These Streets Below the Moon

Although she's mentioned so rarely and in such passing that I either never knew or cannot remember her name, there are stories of a seer in my lineage. The stories dissipate before I can grasp them, like an asp of smoke from a heretical cone of incense—more insinuations of a gift than evidentiary tales.

So it's no wonder I don't think of her often. No wonder I don't imagine at the possibilities of my own intuitions, this heritage as remote to me as the origins of my abnormally short pinkies or my unruly hair.

But I thought of her today.

*

I tend to fancy myself an intentional person—a person who does things with purpose. But don't we always flatter ourselves with thoughts of who we wish we were? Maybe that's not your problem. But it's certainly mine because the truth is I'm a leaper, not a looker. Being intentional is exhausting and I'm always already tired. So I make most decisions, even big ones, on a whim. And I do it with alarming regularity.

Now even though I'm a skilled fooler of myself, I know that I wish to be driven less by a Chinese fortune I found under a bench and more by detailed pro/con lists. So I do myself a favor. At the beginning of every year I set myself up with two things: an intention and a theme song.

We're not talking a resolution here. My intentions aren't to be bikini ready by spring (spring of 1994, maybe) or to yell at my daughter less (what would be the fun in that?!). They're usually just a word or phrase that I can dredge up when thinking thoughts is overwhelming. Something to help nudge me in one direction or the other.

The theme song is the better part of the pairing by far. It's what my brain actually brings up, unbidden, when I know I need to know something but I have no idea how I'm supposed to know it. It's the theme song that does the heavy lifting, which can be pretty unnerving when you realize that the first year I did this, the song that revealed itself to me in a shroud of mystery and wisdom was Meet Virginia by Train.

I'm actually ten years into this tradition, and while this too may be self-adulation, I do think I've gotten better at it. More...dare I say...intentional?

In defense of that first year, I do want to note that the line I don't really want to live this life was exactly what I needed to extricate myself from a life I really didn't want to live. It was a rallying cry. It was a permission granted. And it's why I've carried on with this tradition for a decade. It has power.

*

They say, or perhaps I've only imagined, she was a diviner. That she had the power to find water buried deep beneath the ground with nothing but a stick, forked like the tongue of a serpent.

*

The word came to me before the song this year, which isn't always so. More often than not, I wrest the words from the verse I need. 

I am leaving, I am leaving. But the fighter still remains.

All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to be free.

Nobody knows how to get back home. We set out so long ago.

Just like Virginia met me, led me out of the desert, these songs all served as the nudges I needed to do the things I couldn't think of doing on my own.

But this year the word came first. Elemental. It just felt perfect. 

Air. Fire. Earth. Water. 

I wanted to touch them all. I wanted permission to be grounded in the real, the tangible, the inevitable.

The song came as more of an indulgence than anything. I've been looking for an excuse to get it into the lineup for years, but it—being fully out of my control, of course—was never right. It never seemed to have the quality of the nudge that I was looking for.

But this year, 2020, the year of the elements, it was a no-brainer. What could be more appropriate than Live—yelling at me all the way from the final year of a century gone by—to Run to the Water?

*

I really don't think of her often. Maybe never? I don't even know her name.

But I thought of her today.

*

I do my best work in the shower. The sacred space of singers, writers, dreamers. Thoughts stream and billow, corralled and kept in confidence by thick walls of tile and released, dissipated only when I decide it's time to open the door.

Like many during this time of quarantine, I'll admit I've been spending a little less time in the sacred space—literally and figuratively. A few less showers and a lot fewer thoughts. Mostly, these days I just listen to podcasts that tell me what I'm supposed to think. They're not nudges. They're just spoons, feeding a brain that was already always too tired.

Such were the sounds of my sacred space this morning. Blah, blah, testing, blah. Blah, blah, shutdown, peak, stimulus, blah. Streaming. Billowing. Blah, blah, I'm not sure I can open the door, dissipate, blah.

Nudge.

The theme song? 

Nudge.

Sure. I can do that. I have the whole playlist right here.

Nudge.

*

Oh desert speak to my heart

Oh woman of the earth

Maker of children who weep for love

Maker of this birth

'Til your deepest secrets are known to me

I will not be moved

I will not be moved

"Don't try to find the answer

When there ain't no question here

Brother let your heart be wounded

And give no mercy to your fear"

Adam and eve live down the street from me

Babylon is every town

It's as crazy as it's ever been

Love's a stranger all around

In a moment we lost our minds here

And lay our spirit down

Today we lived a thousand years

All we have is now

Run to the water

And find me there

Burnt to the core but not broken

We'll cut through the madness

Of these streets below the moon

These streets below the moon

And I will never leave you

'Til we can say, "this world was just a dream

We were sleepin' now we are awake"

'Til we can say

In a moment we lost our minds here

And dreamt the world was round

A million mile fall from grace

Thank god we missed the ground

Run to the water

And find me there

Burnt to the core but not broken

We'll cut through the madness

Of these streets below the moon

With a nuclear fire of love in our hearts

Yeah, I can see it now lord

Out beyond all the breakin' of waves

And the tribulation

It's a place and the home of ascended souls

Who swam out there in love!

Run to the water

And find me there

Burnt to the core but not broken

We'll cut through the madness

Of these streets below the moon

With a nuclear fire of love in our hearts

Rest easy baby, rest easy

And recognize it all as light and rainbows

Smashed to smithereens and be happy

Run to the water (and find me there)

Run to the water

*

Maybe they prefer their water to come from the pipes. Sources known, not unknowable. Maybe that's why the stories stay corralled. Kept in confidence. Or maybe they're meant to dissipate, more air than earth.

I don't know her name. But I know—or maybe I just imagined—that she knew how to find the water. She must have, because that's where I found her.