On Peace & Music (Love, too!)

A peaceful, easy feeling is not easily achieved in today’s world for a myriad of reasons. I’m reminded of a few lines from Denise Levertov’s “Seeing for a Moment,” where she hones in on a few:

facing my mirror—no longer young,
       the news—always of death,
       the dogs—rising from sleep and clamoring   
            and howling, howling…

That said, I find peace in the typical places—with family, aka my wife Diane, and even my foil, aka my feline, Tyler. If Levertov had changed the last lines of the above stanza to “the cats—rising from sleep and clamoring/and yowling, yowling…” she’d have nailed my usual ennui to the proverbial T. (I jest, of course. In point of fact, Tyler is 16 going on 17, deaf, and rife with physical ailments, yet hangs on. He loves nothing more than to have his belly rubbed.)

I also find peace in—what else?—the raison d’etre of my blog, music. One of my favorite albums of recent vintage is And Southern Star by Mikaela Davis, which was released a year ago. I’ve likely pressed play on it more than any other in the months since, which—given the way I churn through music—says a lot. It’s transcendental meditation set to song, just about, something that easily takes me away from the madness that surrounds us. I also, as I’m doing now, enjoy grooving to one of several concerts of her and her band that are on YouTube. It’s not quite the same as being at the foot of the stage, granted, but fun all the same.