"And Our Hearts Nodded"

Brief post as I sit in between clients on my Wednesday.  I read over Bill Mallonee's latest Blog Post and it's a good read that I would recommend.  I'm a Mallonee fanatic, have been for a while but have recently come to terms with it.  By that I mean that I used to feel silly for following and listening to one artist so closely. After all, there are many, many fantastic songwriters out there.  Why put so much energy into just one guy that most people haven't heard of?  As I've mentioned before it's because he "brings it" over and over again.  Sonically he can be hit and miss sometimes, I'll admit that.  But in terms of songwriting, I don't think anyone resonates with me as deeply as Mallonee.  He puts out a tremendous amount of music (57 albums and counting) and so I figure that if I love something and the amount of work to finger through is that deep and wide then perhaps it's a worthwhile endeavour to spend so much time with him.

In the aforementioned blog post Bill runs through his latest albums, sketching each song and their roots. I haven't listened to it yet, but the notes for track 2, "And Our Hearts Nodded" jumped out at me:

"How did those prophets, poets and troubadours “know?” How did they give nomenclature to the truths that cascade in rivers with us? How were they able to enshrine those same truths we so often close our ears to. Pain, suffering, deprivation, mortality." 

Bill was referencing the fact that as get older you gain appreciation and respect for writers and others whose work reflects the depth of life.  "Pain, suffering, deprivation, mortality", that is both what keeps us from listening well and the recipe for the ability to peer well into life.

And that "recipe" is what I see often in my vocation and why my vocation has become both a source of deep meaning for me and a reason that some days I just want to not think about my work.

But what I get to see is courage, hope, understanding, frustration, bravery, rage, heartache, sacrifice and, well, you fill in the blank.  And if I'm smart about it I'll take what others have seen and experienced from "a life on the road" and use it as backing and fortification, softening and empathy in my own sense of self. Character is built largely through the "recipe" listed above but I hope that I can borrow what has been learned and built from others.  Partly because I'm terrified of building my own character through my own personal suffering and partly because I think it's how we're created; to be able to "lean in", listen well to each other's stories and feel our "Hearts Nod."  In many ways this is why I often wonder if I'm a bigger winner than many of the people I work with.  They teach me far more than I can ever teach them.

From "Cities of Ruin"

"They say in heaven you'll get your real name
Carved into a precious stone
Drifting through those cities of ruin
On your way back home"