A Love Supreme...

Oh, man. We go to movies and we read novels (and these days, US Weekly and People and Reality TV) to show us love, love lost, love regained, pathos, ethics, passion, amor.

But if you open your eyes, it's all around, no different from you, for better, for worse.

I will tell a story not of REAL love but of two people who are struggling to define real love for themselves, and of a scene in which REAL love was NOT present... but the desire for love, for romantic love, is really a step toward that longing which creates the opening to life itself. What you seek is INSIDE THE LONGING ITSELF...

So, my upstairs neighbor, Zack, is an AMAZING songwriter. I actually had no idea how talented I was when he first moved in- two years ago- just that he was a cool guy and we got along and he was cool about giving me space unlike a lot of people I meet and how open he was to talk to. There was something about him that made me know he would make a good friend, and we became friends, of a sort... I knew he produced music and he asked me to sing on a project he was doing and etc.

So one day, we were talking, and we started speaking in such poetic terms that we realized we were speaking a song. (That was my experience of it, but I didn't know until Zack said, "now THAT'S a line in a song.") And we stared writing this - in my opinion- really honest, heartbreaking, sexy song about love that just didn't work out... each of us going through our own recent versions of that....

We started out with
"That night we went down in the pouring rain, soaking wet, to the skin... kissed me so hard I forgot my name, yeah, you were letting me in."

So, we had that much, and we had the chord structure and the melody for a bridge too, which we just couldn't quite figure out... when suddenly we realized we needed more verse....

so we talked about songs that were sexy.... and I remembered this one hot summer in Minneapolis

and everyone was singing Lucinda Williams... righteously.... which led right back to John Coltrane. So we added to the verses, and here they are:

"That night we went down in the pourin' rain, soakin' wet, to the skin... kissed me so hard I forgot my name, yeah, you were lettin' me in:
I thought I heard Lucinda playin'.... Look in your eyes like a hunger sayin....


V2
I was lookin' for a little calamity
to break up the monotony
I found you looking into the future like you were lookin' at me
Yeah, righteously and you had me burning... had no idea there was no returning....

Do you want, wanna be my religion?
Things that are gone, jamais encore. Makin me late for tomorrow
Lost in the day, wearin' them chains, and I'm trying to say
it's
really
okay
okay
really."




So, there's more to the song but here comes this amazing part where


seriously



Saturday night was one hot night. I mean, literally. Summer fever. Know what I mean? And hearts were afoul all over the place. I was out and about observing the people and by the end of the night I was in my own little passion flower dance myself. (another story for another time.) And i had a feeling about the next morning....

So Sunday morning.

Let's switch tenses, because it hit me so
IMMEDIATELY
I gotta write it this way

I am having breakfast with Nicole (who dates Zack's roommate Derek) up on the balcony when suddenly this little black sedan ZOOMS around the corner

and this man, maybe 30, comes running- RUNNING FAST! after it-

he's yelling,

"Come here, Cxxx (insert C word here)! Come on back here you Fxxxing Cxxx!"

And at first I thought, uh oh, someone's BMW got nicked.

Because it's Hollywood, you know, people get angry about everything all the time but especially their cars....

And then suddenly this man hops into a robin's eggshell BLUE old school Ford Truck, like OLD, and he drives FAST to follow the little black and Nicole and I are looking at each other like what the hell and he THROWS A CD OUT HIS WINDOW...

We turn to watch him drive on down the road, off to-

Nothing joyful, anyway-

And I say,

"what was that!?"

And Nicole says,

"I don't know!"

We ask Derek if he knows who the people were, but none of us knew.

So...

A few hours later...

I got the fever in my blood, you know? And I just have to get out of the damn apartment for a bit, so I go for a little walk around the block,
and

I spy the CD

that angry Ford man had tossed out his window

and I walk up to it

and I turn it over

and it's
John Coltrane, A Love Supreme






and it all comes so clear
and I weep

for who knows what loves was thrown away that day
if there was love in the first place
and I think of passion and romance and flings and sex and long terms relationships and friendships and songs and roses and bourbon and

sometimes

Life just Takes Over





Calamity. Breaks up the monotony, that's for sure.





Here's the funny thing.

I finally just got over being broken hearted. I mean, I have a lifetime believing in being broken hearted and.... I finally truly got over it (as far as I know) just like I finally ended the pneumonia that plagued me for MONTHS. And... now, who am I if I am not this literary damsel always with the sad look in her eyes? And do I even get to choose? But

the funny thing is

as much as I am looking I am not looking

and beyond that,

I'm open to CALAMITY
if it comes from LOVE of the deepest sort

NOT DRAMA

not the man in the Blue Ford who got so angry he had to throw out A LOVE SUPREME

but the potency of

I give up
and there is something better

and that longing for LOVE and whatever other passions come from that
life begetting life begetting life
love begetting love begetting love begetting love
and

CALAMITY
if it brings me to that point of yearning
in which all secrets unfold but no language, no intellectual understanding, no words could ever express
only
light
breath
breath
and the light from your eyes



THAT

LOVE SUPREME

THAT

RIGHTEOUSLY

THAT

that

that.







LIKE THIS,
said Rumi.




HERE,
say I.