-knitting without regret or recrimination, to stay up in the wee hours listening to music, or reading a bodice-ripper. I know I will write, here even. I have not given up on seeing myself as a person who maintains this blog, I merely accept that the path is full of curves and I do not yet know, or even need to know, the destination.
At the moment all I have are questions and vague thoughts. I am not certain that anything about our sense of timelines and obligation has much to do with the ebb and flow of life, but that it is rather something we impose on ourselves and each other. I wonder if a good life is not so much about what one has accomplished but rather about those fleeting moments of just being present. I wonder if perhaps I like music more than I like people. Music never breaks one's heart. Only people do that. Music never disappoints; mostly our disappointments are caused by our own self-imposed expectations. And yet a life lived without the risk of a broken heart is a life not lived at all. And how can there be music, or art, or even joy and love without pain and heartbreak? What makes a good life is not all the things that have been made and done, it is in the breaking and rejoining, in the birth and death and yes, rebirth.
It is not that I love music, or art, more than people. I love. We are a communal species. And yet that power of creation comes from the inward breath. The power of happiness exists only within us, it is not a gift that is given to us depending on circumstances, it is a gift we give the world despite circumstances.
