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Re-entry…

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I got very caught up in holiday busy after the 40 Days – AND – announced the rebranding of my studio as Oh Yeah Yoga.  So, yes, a lot happened.  The work of the 40 Days undid a lot, unearthed more, sent stuff to the surface I thought I had dealt with and hadn’t, and honestly helped me get my hands back on tools to forge a deeply authentic path.  But right now, that all feels like spitting out platitudes – which it kind of is.   And I don’t want to do that anymore – BUT – that isn’t what this entry is about.  (I’ve had some coffee.)

I’ve been trying to write about David Bowie’s death for two days.  On the one hand, I didn’t want to – I didn’t know him, and I recoil from celebrity worship faster than I recoil from liver.  (Which is to say harshly, quickly, and with great purpose in my recoiling.) But I gasped when I saw the news.  And then I hit Google hoping to learn it was a hoax.  I opened Spotify to see if they had done a playlist, found it, hit shuffle, and got “Starman”.

And I *cried*.

I’ve never cried like that over a the passing of a public figure, and I couldn’t get my head around why I was responding that way.  Dismissing it as being due to still having some rawness around my stepdad’s death and going through the first holidays….yeah, no.  Not that at all.  Because it got worse when I decided to cheer myself up with “Rebel Rebel”.

Oh, man.  “Rebel Rebel”.  I was so seven years old again I could smell my bedroom and hear my mom asking what I was jumping around to.  I was in the car asking my mom to turn up “Fame” on my way home from a day in the third grade.  I was surprised when I realized “Golden Years” was by the same guy.  I was watching a Christmas special with my grandmother and going – hey.  That’s him!  I was thirteen and realizing “Sufragette City” was possibly the coolest song ever and wondering how I had never *gotten* that before  – and playing it until my parents declared a need for cocktails. (Over and over and OVER and over and over…)

And then the “Space Oddity” obsession happened – – and is ongoing.   I think it’s one of the most beautiful songs ever recorded.

I could keep going with these.   What I’m getting at is that David Bowie’s music was some of the first that I heard – going all the way back to that “Rebel Rebel” incident – that inspired a deep feeling of, “Fuck, yeah.  THIS is what I like.”  And that’s not to say it confined me to only liking a particular genre – it taught me what it feels like to hear a piece of music and have a soul-shaking response, to understand what it is to resonate with what I’m listening to.  I understood loving a piece of music without judgement or definition – the only important thing is *loving the piece of music*.   And from that very first experience of having a song make me want to jump around and sing it (I still do that with “Rebel Rebel”), that became the standard.   To hell with genres.  The music has to make me feel something, and David Bowie’s music was the first to trigger the response that helped me understand that music is capable of that.

As I grew up, if I saw an interview with him – I read it or watched it.  I always learned something, be it a word, a book to check out, a way of phrasing things, or even an approach to an answer or subject.  Good example:   There’s a clip bouncing around the Internet of him challenging Mark Goodman in an MTV interview as to why MTV was not playing more videos by black artists.  I watched that when it aired, and remember being fascinated by his manner – in particular with how he so tactfully and intelligently went right for the jugular in those moments.  Instead of picking a fight, he was creating conversation.  He was direct without getting completely up in Mark Goodman’s face.  His composure didn’t waiver.   That example is one I admire to this day.

And I know I’m not alone in feeling this or in having grown up with him as an influence – I’m seeing so many people, public figures and not-public figures,  sharing their experiences.  And what makes this so spectacularly amazing?  We all got a lot of the same raw materials of inspiration, but interpreted them all and put them to work according to who we are as individuals.   Just as I have wondered from where he sourced his magical cool factor, I’m wondering – how the hell did he do that?  How does one person create so much of that brand of inspiration, the toolbox kind?  I’m forty eight now.  My “Rebel Rebel” moment was forty one years ago, but it still feels new, and I’m still getting fuel from the spark it ignited.

And, ultimately – why try to figure it out?  I would rather keep going with it instead.

I think that’s what I was crying for.   I didn’t know him, and it’s confusing to grieve for someone I don’t know.  But when someone has had that much of an impact – one that’s equally subtle and profound – that person’s departure from this life is a loss.

But back to the idea of keeping going because I don’t want to start crying again – I have this collection of guiding principles that I’ve been gathering since 2013, and add one per year.  Here they are:

2013 was “Don’t try hard, try easy.”  (Baron Baptiste)

2014?  “Screw it, let’s do it.”  (Richard Branson)

2015:  “Stand in front of your past, and let it be.”  (Baron Baptiste)

And for 2016?   “What would David Bowie do?”

Out of them all, this year’s is giving me the biggest rush.  So with that, I’m off to jump around a little.  Create something from the space of what inspires you hardest and brightest today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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