Friday, October 3, 2014

Bringing it all back home (Asbury Park)



September 27, 2014

I embrace the here with open arms, this history my history, not one of my ancestors – no grandfather and grandmother honeymoon in Cape May, but the roots of this primitive ritual called Rock & Roll by which I still live my life – an ageless back beat more firm in my consciousness than even the rise and fall of tides, yet tided to the movement of waves the way the moon it, part of some greater and more mysterious cause and effect that cannot be measured with sextant or metronome, yet beats firmly in my heart, a syncopated symbiotic rhythm I can’t live without.
I feel this place in my bones, a constant vibration that gives meaning to each step I take, and I hear a hum in my ears like the aftermath of a long night’s electrified music.
I am electrified, too, and need this place even though it is not my place to need, its history tied to a history I experienced elsewhere which has long vanished from those places I knew it best, and so I cling to what is left here the way a man might cling to the remains of a sinking ship, knowing that if I let go I am lost forever, knowing that rock & roll is in the air I breathe, and without it, I ceased to exist, if not the rock & roll that took place here, then music elsewhere to become what it became here, and as with other such special places like the marker at Bethel, this place retains some magic I need and ache for, inside and out, and so I drench myself with this place the way a pilgrim might with holy water from some sacred fountain, chanting lyrics like prayer, seeking a god or some greater spirit I secretly suspect does not exist, yet must exist for me to exist, and in that is the paradox.

What is lost cannot be found and yet, we cannot cease to search for it, for our lives are bound up in this quest and like Odysseus, we are always trying to find our way back home.

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