I come up with what is by first defining what is not. Sometimes. I'm not sure what freedom looks like right now, or perhaps I'm too scared to look just yet, but one thing freedom is not is a stifled, worn-down feeling inside my bones.
Right now, freedom is writing a lot and listening to a lot of music. That, in itself, has been nothing new. But the older I get, the less afraid I get in my writing. It seems the worst things are for writing and being processed. Seems natural. Feels vital. I reckon I'd be a much worse person if I didn't write habitually about the things that bug me. The ones I'm struggling with a bit. Or maybe a lot.
I wrote about some stuff for years. It kept nagging at me 'till I had to find it an outlet somehow.
What do you write about? I write about everything, but the ones I usually like best are the things I don't feel free to talk about in my waking life. Embarrassing, shameful things. Hard things. Things I would like to say, but fear would remain unheard. Just random life things.
And interesting things happen. I'm watching emotions I've already identified crop up in my writing in completely unexpected ways. I know what's going on most of the time. I may not always like it, but I generally do, but I don't see the point in writing about it. I seldom write-write in prose about the things going on in my life, though I did write a rather lovely short story a few years back while going through a break-up. It was quite sad at the time, but at least something good came out of that.
But I generally don't see the point in writing verbatim about what I'm feeling and for who and for why. That doesn't mean it don't come up. Just now, I watched this abundance of emotion well up inside a narration in quite an unexpected way. It read sad, which saddened me in turn, or perhaps allowed me to feel it. I think freedom sometimes also does that, or at least ought to. Let you feel whatever you're feeling, and sit with it for a second or two.
When I was smaller, I used to think I'd find freedom in all sorts of places, but so far, I've only found it in these few handful of things. Writing. Lately, I've been feeling this longing, increasingly, for another place and I know it's somewhere I'm meant to write about, not be. And that's free.
And music. Can't forget music. A crutch to my crooked armpits, always, the sound of beautiful things humming inside my ear. Some people tell you they listen to music for the Oneness, that great wonderful feeling of sharing in something greater than yourself, but not I.
For me, music has always been about freedom - even the sad kinds of music - about floating away. A memory of sitting on one of those tiny balconies. Summer balconies. Barcelona. Kind of Blue. And having this wonderful feeling of being everywhere, of nothing, no one trying to cage me.
Playing at road-running, also, teaches you freedom. It never ceases to amaze me, the brilliant, tremendous piece of luck that, although we live in times of terrible atrocity, we live also in times of great opportunity. That I've been fortunate enough to see so many wonderful places, and to wake up without an alarm clock and walk foreign, gorgeous, old streets, and scour old dust-ridden stores for treasure-ified books. Isn't that freedom, also?
What do I need to be free from at the moment? Fear. Shame. Old hauntings I thought, mistakenly, I'd solved. Hesitation. An overswelling of pride. Deception. Sorrow. Mistakes. Foolishness. My own two eyes that insist on seeing things that ain't there.
How do I be free? Writing this. Writing else. Riding the waves of a nice tune or two. Soaring.
Can I still? If not, I trust in these old bones and these drummed-out ears to remember me how. I've got a long road ahead of me.
