Sometimes,
In the first burst of a song,
When the hand or the hammer finds the string,
And we stumble into the city of Simply Witnessing,
There is a great silence that grows inside the mind.
It is as though the dance of the sound,
(That innocent compression of the air),
Wanders quietly to meet our skin and return us to the whole.
Unbolting, on its way, the locking of the jaw
And the tightening of the temple
And the frowning of the fore.
And so this wind in motion envelops us, gently,
Quilting the realm just above the bridge of the nose
That when pressed with a fingertip,
Folds our eyelids and unburdens our chest – try it.
Try the blurring of your separateness from the rest,
If only for a moment, in the first burst of a song.
Or in the feeling of the sun striking your closed eyes, slantwise,
While your best friend is driving-singing-laughing loud and
You stick your bubbly head out of the window,
And where your bubbly head ought to be –
Only the fullness of the world is found.
In the space of this great breath, it becomes as though
The mind were only made to meet the universe –
And the musician to entrust it with a voice.
Thank-yous. To Nick Murphy, Líam Caula, Hania Rani, Jacob Collier, Sean Angus Watson, Chassol & many more. To Douglas Harding, for Having No Head. To Seb & Mathieu & Alec, for taking turns on the wheel while the rest of us stuck our heads (and bodies) out of the window, in Summer ‘15.