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The Silent Accord

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society”

– Jiddu Krishnamurti

Sitting here in the window at the local. It’s a rainy Saturday morning. The studio is whispering to me from a few blocks away. Urging me in. Urging me on. I’m in a weeks long cycle of pain, illness and procrastination. I am one guitar track and one vocal track away from finishing Stereophile, my new record. I am mustering the courage, the heart, to lay them down. To breathe it all out and elevate out of this hard place. I’m aware that, while I moan about the delays, I’m afraid to finish. Afraid to release this work into the world, these bits of soul made digital, and see it mostly ignored, if my previous work is any measure. I’m at once hopeful, while feeling the cold whisper of the voice of ridicule and shame trickling down the back of my neck.

I drink my coffee and watch the people go by. I think of a better world. One where we are not so pressed and dented. Where art is not reduced to content. Where the substance of our silent accord is lived, rather than its loss bemoaned as a symptom of modern life. A place free of our Post Pandemic Disconnection, the cortisol coming in waves as we panic for breath, for a short reprieve.

I think I may be in the wrong lane. It may be time to hang up my modest public presence in the world and beat a retreat. I’m sick of the spiritual shithole we’ve made of this place, with all its potential for greatness and kindness. I’m tired of the helpless, hateful rage I feel towards our politicians, and the corporate world, who continue to refuse accountability for the widespread damage born of their relentless pursuit to hoard and boast. These for whom money has replaced the hardwired neanderthal idiot male need to compete and dominate. The depth of this greed is an uncommon stupidity in this day and age. For those of you feeling like this is a finger wag, make no mistake, I see myself in these people. I see all of us in each other and everything else. We all have the potential to shine or shit the bed.

Coffee is almost done. Time to head over to the studio and get embryonic, while my heart longs for more real time connection, to be among a group of souls. Maybe that’s what’s missing. Maybe, instead of retreat, I need to get out more. For me, and everyone I know, having the energy and making time for something as simple as seeing a friend has, due to the relentless hustle to make ends meet, become elusive.

We are fragmented. The societal machine we continue to allow to run is sickly and wrong. The silent accord I mentioned earlier is the feeling we all get, in the quiet moments, where Love comes in and fills us with its amber glow. That light is in all of us. It is the eternal, fixed point, like lights along the landing strip at night’s most impenetrable hour.

I’ve been sitting here for a while now, thinking about a succinct way to wrap this one up, but I can’t find one. This is an ongoing trip. One without end. We are Divine Misfits made flesh and bone, each with our own story, each flawed and returning, missing home and looking for the runway lights…

K. xo

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They’d all died, but just for a bit. One of them, a doctor, had gone over a waterfall in her kayak and was submerged and lifeless for a half an hour. She recovered and carried on with no cognitive impairment. There were others. Their details were different, but they all flatlined. I learned their stories recently in a Netflix doc.

They all felt profound bliss. They all had the same look in their eyes; a shine that those of us who haven’t died and come back are missing. There’s a knowing in that look. These people experienced a fleeting insight into the big question: What happens when we die? In most cases, these people were met on the other side by a loved one or guide who told them their work wasn’t done and that they had to go back. Imagine feeling that freedom and having to come back to our Right-Side-Left-Side-9-to-5-Cancel-Culture-Social-Media-Fame-Whore-Post-Pandemic-Great-Big-Mess-Of-A-World after having had a glimpse into the union we yearn for all our days.

Recently, a friend posted a memory about the anniversary of a friend’s suicide. It got me thinking about the folks in the doc who had died and come back. In each case, their temporary deaths were the result of an accident or ailment. What happens to a suicide? If we die by our own hands, do we get bliss? Or do we cross over somewhere further down the river, where the sky is darker and the general feeling bleak rather than blissful?

While all this was going on, I was revisiting a song I wrote a few years ago. It’s called The Hemingway, so named after Ernest and family, who were no strangers to despair, addiction and murder of the self. While writing it, I kept in mind the story of Kevin Hines. In the throes of delusion and illness, Kevin launched himself off the Golden Gate Bridge in an attempt to end his life. As soon as he was airborne, he felt one overwhelming emotion: Regret. He instantly wished he’d not done it. By the time he hit the water, he was falling at 75 miles per hour. 240 feet down in four seconds. He broke a bunch of bones, but he survived. He now travels the world to share his story, to help others through their dark nights, inspiring many to seek the psychological support they need, in a global society that still harbours a dim and emotionally unintelligent view of mental illness.

The Hemingway is a place that I imagine we end up, filled with the same regret Kevin Hines felt. How many of us have committed suicide and felt the same regret after arriving on the other side? It must be a terrible destination. A terrible way to spend one’s time. The song is also a reminder to me in my own struggle with depression, anxiety, trauma and daily, intense chronic pain. That, even when I feel like everything is going to shit and it’s all hopeless and wretched, and I want nothing more than the hurt to stop, I’m likely to end up spending eternity wandering The Hemingway’s lonesome halls. A fate that, unlike our earthly troubles, which rise and fall over time, might be forever.

The lyrics to The Hemingway are below. I hope they in some way help or inspire. You’re not alone. You’re cared for more than you know. Reach out. Call a friend. Call a crisis line. Drop me a line. We’re all in this together and we need to take care of each other.

Love,

K. xo

Resources
Suicide Prevention Canada – Call 988
Distress Centres of Greater Toronto – 416.408.4357 (GTA) / 905.459.7777 (Peel)
Canadian Association For Suicide Prevention (contact resources at link) – https://suicideprevention.ca/im-having-thoughts-of-suicide/

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“Have we been so brainwashed by capitalism that you have to be busy to be worth something?”

The above quote is from an article I read in the Guardian this morning about millennial women pursuing the “soft life”, so named for a generational movement towards not working your ass off for so little in return. Millennials get shit on all the time for being lazy and of no account. In this case, the lifestyle pursuit is one I can get behind.

My music has made little money over the years. I’ve always had a day gig to make ends meet. The forty hour work week is something I only did for a short time. I found a way, while employed in food service, to survive on a four hour work day, to keep the creative and utilitarian plates spinning. I spent all my free time developing my craft, while learning to carry out all the other aspects the modern singer/songwriter is required to be good at.

I was never one to pursue a career in any area other than the arts or to have “something to fall back on”. I knew what I was getting into. The risk. The odds. The potential to be crushed under the weight of one’s dream not coming true. Still, I went for it. Over the years my music got better, I learned more about everything, my writing deepened, as should any writing, with the experience of life and years gained.

Seven years ago, my marriage ended. We lived together for three years after that, due to the cost of living in Toronto being so high. I became a single Dad and solo householder in the midst of the pandemic. All of the above, coupled with an empathy and sensitivity to the forces at work in this world started to take their toll. I then underwent a botched surgery for a labral tear in my hip that resulted in graver pain than the issue itself caused. This has become a chronic condition where each day is met with serious pain. All this said, I still wake each morning with art in my heart, mustering the energy to put forth sound. To, hopefully, bring a bit more light into our often dark and disconnected world.

I tell you the above, not to fish for sympathy, but to illustrate the reasons by which I came to feel supportive of these women saying fuck that to being on the endless, thankless wheel of shit that is the current societal system. The nose-to-the-grindstone approach of the generations of old no longer works. It’s not news that our politicians and corporations don’t give a fuck about us. The divide grows. The middle class is disappearing. Hard work is good for us, but there are no guarantees or securities as a result of it.

I’ve done the sixty hour work weeks, with the day gig and music hours combined. It hasn’t resulted in the success I’d planned on. I’m not the only would be rock star who’s reframed the original dream for humbler aspirations. I know there are many out there who didn’t put forth the effort, mostly due to fear of failure, but I also know many who, like me, have done their time in the arena, taking the hits and savouring the shining victories. We’ve put our 10,000 hours in. We’ve faced the anxious quiver of soul-become-art, released into the world with bated breath.

It’s all exhausting. It is for me, anyway, and clearly some others. How many of us are just knuckling down, unhappy every day, telling the people we meet along the way that we’re fine, when we’re so far from it? Our real time connections wane. Bullshit AI is on the rise, with cowards and fools using it to create fake plastic “art” that sullies the genuine, beautiful things that take time, soul, love and struggle to bring into being.

We could all use a softer life. I’m not sure how to get there. We’re most of us working at maximum capacity and still feel the waterline rising, as though any grace or space we might offer ourselves means compromising cash flow or conditioned definitions of self-worth. We need to keep working hard, though in areas that will result in greater peace and fulfillment of that which we are called to.

I write all this down today to stave off the extended gaze over the edge. To find solace in the process and getting it out of my head and onto the page. And to communicate it to you, to hopefully find common ground between us. We’re missing so much, while we run so fast and hard to stay ahead and above the undertow.

Damn, I’m tired. Here’s to more Love, Light and Ease in our lives.

 

K. xo