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colinthecaldwell · 3 years ago

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One Free Friday Night

People love a good concert. The chaotic mixture of dancing, singing, imbibing, and fraternizing overlayed with the order of the vibe created by the performers forms a unique environment in which people can let their guards down and just Be, collectively. Though many people love attending concerts, there are many in this same crowd that would try to convince you that going to a concert alone is somehow sad, or shameful, or scary. I would raise a wager that these are the same people who crave as a necessity the presence of others for they are fearful of spending time with just their own thoughts.

It’s an understandable fear, to be afraid of sitting with your own thoughts. If you sit with your own thoughts, you begin to know thyself in an active sense, which is a lot of responsibility. Most people are content to pass through life behaving in their way simply because they feel it’s in their nature. These people would rather never worry themselves with thoughts of alternative routes of life or deeper understanding of right and wrong besides what feels right to them. I do not intend to take the stance that there is anything wrong with this way of being. In fact, some of the most genuine and kindest people I know are this way. There could even be an argument to be made for someone operating purely on inherited motives as more in tune with their role in Universe than a mediocre philosopher or halfway committed mystic. However, I will not be making that argument here.

For those of us who, intentionally or otherwise, have peeked our heads into the inner machinations of our hearts, minds, and souls, that way of life is sadly locked away from us and the responsibility is therefore thrust into our hands whether we like it or not. Thankfully, there are generations of artists who have dedicated their lives to creating enriching experiences in which we can begin to hear, see, and feel the heartbeat of the Universe itself. The key then lies in learning how to listen.

To begin to listen the Universe you must learn to quiet the mind. To learn to quiet the mind, you must know yourself in a very active sense. To know yourself in a very active sense, you must sit with your own thoughts for great periods of time. So, take a seat, straighten your back, close your eyes, and breathe deeply. As your diaphragm drops and rises, focus your attention on the space of your lungs. How do the tubes within them feel as air flows in and out? Can you feel the alveoli expand as oxygen rushes into them? How do they feel when the carbon dioxide rushes out? Your body is your gateway between the oblivion of nonexistence and the whole of creation, so pay attention to what it feels. Keep breathing. In and out. In and out. Now, go on; close your eyes. I’ll still be here.

Unless you are already well-practiced in this art, you will find that your mind doesn’t enjoy this exercise, and like a poorly behaved toddler being put down for a nap, it will refuse the silence by generating distraction. Perhaps you will remember something you said earlier. Maybe it was something you are just now realizing was unkind or impolite as you are now able to see it from the other person’s point of view. A small knot may form in your belly as you realize you are sometimes unkinder than you want to be. Remember to breathe deeply. The Universe is a chaotic place, and even stars lash out at the planets that surround them in great plasma bursts of primordial creative emanation. It is okay to make mistakes, even in meditation. Forgive, and return to the rhythm of your breathing. In and out. In and out.

Perhaps the focus on your lungs and your body doesn’t work for you as a mode of relaxing the mind. Instead of walking through the doorway that lives within us all, you would prefer to walk through the doorway that lives without. That is perfectly alright and may perhaps be a better focal point for the rest of the story that is to come. Please, again, take a seat. The best place for this meditation is somewhere outside, if possible, but under some shade so your mind won’t distract you with thoughts of sunburn on your precious skin. However, if outside is not an option for another reason, this can also be done indoors. Now, take a seat, straighten your back, close your eyes, and breathe deeply. As your breathing falls into a rhythm, focus on what you can hear. Perhaps it is a bird singing or the wind rustling some trees. Perhaps it is the distance hum of an air conditioner’s fan, or a neighbor’s lawn mower. Perhaps even it is the chatter of people or the honking of cars. Whatever the sound may be, do not allow your mind to pass judgement on it; each sound is a sound of the Universe, and you are merely the Universe experiencing itself. Everything is allowed to exist now with you. Listen for the sole purpose of the experience of hearing. Try to expand the horizon of your attention, listening for sounds farther and farther away. Can you hear them? Take a minute. I can wait.

These practices of mindfulness may seem silly or useless, but they are the essential ingredient to entering into Universal Flow. A silk sheet when untethered can fly many thousands of miles, but when snagged onto a branch the only thing it can manage is flapping furiously in the wind. Though its haphazard undulations may follow the flow of the wind, that attachment point prevents the sheet from finding its full, journeying potential. Just like the sheet breaking free of the branch, going to concerts alone can remove the barriers to that formless freedom. With our introductory tutorial complete, and the understanding of the importance of concerting alone established, let me tell you of one such free-flow experience:

Friday night in Austin, Texas. On a whim, and surely as a gift from the Great Ephemeral Everything, or perhaps from the Grand Eternal No-Thing, I discovered that Opiuo, a favorite musician of mine, would be performing that night. Thoughts of invites to the concert danced in my mind: perhaps one of the new friends I had made in town; perhaps one of the women whose company, and not unimportantly whose bodies, I do so enjoy, for surely concerts always lead to sex and surely Friday nights are meant for making love. As I wracked my brain for the right thing to do, the answer rose from my dan tien in a deep, knowing, belly laugh. No one I could think of would go to that concert of their own volition, and each would attend with me out of obligation, whether fueled by romantic intent or otherwise. Regardless of their motives, I knew their presence would stand like an immovable obelisk shading me from the fullness of the Light of the World which I felt so tapped into. Solo I shall go.

As fortune would have it, I was invited to a dinner with one of these Austinian lasses and her friends. Burgers and beers like real, red-blooded Americans. Being the Beat-inspired wannabe writer I am, I brought a bottle of wine just in case the post-dinner plan kept me from returning to my abode with my stash of prepaid alcohol. I also packed away my dugout with a few small nugs’ worth of free weed ground up and stored inside. Just like people and things can be anchor points tethering the silk sheet of your experience to a single locus, so too can random gifts from the Universe itself act as calling cards beckoning you back into the wind and away from those snagging limbs and reaching fingers, and it wasn’t but four days prior that my roommate Aaron wordlessly, unceremoniously, and with the sadness of a gift given in complete and total earnest laid those three tiny nuglets on the magazine next to my dinner plate in the main room of our house. Armed to the teeth with feelgood juice, both natural and artificially derived I exited my house.

Some of the friends of that lady had some friends of their own, as we all do. We ate and laughed and talked about plans for the evening, and she even paid for all my food and drink. What a gone girl. I told her I was going to a concert tonight, and despite my better efforts (though I don’t even know why I tried) I grinned through my teeth as I spoke. She smiled sweetly when she realized I wasn’t inviting her, and a tenth of her heart begged to ask me who I was going with. Another third didn’t really want to know. I thought about telling her in plain English speak that I was going alone, but instead I said nothing of it.

I decided to keep my options open for the night, so I set about convincing her and her friend to go out to meet her friend’s boyfriend and his friends. So many layers of friends. My mad scheming worked, despite the bartendress underpouring the gin. The plan was set: I would return home before my deepening intoxication stranded my van on that sad side street where it stood, costing me more money, and more importantly time and necessary decisions, than I cared to pay to recover it. Later, I would meet them out at bar downtown somewhere for a few drinks prior to heading to my concert.

So, I ripped up and roared out of that side street just as slow as my 4.6L v6 engine could drag the massive payload of my disused camper van bedframe. Headphones in, I was listening to Opiuo’s discography for the fourth time today, lining myself up to cash in on a few more precious hits of dopamine from the sheer familiarity of the songs because, you see, though we don’t understand our consciousness in its entirety, we know enough about it to be able to hack ourselves into a better way of living. And if god didn’t want us to do that, then why would we have ever learned as much as we know?

I screeched into the driveway, sending mud and bits of broken in-ground-sprinkler heads up and out from the underside of my boat. I rushed inside and found one of my new roommates in the kitchen. We talked of pleasant, unimportant things and shared the bottle of wine I had brought to dinner. The wine sucked the moisture out of our mouths terribly, and we agreed it wasn’t a very good one. I had two and one half cups of the stuff before flying out the door. Walking with the speed of a man driven by the pace of the World and all its magic happenings, I arrived at an electric bike in two and one half songs. I got myself directed, lined up another five songs in my queue, smoked my first hit of the night, and peeled off into the darkening light. The sunset smoldered like golden coals across the sky and all the world as I flew over the South Congress bridge. The capitol building sprang up ahead of me, and a deep belly laugh snorted its way through my sinuses as I reflected on how much beauty and confusion bureaucracy created. I cackled when I asked myself if it was the other way around. A couple smiled warmly at me, or at least the lady did, so I tipped my invisible hat in embellished approval and unbuttoned my shirt to my navel. After all, Austin was hot, and it was far too early in the night for me to be this sweaty.

I found the girl at the bar with her friends and her friend’s boyfriend’s friends and, in fact, the bar was two and one half doors down from the concert venue. I smiled at the coincidence and winked to no one in particular because I knew I was finding the Flow. Finding the group was, in fact, more difficult because there was a back room of the bar, and that back room had its own back room after all. The televisions lining the walls displayed a baseball game and a football game in tandem, and the denizens of the establishment cheered uproariously. Having no idea which event deserved the applause, I flicked my eyes from one screen to the next before settling on the explanation that it must have been the football game. After all, we were in Texas.

The group was tucked back behind a pillar of that back-back room, and there were many more than before. I dapped up the friend’s boyfriend’s friend and called him by the wrong name. Oops. The friend’s boyfriend seemed perturbed by the name I had chosen to make my guess, or so I thought. Rather than hang around to find out I made my way to the girl, and her cute friend who was in her budding years of becoming Denver-type granola talked excitedly at me. She showed me her hands palm-up and they were covered in new, shiny pink skin. She had apparently ripped her palms off stopping her boyfriend from falling to his death while on a climbing trip together. She said the rope smoked, and she could smell porkchops and burning hair. When it happened, she cried and didn’t realize it, and only after prided herself on the factoid that in the same situation many people let go of the rope in instinctual self-preservation. This woman’s knee-jerk response was to preserve her love over herself, and that factoid made me smile at the whole Universe. We all left that bar and that whole group was headed away from the concert. It was now ten thirty and the show had started at ten. The girl and I hung back from the rest of the group so I could graze the small of her back and kiss. Say everything else you want about her, but she sure can kiss. We exchanged hot breath and saliva like you do when you’re madly in love and the whole world vanishes. When I opened my eyes, I caught 4 of her friends staring out of the side of their eye, since apparently this girl wasn’t normally one to display any affection privately, let alone on the street. Three of them averted their gaze quickly, and I beamed at all of everything. I fumbled through telling the girl I would text her later, because I didn’t want to lie, and I wasn’t sure if I would. She spoke what I had left unspoken, and I figured we are all allowed to lie to our own selves, so I gave her hand a squeeze and ran away, jamming to the music in my head.

I turned the corner and hop-skip-jumped two and one half doors down as I heard the familiar sounds of one of the five songs I wanted to hear that night. Surprised that the main artist would already be playing, I rushed through the ticket counter inside. The lady behind the desk made a small joke, and I boogied and beamed. The scanner beeped, and she gave me a wristband. Giddy, I flashed my ID and the newly acquired bracelet to the bouncer before bounding down the stairs into the open-air club. I danced my way through the crowd to the front and eventually settled into a spot in the corner where I could dance and dance and dance. No one was quite sure what to do with me, but the flashes of smiles and curious stares were enough to let me know that I was shining bright with that white light of life. Smiling, I closed my eyes and writhed. The song ended, and I howled at the moon. My uproarious approval of the DJ goaded everyone into a greater fervor, and you could feel the anxious tremble emanate through the crowd as everyone and even me realized there was a madman in our midst.

The first opener ended his set as the second one came on. All I knew of Opiuo’s appearance is that he was blonde and a bit chubby, but in a British sort of way where you can almost see the generations of potato soup and mutton that birthed such a body type. The second opener had a round face and looked strangely similar, so for a while in my addled mind I thought he was the headliner. His music sucked, at least to my ears for what I wanted, and I realized I had no obligation to stay. After all, I had paid a full whopping twenty-five dollars tonight to ensure I had a good time, and by god I was going to do it.

So I ducked around the corner of the door and ripped out of the bar, making sure to verify with the bouncers that my paper bracelet was the key to my unhindered return. Outside, I took a deep drag from my dugout to the bottom of my diaphragm and exhaled. I pondered what to do with my time now, and the Universe answered in the form of an old man coughing conspicuously on a bench. I wheeled around and sat asking him his name. He told me it was Hobo. I told him I didn’t believe him. He insisted. He told me he earned that name on account of hitchhiking 25,000 miles over the last nine years. “That’s the whole world around,” he said proudly. I told him I was impressed and licked my lips at the gift of meeting god on the corner of 4th and Lavaca. Then he told me all 25,000 miles of that journey had been between Austin and San Marcos, merely 30 miles apart, though I didn’t know it at the time of telling. What I did know then was this wandering bodhisattva wasn’t quite the bodhisattva I had pictured when I licked my lips, but I laughed when I realized he was a bodhisattva nonetheless. He told me he wrote songs, and I asked if I could hear one. He tee-ta-pat-doo-wapped his way through a few bouncy bubbly rhymes and the songs were silly so we laughed. Cute girls with handsome guys all dressed to the nines like something between flamingos in dance and peacocks brandishing their beauties walked all around. I caught flashing eyes and the subtle, instant, vanishing smile we all smile when we see something we like but realize the thing is looking back. I smiled casually and laughed at Hobo’s jokes, and confusion mixed with concern danced in the eyes of the youths all around. “What is this put-together young man doing sitting with that hobo?” they thought each to themselves. Their concern was replaced with curiosity when it was apparent I was enjoying my unorthodox company, and the whole world was a better place for the camaraderie, displaying that we are all much more alike than we are different. My eyes searched hungrily and cautiously in the night for beautiful parts of beautiful women to look at as they walked around me. Hobo and I shared a kinship in the appreciation of the finer parts of the female form, as was clearly evidenced by the subjects of many of his verses.

I became suddenly aware it was time for me to leave. I implored Hobo to tell me his real name, and again he insisted it was Hobo. I told him to call me Hippie, and we bumped knuckles. On my walk back to the venue, I noticed I was missing an earplug, a priceless commodity for a lifelong Hippie desiring to live a long life. Unashamed of how I appeared to strangers, as everyone should rightly be, I laid my face flat on the ground to get a better vantage point for searching. A young lady asked me what I was looking for and offered to smoke some of my weed. I told her she only could if she helped me find the earplug. We didn’t find it, but I smoked her up anyway. After all, it wasn’t my weed to begin with. She invited three of her friends to join in the quick streetside sesh, and for a second, I hesitated. Knowing I would want more later, I didn’t know if I would have enough for everyone. They were all very tall and in platform boots to boot. I had never seen anyone in my life so big and gay. I stuck with my gut and smoked everyone up. The one on my left with the fake fingernails held my hand when he passed the one hitter back and gave a lusty, imploring look. I beamed back my light of life smile that told people “no” so kindly that they loved you even more for not saying “yes” and ran off into the show.

Taking the stairs in one great leap I landed as the second song of the five I’d like to hear began, but the crowd had thickened in my absence. I ducked along the bar on the side of the venue and got some whiskey and a water. My mouth was beginning to dry out from the fervor and the wine and the smoke, but there were rhythms practically crying for hips to sway to them. I tucked myself into a corner spot at the front and danced like no one was watching. They were, of course. When lightning strikes you turn your head to look. It is simply in our nature, and I took no offense to their lingering eyes. The novel danger of the stranger dancer wore off quickly for everyone, and we were back to the Universal Flow. Eyes closed and half open all at once I spun myself around and jammed. Oh boy, these speakers could blow, and I let go. I zigged fast, and zagged slow, jumped up high, and dropped down low.

Songs later, my ultimate and truly most pressing concern was the nearly fatal levels of cottonmouth I was experiencing, but I would be damned on a cross before I paid another seven dollars for bottled tap water, so I stole away into the bathrooms which were communal and coed in the sink space. I shared flirting smiles and side eye glances with a beautiful thick-thighed blonde in a skirt while I waited for the patron at the sink to finish. Without missing a beat, I bent my head to it and drank like I’d never see the well again. Water poured down my chin and soaked my mustache. My belly swelled, and I filled my mouth before departing. When I turned around, blondy tightskirt was appalled. I smiled cutely again as water dropped from my beard, and, without breaking eye contact, began to gargle. She turned away disgusted, and I roared laughter inaudibly.

Back on the dancefloor, I struggled for my spot again. The crowd was packing in tight as only fools will do. I slipped through and slithered back to my cozy corner spot with a partially blocked view. There were no visuals at this show, and my eyes were mostly closed, anyway. The crowd cheered as the second opener finished his set, which was salvaged only by using the headliner’s music, but I thanked him with whooping applause anyway. We all have our own tastes and more than my own preferences I love when artists make art. Opiuo stepped out and the crowd roared their approval. I let loose a few screeching whistles to let god and everyone know I meant business tonight. He lifted up some drumsticks and began.

Immediately, I knew this rhythmic drumming to be the main bassline of my favorite song, a song which is so slow and takes so long to build I guessed it wouldn’t be played. In fact, the timing couldn’t have been better. I and all the crowd needed to cool down after the previous set, which ran probably twenty-five beats per minute faster than Opiuo’s average. Excitement swelled within my body and my lungs begged to cry out in approval, but I knew it was poor form to laugh during a comedian’s setup when you’d guessed the punchline. Instead, I bit my knuckles and swayed with my eyes closed. The music reached out an invisible hand requesting the reins on the chariot of my soul, and I gladly handed them over as the saxophone blared out over the crowd. Now, everyone knew what I knew, and they cheered their approval. Someone I had met previously told me this was the song he was waiting for. I tried to say the same, and only mustered a face-splitting grin and a knuckle-bump. Nothing more needed to be said; my eyes closed and my body faded away.

Swaying back and forth with my whole life and soul at the beck and call of the energy of the Universe blasting through me out of the 808s, everything became immediately obvious to me at once like a meditation. Though I had not the control to wrap the words of mankind around these revelations, I knew that everything was good and always would be, even though bad things would happen. It was all shining love and good feelings refracting through shattered glass of misunderstanding and painful upbringings. We were all tiny fragments of the whole same thing and yet we treated each other like enemies and if only I could bottle up all this love and pour it out for the world to drink in then all would be cured again and the world would fade away into that multicolored singularity of all that ever was, is, or will be, but of course I can’t do that, so I’ll just pour out love into every single thing I pass in life from this moment on until my last.

And then, the bass dropped, and the music whipped the reins of my psyche and soul into a frenzied sprint through the endless avenues of the entirety of existence. I clenched my teeth and my fists and bobbed my head and weaved with every full-, half-, quarter-, eighth-, and sixteenth-beat until every strand of my corporeal form was electric and vibrating. Only then did I realize that another madman of the night had come out of the crowd while my eyes were closed, and I could feel that he was being driven by the same fiery charioteer. We were brothers in that moment, and my revelation coalesced solidly in my mind.

The music continued, and eventually the fourth of my top five began to play. It was upbeat, joyous, and bouncy compared to the one he opened with. I beamed so bright I thought my teeth might shatter as I high-fived strangers and howled into the night. Following each howl, a hooping holler would roll through the crowd out from me, and I felt good knowing I encouraged others to give love to this fantastic musician who was indeed quite deserving of it. My brother from the first song returned with about eight water bottles for him and all his friends. Once he passed them all out, he turned around to me and gave me the last. I thanked him gladly and downed it in a gulp. As if waiting for the extra water, my face began pouring sweat. The song ended, and the reins of my soul were handed back to me. My corporeal form was heavy with gravity and moisture, and now with the reins back in my hand I realized how tired I was. I became suddenly aware it was time for me to leave.

So I left. With maybe more than an hour of show, and one last song of the five to hear, I had gotten everything I needed out of the whole experience, and I could feel in my bones there was elsewhere in the world I was needed. On the street, I took another long drag of my dugout and popped in my headphones. I prepared to dance my way down the street to some new tunes when I was struck by an idea. There was a specific song I needed to hear, but I had no clue which one it was. Instead of hitting shuffle on my Spotify likes, I gave it a scroll. When the scroll stopped, the song jumped out at me. I pressed play, and on hearing the very first note I knew this was the one. Lyrics are not of great importance to me, generally, and this song was no different. It wasn’t until this writing that I took the time to read them and realized why it must have been the Universe called me to listen to them that night. Regardless, at the time all the lyrics were to me was a vocal instrument among other instruments used to convey a feeling. And I felt that feeling with everything I got.

Tears burst from my eyes in great, silent streams. I danced slowly, sadly around in circles taking careful steps like a swordfighter in training. I spun my arms and hung my head back as hot tears of sorrow streaked down my cheeks and into my hair. Like the flipside of the coin found during my previous reverie in the night, I cried for every broken heart of the world. Every time a connection was missed or a hurtful lie told; every time two lovers were torn apart by the circumstances of this awful world; every time some “one” spurned some “other” simply for being unknown to them at the time; every hateful belief held in the dark corners of an unsearched heart; every bomb that has ever exploded and every dying soldier crying out for his mother and his home in the unfeeling wasteland of a battleground. I cried for them all. In my fervent and sacred weeping in that warm, busy night of Austin’s downtown, only one man passed by me.

The song ended, and like a valve shutting closed my tears, and all desire to continue crying, stopped. I wiped my eyes dry and found that in my sad dancing I had stopped in front of a mural on a tin shipping container. The long wall was broken in half by a vertical line. On the left side was a large, lone crow perched proudly upon a limb, with detailed, geometric shapes filling the entirety of its background. On the right side, there was a single-lined heart with the word “Love” written in cursive inside. The bare tin of the shipping container wall shone lustrously and uncovered throughout nearly all of that side.

I contemplated the two drawings for a while. They felt like two of the mutually exclusive choices I had been and am facing in life: to continue to beat and bum around this world alone, free to go where I desire and where the Universe instructs me to, unhindered by the feelings of another, but unsupported by their love; or to find a mate and sacrifice part of my individual self at the altar of the partnership and receive the gifts of love and comfort that come with that path. I looked at the crow and saw that it and its background were finely detailed, especially in comparison to the barren heart of love. I looked at the word Love written in cursive and saw my own journey with the concept reflected in the way it swoops, beginning high and swooping higher, before dropping precipitously down into the low, effortful tumblings of the lowercase letters. I looked again at the crow and wondered why it was that he was alone. I looked again at the heart and wondered why the artist had apparently never finished the piece. I wondered which was painted first, and if they were even painted by the same person. I breathed deeply into my belly and exhaled a lion’s breath before walking away.

Realizing it was late and getting later, I decided on a scooter ride home. After all, I love the damn things and they’re especially good with some music and just a little bit of intoxication. I mapped out a rough route home and began, shuffling my Spotify likes. Being as late as it was and given that the route I had chosen was a way’s away from the beaten path, I had the entire road to slalom. I swayed back and forth to the beat in my ears. I wobbled in tight waves before swinging my turns wide and leaning heavily out of them. I even cut an angle on the left side of my tires when one of my slalom turns, perfectly uncontrolled, skidded sideways across the street before popping me back up. I felt as free as a falling snowflake. So free, in fact, that I became terribly lost. I realized I was lost when suddenly the road disappeared, and I came to be staring at a lakeside park. There was a park bench facing the water when I understood that though I may be lost I was exactly where I needed to be. I quit the ride, took a seat, and stopped my music.

Staring out over that water with the ripples flowing quietly making the reflected light of the other half of Austin dance silently in the night, I saw god again. I realized, just like Japhy Ryder, that whether I was hiking up a tall mountain many dozens of miles from civilization or buried knee-deep in the heart of a metropolis like Austin, “it’s all the same old void, boy,” and damn if it ain’t all just so beautiful anyways. I said a prayer for the world to realize that much and drank deeply from the fountain of lifelove I had found. I meditated on the cold metal bench before resting my back against a tree. I slept there in the warm Austin night with my ankles crossed and my hands in my pockets. When I awoke, the sun was still sleeping, and my scooter was still charged. I rode home in silence, tasting the wind on my tongue.

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