Melody's Musings

Okay friends, we're going on a journey so buckle in- or don't- I won't tell you how to live your life but be prepared that this piece is going places you probably didn't expect on the outset. It's adventure time!

I've loved the band Tool for a really long time and if you haven't known me for long you might find that information surprising to hear because I don't think I look like the average Tool fan (and that's okay, maybe we need to stop judging people based on how they look). I wasn't always a Tool fan, in fact, I actually visibly rolled my eyes at people when they kept telling me they thought I would like Tool. It took encountering them at the right moment of my life, and armed with more information that made them fascinating to me.

You see, it was at a time where I was grieving a version of my life that could never exist when someone forced me to listen to them and it was also shortly after I had done another deep dive into sacred geometry and how it applies to music theory and music writing. Don't worry- we're not going to be spending a lot of time on the music theory here because in spite of my name I'm actually not an expert on it (sorry, grandma).

The first piece that really got my attention and hooked me in was Wings For Marie Part 1. I was just listening, taking in the audible tapestry and allowing the music to tell me where I was as they went in with the slow build the band is best known for. There's something haunting about the guitar track- something that sounds the way my heart feels when it races with anxiety. Maynard's voice starts off as a slow chant. The scene feels like the flurry of activity in a hospital room or around a person at the most important moments- birth and death. And of course, that's the point. And then at 3:33 we get more prominent lyrics "What have I done" followed by the audible 90 degree turn which is where I fell in love with the transition "to be worthy". From here, the whole piece shifts as it literally expresses all of Maynard's phases of grieving and sits with the simultaneous gratitude and guilt he feels in losing her. The song is filled with genuine emotion and refuses to smooth over the uncomfortable parts, bringing in dissonance to highlight that difficulty instead.

It is that very willingness to sit with discomfort that drew me in. I call it Comfort With The Uncomfortable. What I mean by that is that obviously they're not so much cozy with the discomfort but they can hold steady in spite of it and allow it to eventually resolve after we've moved through the difficult parts and the dissonance. In this way, I found the band expanded my mindset. I had already completed acupuncture school when I discovered them and had really bought into a more Eastern mindset regarding not holding onto emotions and sort of releasing them after initially feeling them. The thing about this school of thought was that I went from one extreme to the other. This meant that instead of stewing in an emotion for an extended period, I was actually more likely to engage in spiritual bypassing and then get caught off guard when these things would resurface. Alas, the pendulum has gradually swung closer and closer to center as time has gone on.

Who would have thought that metal would be teaching me such valuable philosophical lessons? Perhaps Chinese Medicine, actually. In Chinese Medicine, the element of Metal is expressed by both the Lung and Large Intestine. The Lung is the organ of grief and of breath. It's the boundary organ, the place where the outside world enters and the inside world leaves. It doesn't cling to the inhale or refuse the exhale. It stays in rhythm with the uncomfortable. It's easy to see here how disruptions in that rhythm would cause problems or distress as well as how the breath can be extremely regulating and important when enforcing boundaries.

I've been thinking about all of this so long that there's actually a connective tissue between the two types of metal, the emotional regulation and even the season we are in. I'm writing this piece towards the end of October. Nearly every culture across the world has some version of a holiday this time of year to celebrate their ancestors. Some reference the thinning of the veil between worlds, others still place the emphasis on remembrance of their loved ones who have passed. It is this time of year that I think most about the role of grief- though I think about it at other times as well. 

Speaking of connective tissue as well as times in my life where I have grieved versions of me that either can't or no longer exist, my own connective tissue no longer holds things together the way it is supposed to. The thing that's supposed to connect everything, the thing that's supposed to hold the body together, is the thing that's different in me. And I've had to learn to live with that. Not fix it. Not resolve it. Live with it. Sit with it. I feel like I am constantly relearning the shape of my own abilities and adapting my life and my practice around what my body will allow me to do. I'm aware that grieving past versions of self is not the usual context in which one would think about grief. Nor would grief over places come to mind either.

I've written before about how sometimes we walk right past things, assuming we already know what is there. I think there are places we always assume will be there as well. For me, that place was my nana and papa's house and those woods and the pond and my fairy hideout under the Hawthorn tree by the creek. I've been mourning the loss of that place since before they sold it in 2023. It was a place that felt like it would always be there, like it would always hold the magic and the mystery and the love poured into it. They listed the property not long after my husband and I settled into our house in Newark, and I would have bought that house and those woods in a heartbeat if anyone had asked. Family dynamics being what they are, no one did. I don't know if the fairy hideout is still there. I don't know if the hawthorn is still standing. It's such an odd feeling to be able to close your eyes and remember every detail of a place that, for all intents and purposes, could no longer even exist.

The only constant in life is change. Things are changing all the time- and there are times I just wish it would slow down. I think back to when I was younger and in such a hurry to grow up, to get on with my life. I had such enthusiasm- and I still do. As I watch my own son take on the world, full speed ahead, I feel like my own life has come full circle in a way where I understand why everyone around me when I was growing up wished I would just slow down. There's a type of grief that comes with that too as each new version of him replaces the last. He came into this world to a Tool song, you know. Pneuma: greek for breath, spirit, the animating energy inside of us all. "Wake up. Remember. We are born of one breath, one word. We are all one spark- Sun Becoming."

I am embracing my ability to sit with the uncomfortable this season. I'm trying to embrace whatever may come because there is no fighting it. The best ending I can think of to this is to leave you with Maynard's words: I embrace my desire to feel the rhythm, to feel connected, to step aside and weep like a widow, to feel inspired, to fathom the power, to witness the beauty, to bathe in the fountain, to swing on the spiral... spiral out, keep going."