honestly

it is a breathing problem. primarily. if i knew how to breathe, i would know how to live. take the accordion for instance, beautiful instrument, i was told i was not musical way back when, but it was the guitar they wanted me to play then, and pinching is not my thing, plus it's too far from the heart, location-wise, but the accordion now, rings in, rings through, my chest, the music slipping right into me, and i knew this the very first time i held one, and was hooked. even though i was old (what kind of person begins playing an instrument at 35???), and even though between little children and work i didn't have much time for music, i played anyway, took lessons for a couple of years, until life as i knew it collapsed, and divorce and mayhem followed, and then another pregnancy, another infant at the breast, blah blah, so here we are, i just started again, and i love it, as much as ever, maybe the things we love we will never stop loving, for me it's the accordion, and the children, and the man, but i digress, so here i am, playing again after years of silence, and i run into it straight away, it was there all along, and I knew it, but it didn't bother me, and now it's all i hear.

there are phrases in music. breaths. you breathe in, one phrase. you breathe out, one phrase. it's just a big manual lung, you let it fill with air, you push the air out, how ironic that i would choose myself a breathing instrument. and this is what i love, and what i hate, about it. because the thing is: i cannot breathe. and therefore I cannot play the accordion. i just let it fill fill fill fill with air, until my arms are stretched so wide I cannot reach the buttons, and no idea where we are with the melody, and then i have no choice but to push push push it all in until it collapses on its own silence, often in the middle of a note. and this is exactly what i do with my breath too.... just this. no sense of where it's at, always at odds with the song being sung, by the body or the world outside. Too little air, too much, stretching too far out, running out of breath on the way in.

or look at my writing, right here, where is the breath, when is a person supposed to breathe. i mean seriously, have you even looked at these paragraphs. how would i write if i breathed. if i stopped. for that is the key, the very holy grail, finally revealed to me this week by my patient teacher. I said: I cannot do it, I cannot go back, I cannot initiate the movement back. I SIMPLY CANNOT DO THIS. She said: you have to stop first. She said: there is a pause, between in-breath and out-breath, between out-breath and in-breath. that pause is where the movement ends, and the new movement begins.

here.

in the pause.

where one thing ends.

and another begins.