Where Do I Find Myself?

[nightcircle]

I just got sucked into an hour long conversation about New Orleans with a man who was displaced by Katrina just like me. The conversation started because of Hurricane Gustav - which according to my sources - may be heading for New Orleans, at the moment that looks more likely than Texas, but of course that could change, especially this far out in

Comments

[bandraoi]

There is tune I play on the harp called "The Strayaway Child." It's a six-part jig that's really complicated and took a long time for me to learn properly. I always think of you and your crew evacuating New Orleans and fleeing Katrina for Houston on some level every single time I play that part. Why? I was learning that part, practicing it over and over and over again in the weeks and months around the time you and neshenti were writing in your journals here about it.

[bandraoi]

The particular part I'm talking about is the fifth part, by the way.

[nightcircle]

Isn't it weird how music becomes fused to certain eras/events in your life? I listen to a bunch of stuff on my ITunes account when I write my novel(s) and sometimes when I hear a song I haven't played for a while, I flash back to a certain section of a novel and realize I was playing that song on repeat during that whole scene/section. It's wild.

[bandraoi]

It sure is...especially since that section of the tune is fused, but not even to my own damned life...etc. There was a lot of pathos in what you guys wrote, and I'm already sensitive to that sort of thing anyway. Couple it with the meditative state I enter into when I'm working really hard on learning or perfecting a piece, and it just all gets absorbed. I creep myself out sometimes.

[nightcircle]

Yeah, I was just rereading all the stuff I wrote back then and it's *this* close to the anniversary and EEEK.

[bandraoi]

"Anniversary reactions" to painful events are very powerful. Even if it's something you've "gotten over" after many years or something you never actually consciously marked the time of, the enviromental cues from that time of year -- barometric pressure, angle of sunlight, temperature -- though working subtly can all have a profound effect on the psyche.