 | Skyline V-------------------Sitting Room I know, right? I love my sitting room! Never had one before. Never sat much. I was always going, always doing. I like the way Tom Voccola puts it: I wasn't so much a human being as a human doing. I think maybe the sitting room was there all along. I just spent so much time in the office or the music room, I never came in here. I forget what JS calls this blue. It's either 'peace' or 'calm'. No wait, calm is in the storm-room. This one is peace.
I hear things. I hear the world around me. I hear the world inside me. I like the quietness in the sitting room now, but it used to drive me nuts. For a guy who's used to hearing noise all the time, it's pretty scary sometimes to hear silence. Even when I wasn't really watching, I'd have the TV on just for background noise. To be distracted, immersed in the comfortably chaotic hum of voices and pain besides my own.
Sometimes I hear music in my head from cd's I've listened to or music I heard live at the coffee-shop. I don't even drink coffee but I love that aroma, and the sound of a room-full of buzzing friendships, and the hush that falls when guitar-girl sings about young love and old beauty.
Sometimes I hear music in my head that wasn't from the cd. It's definitely one of my favorite sounds, when the new music comes. I used to think I was making it up. That was back when I thought I was alone up here. Did I ever tell you I'd been living here for years before I realized anybody lived above me? Turns out the guy upstairs is an amazing musician too. Yep, designer and musician. He goes by his initials, J.S. Not sure what it stands for. Yeah, sure I'll get you his contact info. It's in the office.
Sometimes I'd be in the office and hear this music and think I was crazy, and I found out later it was him playing; he's got tons of friends and they get together and play and I hear the bass and guitar and the percussion and the voices. It's good stuff. There's a music room back there down the hall with a sliding panel in the ceiling. We put the panel in during the remodel so I can hear better. Then I try to play it myself but it never comes out like I hear it. I'm getting better at it, though. Anyways, I'll show you that later.
Since I started using the sitting room, I've noticed a couple things. Silence doesn't frighten me anymore and, I have lots of company now. I'd be going and going and running and doing all day long and never take the time to just hang out with a friend and a cup of tea. Always on the move, hearing the noise, chasing the noise, running the race, whatever you want to call it. But I'm not gonna preach right now
I'd been hearing his music for a while and then I started trying to copy it and I was pretty good at that so I'd write down the words and sing the songs and people liked them, so I'd write down some more. After a while it got to be rather inconvenient, cause he kept playing at 3 am and I'd have to get out of bed to write them down. I wonder if that's when he played or if he'd been playing all day and I just couldn't hear anything with all the noise. Could be 3 am was the first time all day I'd been quiet enough to hear him.
Back around 2002 or so, I started really paying attention to the stuff I was writing down. I'd begun to suspect he knew I was writing them down. In fact, I started realizing that was his intention. He meant for me to hear them and write them down and show them to the other folks in the building. And I'll admit I felt a little manipulated. Like this whole time he'd been letting me think I was coming up with this stuff and when I found out it wasn't coming from me, I'm not sure why that upset me. I guess I kind of liked the idea that I was somewhat original. Thing is, it's really great sharing a song with somebody and having them tell you that it touched them and made a difference to them. And the more I wrote them down, the more I started paying attention to what they were about and then I noticed it was affecting me to sing them. Like, you can't really sing about love and then turn around and be a jackass to somebody you love, right?
Right about that time Merna from 4th pulled me over on the ramp by Mandate school and confronted me about what she called 'lip service'
She said, "are you for real with these songs? Do you mean this stuff?"
And this other guy from 4th told me, "if you were living your music, the woman you live with wouldn't be so upset. She hears you out on 2nd and 3rdsinging about patience and then she sees you back on 6th being impatient with her, and what she sees doesn't match what she hears…" I don't remember exactly how he put it, but I got the point. That's them right there on the wall of fame, that's Kevin with the funky bass and that's Merna over there with the braids. Turns out they know JS, too. Small world!
Yeah, back then there was a woman living here on 6th. That's her picture by the fireplace. That's another thing I like about this room—pictures. It's a good place to keep memories of the people I've sat with. People with whom I've shared tea and silence.
You know, there was one time early in '04 everything went silent for a while. Actually, it started around Thanksgiving the year before and went all the way through Valentine's Day. I'm talking absolute silence. Deathly silence. No visitors coming up. I don't know if JS was on vacation, but I couldn't hear him moving around up there. No walking on the ceiling, no music, nothing.
I'd been telling him to shut up cause I didn't like all his live-it-like-you-sing-it stuff. So at first, I was cool with the silence, then a month went and I missed the sound, and then another month and I was a little anxious, and by the end of the third month I was banging on the ceiling like "dude!! play something, I don't care what, just play something, anything!"
You know what I learned then? Silence below is uncomfortable; silence above is unbearable. Silence within lets me hear what's really going on.
When he came back, he said he was just respecting my wishes. I'd asked him to stop bothering me so he did. Now when it gets silent, I check in with him real quick and ask what's the reason and usually he'll tell me. Like right now, we're sitting here so I can be still. Stillness, that's big with him. That quote over there in the corner, that's from one of his books: "Be still and Know."Yeah, he's also a writer. Designer, musician, writer…
More tea? |
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Skyline V---Sitting Room
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