If you go looking for magic with a search warrant, you probably won't find it. That's because a watched kettle never boils, and because leprechauns can make themselves invisible, and because magic resists people who think they can capture lightning in a bottle. You can't orchestrate it. It's not a tourist attraction. And it doesn't lend itself to scheduling like a trip to the zoo or a museum. Magic is spontaneous, unique, independent, and it infuses everything…if you let it. Dump your doubts, and it will be there. Block it with negativity and it will consider you unworthy and leave you to a pedestrian life.
This time of year makes magic easier to find because spring is such a full sensory onslaught. Every branch of every tree is a maternity ward of buds swelling like little pregnancies, pyrotechnics rumble and flash across skies as regularly as curtains rising on a stage, and green miracles pop out of the ground wherever heady aromas exude from the earth. I like to watch the wind paint on a soft canvas of tall grass just before the timpani of a rain. On sultry days you can almost hear the breeze "pant" breathlessly like a final brushstroke. And everywhere – everywhere – life quickens to the imperative of romance!
There – did you see that? An owl just flew across your path in a straight line, like a trapeze performer gliding down a wire. And that woodpecker knocking intently in stanzas is sending you a message in code. Wait a minute! This one's mine to decode. Ah. I thought so. It is music...
I have fallen in love with music again – hearing it, making it. Mostly I play at Elm Creek’s picnic shelters, or at a place called Weaver Lake. I am a terrible T-sax player, but people come to listen, and sometimes I find dollars slipped into my case. I have become the irrelevant accompaniment to volleyball games, the peripheral atmosphere for courting couples on blankets, and the object of drive-bys. Sometimes there are flash dances with wandering groups, usually of preteens who pop out of the vegetation like munchkins. There's a video link below of Norby Nation dancing on a table similar to the one I posted on Facebook.
And then there is Famous Dave's Bluesfest 2011 – always a happening for me – which I'll write about next month in either the Sullygram or the column on StorytellersUnplugged.
After the last Sullygram, I received a long ton of feedback about my nightly drives. Sorry I can't explain more than I have. I'm like a nocturnal insect attracted to lights only to get smashed on a window every night. Why don't insects just wait for the sun to come up, if they like light? Why don't I? It must be the magic of the music of the night.
Music again.
Here's a really touching song someone sent me that I wish my buddy Glenn Frey of the Eagles – or maybe his up-and-coming songster son Deacon Frey – had sung: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw_zOEWxkZE
This month's column over on storytellers, called LION LUNGS, DEMENTIA DOG & THE KILLER GARAGE DOOR, is just a small piece of commiseration for struggling writers who feel that their dreams are slipping away. Here's the link: http://storytellersunplugged.com/thomassullivan/2011/06/15/thomas-sullivan-lion-lungs-dementia-dog-the-killer-garage-door/ Recently heard from someone I've known for a long time who told me that life was forcing her to give up on her dreams. I think she meant even to the point of how she thought about herself, her need for positive feelings, for romance. This is someone who has always been an inspiration for dreams. I cannot imagine her existing without them. Her hopes and romantic idealism are what define her, give her personality. Sometimes it takes more boldness to reach for our dreams as life becomes increasingly complex and controlling, but the alternative is surrender and extinction. Imagination and courage will find a way, if we so will it. Our dreams don't give up on us. We give up on our dreams. If we do not dream somewhere, somehow, the best part of ourselves doesn't survive. Dreams are the last wall before we stop being who we are at the core. It isn't dreaming that is a waste of life. It is not dreaming.
And I don’t know what Doc Foto was dreaming when he sent me a couple of the pics below. Would you believe, Doc Foto writes/performs the sweetest ballads you've ever heard when he's not assassinating me with photo software? Oh, it's going to be a long election run-up to 2012! Besides that pair of fun pics, there are three spring nature shots I took, plus the video of Norby Nation flash dancing while I was playing sax at Elm Creek.
And may spring play your song all season
long…
Thomas “Sully” Sullivan
www.thomassullivanauthor.com
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