The first Moon of the year is full! Let us cast and expand!
I'd like to continue to expand on the available knowledge about my personal story! A bit of hystorical context on my music, and why I am so ceaselessly fanatical about it. If you are reading this, I bow to you, friend!
Compassion and Faery blessings,
~ <3 Trolli <3 ~
”Fast flowing waterfall. Fast, flowing waterfall. Wash my tears away. Wash my tears, away. Away, my love.” -Robbie Basho
It would appear that most people understand the feeling, or at least are familiar with the concept of being “in love”. “Falling” in love... Finding yourself with an affinity for another so strong that you must do everything in your power to show and provide them the depth of your inspired yearning for closeness and oneness with them. Realizing in blood churning, gut bubbling, light blinding captivation, that their voice, their touch, their smile, their movement... is more holy than any God ever praised from the highest mountain or most sacred shrine. Witnessing that their laughter, their anger, and their most basic simplicity completes your existence, stabilizing and raising the foundation of your place in this world. Building your life around their precious beauty and your awe for their every aspect, including the ones that challenge and can even hurt you. Knowing the ancient sages of yore hath no wisdom as sure, as sagacious, as pure, as the leap of faith you fly upon when the world bows before them, your heart screaming, sobbing, exalting, “I love you.”
Praise the Goddess, I have experienced this euphoria a few times in my life so far! With the humans, the relationships didn't ultimately last that long... Though that's not to say I couldn't have a long-term true love with another person in the future! However, my first love remains with me, and I with it, to this day.
~
People often ask me how long I've been playing the piano. I tell them,
“My whole life. Some of my first memories are of trying to find something in that instrument.”
Interestingly, however, in my first 10 years of consciousness I did not really know what the object my my search was, or even that I was indeed searching. I would hear music in the world, but not feel or care much about it. Yet still I would often spend hours at the piano composing music and improvising.
My parents (bless their souls) recognized a talent and drive, and enrolled me in classical lessons at age 6. That was much the same. Practicing felt good, and learning the theory and language was interesting. However the results, the music itself, I didn't truly care for. I preferred to work on my own pieces.
I was lucky to have a father who had adventurous hobbies, and took me and my two brothers along for the ride frequently and regularly. Disc Golf, bowling, and fishing took us through many of the larger towns on Sioux land, as well as far flung forests, rivers, and fields. We would ride to and fro such places in one of my dad's beat up old vehicles, music from his illegally downloaded collection of burned CDs blasting from the stereo, competing with the crunching gravel roads and beating highway winds.
As far as I remember, the majority of these discs were full of heavy metal or blues. I remember generally enjoying those collections, however only a rare and fleeting moment on a heavy metal album, where the aggression would lull and a beautiful acoustic passage, delicate and shimmering, would cause me to say,
“I wish this part would continue”.
When I was around 11 or 12 I took up cello in the school orchestra, but was very quickly dissatisfied by the other students' lack of commitment to practice. I quit, and began playing the electric bass instead. I took lessons from a guy named Al. We would meet in his dimly lit basement, learning the basics of the instrument, and the basics of rock music.
Maybe a year later I played bass in the School of Rock. At this point in my life, I was experiencing a near total inability to socialize, especially in a group setting. My long hair hung down in front of my eyes always. Whatever the way I was talking, I was getting largely ignored or avoided. The other kids in my band were older than me, and they were “cool”. I had no concept of what cool was except that for some reason I found popularity terribly distasteful.
I remember the rehearsal space, a tin warehouse down some gravel road on the outskirts of town, dressed up with skulls, guitars, lightning bolts and other essential ROCK aesthetics. I remember the concert hall we did the performance in, and I remember the face of one of my band mates. Blonde curly hair, blue eyes, glasses, uneven smile. I remember that we played “Don't Fear The Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult. Other than that, my memory of the experience is not strong enough to be accessible to me now. I was deeply inwardly withdrawn. I can barely even recall whether or not I played the bass well.
When we were asked by the instructor “What are your favorite bands?”, I just selected from the answers the other kids gave, hoping not to be asked more about them. I didn't listen to rock music. I liked to play music, but I had never heard anything that I thought actually mattered. I was still searching for it in the piano.
Once upon a gravel road in a rusted white pickup truck that by all reason and physics should not still have been mobile, the bards of epic fantasy reached out to me among a cloud of dust and a portable CD player connected to the truck speakers by aux chord. I don't remember the rest of that day. I don't remember how old I was. But I remember that moment. The dry, brown dirt billowing all around us, rumbling through the tall yellow prairie. We must have been going fishing. The high summer sun steaming the humid air. The protruding cushioning of the torn seat in that front seat only pickup. My writhing hatred of being touched, squished between my brothers and my dad.
The choirs of angels intoning prophecy and power, the urgency yet delicacy of a sacred quest cast through the shitty old speakers and the squelching grinding of tires on gravel.
“WHAT IS THIS?” I demanded, some deep, dark, dormant part of my young mind snapping to attention. I don't remember my dad's response, as I probably didn't even listen to the answer for my demand. For the awakening resplendence of every single moment of this heavenly, hellish mass there must be no distraction in the idling speech of mortal men.
I began searching through my dad's CD collection, though I did not yet have a player of my own. I had to find those musical angels again. I remember spending hours in the basement just looking through the collection, reading the titles and track listings, trying to find ones that spoke to the sound of what I had heard. I must not have asked my dad for too much help, because it took some time, maybe even years, to find exactly the album I was pining for.
Middle school had begun, and I had all but lost my best friends of childhood. Romping through the creeks, sledding, walking the train tracks, sleepovers with movies, pizza and video games were fading into the past, unless I wanted to go it alone, or just with my brothers. I began to spend more time with video games, books, and the piano. There emerged from time to time a tune from lessons that I quite enjoyed hearing, yet I still preferred vastly to explore the instrument on my own and continue searching for that elusive, yet-nameless opening. Somehow I knew there was a way in to a realm I did not know existed. It tugged at me so.
One Christmas my parents gave me a CD player. It was white, circular, and I believe of Japanese make. I tried various CDs from my dad's collection, as well as from my uncle's who lived with us at the time. Clarence Gatemouth Brown played the Blues. Charlie Daniels played folk-rock. Iron Maiden played Heavy Metal. All very nice.
One of those albums whose title and track listing I thought indicated that heavenly sound from years ago... A sound that could have been coming from the bloody, apocalyptic myths of the Holy Bible and ethereal stained glass light of its pain-filled, glorious symbology, yet never did... found its way onto my bedroom floor next to my CD player one fateful day.
I clicked the disc onto the little circle at the center of the little machine, closed the lid, and pressed play. The batteries were out. I gathered two double A's from the drawer of random items in the kitchen. Took the CD out, replaced the batteries, popped the CD back in, and pressed play.
The God of Christianity, his choirs of angels, bloody cross, and stained glass window light were put to mundanity by what came through even those little earbud headphones. My jaw dropped and my eyes were saucers. A wide, wicked grin pained my jaw and cheeks as my heart pounded and my fists clenched. Tears filled my eyes; Glory. Power. Fear. Mania. Joy. Freedom. Despair. Hatred. Ecstasy.
I had seen plenty of movies at this point, action thrillers and supernatural intrigues. Somehow none of that shit came anywhere close to the level of unfiltered drama and passion I was experiencing now. Consuming Sorrow and True Love, not separate. Both Outright Rebellion and Devoted Worship.
The gate to the secret, magic realms of music was slightly ajar when I searched on the piano. The Divine Wings of Tragedy by Symphony X blasted the gate to pieces, laughed mercilessly in my face, and kicked me spiraling into the abyss beyond.
...This was the moment I first fell in love. The fall would continue for over 10 years, a dramatic cascade. That faithful leap that often more resembled a desperate dive. But you know how love can go ;)
Thank you, fair listener ~ your ears are a precious gift!
Compassion and Faery blessings,
~ <3 Trolli <3 ~
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