December 29, 2008

3:05 p.m.

An Amazing Meeting, and Sleeping In

It's been a very, very long time since I met someone in a way that I felt was meant to be. Last night I had a fun evening that involved a fortuitous meeting that I think will inform and inspire my thinking and musical work for a long time. Some old association, reformed. An eerily coincidental connection.

No, this isn't a romantic involvement, though I felt something akin to that kind of attraction, that kind of quickening. Something waking up.

I drove to New Hampshire and had a protracted lunch with Normandy and her seven year old daughter, for whom she could not find a babysitter on short notice. This meant waiting for long moments while daughter ignored admonitions to "put it away" and "pack your bag" and "get your jacket" and "come on, we're ready to go." Seven lives in another world. Mommy doesn't push, just talks, and waits. There is no real authority being expressed here, so one waits for Seven endlessly, to get out of the house, to get out of the car, to get back into the car. One drives back to the house to get the gadget charger Seven left plugged in in the kitchen. Things took a bit more time than planned. We did manage a lunch, though, and a brief walk in some slushy woods.

Not as much girl talk as we'd hoped, but it was good to see her anyway and we should have another opportunity soon. She has babysitting certificates from ex-daughter-in-law, so we'll arrange something with more notice.

Then I drove a few minutes to Mary Rose's house. We had plenty of time before dinner to chat and catch up. I learned that her parents were coming -- I hadn't seen them in probably ten or fifteen years. Her dad's not doing so well. He was recently in the hospital for low blood count (he has lukemia among other things). I was really glad that I would see them again. She said another good friend of hers was coming, a woman she just KNEW I would like. And so I met Diane.

Diane is diminutive -- several inches shorter than I, so that I felt Amazonian standing next to her. I put on my meeting-new-person face and now I can't remember if we shook hands or hugged. But then she then smiled so brilliantly at me and rubbed her hand up and down my upper arm, reassuringly, in the way an old friend would. I knew then that this was no ordinary person, and I looked forward to whatever conversations we would have during the evening.

It turns out that Diane lives in Zurich. She teaches at a college -- art, aspects of art, but as they apply to dance, music and literature. She writes about dance for a local arts magazine. She decided two years ago, at age 50, to start writing songs. She plays marginal piano (much more competently than I, still) and speaks with an exteporaneous articulateness I've almost never heard in a contemporary. I thought, this woman is extremely smart and extremely educated. She and Mary Rose talked, laughing, about Kafka, at dinner, and how Kafka was just a very funny guy. I get excited about conversation like this because I have never read Kafka or any of these other brilliant minds -- I was never required to study them in school -- why not? -- and they tossed names around like I would toss names of British singer songwriters from the 70s. She was completely engaged with everything she heard and said, funny, passionate, altogether present.

We sat on the sofa and kept finding common places. There were wide-eyed moments with gasping. I had a similar experience! I know exactly what you're talking about. I told her about the music tones in theta state, meditating with 400Hz, and she understood what I was getting at. I told her about my nascent love for the cello, and she spoke of it as a second body, as an extension of the human body when it is played. She described a dance performance she was trying to write about once, where there was so much going on onstage that her acute focus got tired of trying to pick out details. But then a remarkable thing happened. Her eyes wandered up to some set object above and to the right of the dancers, and her peripheral vision took over. Suddenly she felt the entire sum of movement, every action of the whole group, as one organism, and that it was occurring in her body. She actually felt waves of energy and movement moving through her physical body, nanoseconds before she saw it onstage. A cellist was playing, and she felt the movement of his bow on the side of her neck. She approached a biologist friend later about it and learned that there is a "peripheral" or secondary nervous system that perceives the outer world on a more subtle level. But it's that peripheral focus that allows it to engage. Like perceiving things in theta state. I said, "What if you could learn to engage that perception in any situation -- at a dinner party, driving someplace, any sort of conversation, grocery shopping? Where you were really one with this circular flow of energy, where everything around you is everything in you?" She was already nodding. "That is the power of now! Just like Eckhart Tolle talks about," she said.

Then it was time for dinner, and she regaled us with stories of how she ended up in Switzerland, her wild young partying days, the Swiss landlord's family who all got up at 4:30 every day, just as she was coming back from her night out. The time in Asia. Discovering movement and, eventually, discovering music. I suggested Malcolm Dalglish and she suggested Greek and Roman mythology.

My new friend! She goes back in a few days, but I may see her over the summer. We said happy, earnest goodbyes outside and I gave her a CD to listen to.

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And I slept way in today -- the afternoon is half gone and I've done nothing. I must practice. My stomach wasn't so good yesterday but is marginally better today. We have a trip to Buffalo this weekend which we have pared down to one day out and play, one day back. I may ride with them. In any case I must get off my butt and move my body around some.