Ego

Ever have one of those transcendant feelings, like you're bigger than you really think... or maybe much, much smaller?

So tonight I'm enjoying the second day of a three-day weekend. I'd been running around all day. I finally retire to the back porch this evening with my guitar and learn a new song. I haven't learned a new song on the guitar (indeed even played my guitar) in a long while. I'm learning the La's There She Goes, but I'm kinda learning the twangy, V-Roys' version from their live album. Normally, my voice should be able to handle it, but tonight it just wasn't happening. So I went inside and got my fiddle instead.

Now I've been practicing my fiddle a lot more lately, and I'm really starting to enjoy it, even much more than usual. I went and bought new strings for it today, so it sounds distinctly less like ass than it normally does. I mean, I can play a low G now and it actually sound something like a musical note rather than the violin trying to vomit. Believe me -- it was bad.

But now I'm finding myself being caught up in my own playing. Here's where the transcendant moment comes in. Don't get me wrong -- I'm not doing anything special, just standing on my back porch about 10:30 on a tiring (but good!) Saturday, the porchlight is on, and I'm just fiddling to the stars. Nothing special. But then, I get caught up.

The world comes into focus. There's only me and the sound of my fiddle. I'm facing the darkness of the yard and the sky, with the light behind me, and it's like the sound of my fiddle is the only light in the universe other than twinkling stars. I feel huge, immense, immeasurable... astronomical, and yet I feel tiny, like the weight of the universe is pushing down on me and I know without doubt my tiny, little microscopic role in it. I play and I play and I play... and then I catch my breath.

Now I'm an arrogant jerk. Make no mistake about that. I'm pretty self-centered... I mean hell, I run a website about ME for God's sake. But this was a tiny little moment of transcendance, when I felt like so much more then me, and so much less.

I wouldn't have written this if I'd been drinking, or indeed if I'd just let myself go to bed like I need to. Oh well.... Just didn't want to forget. It makes me want to play more, not for other people or for anything external, just for me. (It also makes me want to buy a new fiddle, which I will, just not this year. That's a story for another day.)