Poetry & Music
Hello Lovelies,
Today was one of those odd days when I do everything I'm supposed to do (writing, exercising, walking the beach, taking care of pup and chores) and yet I still feel a kind of hollow that's hard to describe.
The weather is nice. My children are healthy. My love will be home from work soon and we'll have a family dinner and a cozy night. Really, there's just no reason to feel off. And yet.
Part of a creative life, for me, means that I do a lot of dreaming while fully awake. Some of me ventures off and away to inhabit other lives and stories. The truth is, this kind of dreaming can can leave me feeling wistful and restless and absent...
I've learned that when I feel this way, one of the best things to do is engage with poetry and/or music. Something about those forms of expression can reach me and bring me back to the present moment better than other things, like TV or visual art or prose. In this way, reading poetry, for me, can be a form of meditation.
Sometimes I enjoy letting myself spin off into fantasies, but sometimes I just want to be here and now. Poetry's attention to detail, to rhythm, and meaning, returns me to myself. Playing piano, or guitar, or listening to something soulful can bring me home.
I could go on and on about which poets and musicians I most adore and depend on, but I think I'll save that for another time. Here, at least, is one poem that always comforts me:
Eel-Grass
By Edna St. Vincent Millay
No matter what I say,
All that I really love
Is the rain that flattens on the bay,
And the eel-grass in the cove;
The jingle-shells that lie and bleach
At the tide-line, and the trace
Of higher tides along the beach:
Nothing in this place.
In the meantime, if you missed my recent social media posts, I'll post links to a few more of the songs Michael and I recorded recently as Foulweather Bluff.
Thank you so so much for swinging by. Wishing you and your loved ones joy and peace.
Always,
Edie
Today was one of those odd days when I do everything I'm supposed to do (writing, exercising, walking the beach, taking care of pup and chores) and yet I still feel a kind of hollow that's hard to describe.
The weather is nice. My children are healthy. My love will be home from work soon and we'll have a family dinner and a cozy night. Really, there's just no reason to feel off. And yet.
I've learned that when I feel this way, one of the best things to do is engage with poetry and/or music. Something about those forms of expression can reach me and bring me back to the present moment better than other things, like TV or visual art or prose. In this way, reading poetry, for me, can be a form of meditation.
Sometimes I enjoy letting myself spin off into fantasies, but sometimes I just want to be here and now. Poetry's attention to detail, to rhythm, and meaning, returns me to myself. Playing piano, or guitar, or listening to something soulful can bring me home.
I could go on and on about which poets and musicians I most adore and depend on, but I think I'll save that for another time. Here, at least, is one poem that always comforts me:
Eel-Grass
By Edna St. Vincent Millay
No matter what I say,
All that I really love
Is the rain that flattens on the bay,
And the eel-grass in the cove;
The jingle-shells that lie and bleach
At the tide-line, and the trace
Of higher tides along the beach:
Nothing in this place.
In the meantime, if you missed my recent social media posts, I'll post links to a few more of the songs Michael and I recorded recently as Foulweather Bluff.
Thank you so so much for swinging by. Wishing you and your loved ones joy and peace.
Always,
Edie
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