We can express the feelings we do not know how to say

#12 - Writing, in its various forms, becomes something the Writer can not live without

"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."
-Henry David Thoreau

I had a hard time growing up because I did not feel loved or supported by anyone close to me. I truly felt like I was alone in a vacuum of despair, and I had no other way to express how I felt other than to write about it. I had no idea what I was doing, but my impulse was to write about how I felt in some sort of a veiled poetic code so even I could hide from the feelings when needed.

In my younger years I scribbled dark poetry and short stories about jumping off of buildings into notebooks and never shared them with anyone because I was afraid they would discover my pain. I viewed myself as a victim of many circumstances, and did not want to be further victimized, so I hid within my comfortable shadow for years.

Most of the writings centered around being confused and scared about the gravity of life, deciding to jump from a rooftop to take the pain away, and then having epiphanies about the sanctity of life which were only realized as I careened toward the ground after having made my final decision. While I wrote about suicide often, each piece ended with the realization that I didn’t truly want to die, I wanted to feel alive. But then, my emotional decision would come full circle - splat.

Over time, as the website Soundcloud became a thing, I would spend hours scouring hip hop groups for instrumentals, and would contact their producers to ask permission to record my own voice over them. I used a Digital Audio Workstation called Garageband on my first laptop computer starting in 2005, and recorded makeshift hip hop tracks by rapping into its shoddy built in microphone.

Over the years my passion for music grew, I started making my own beats, and I continued to use the medium to express all of the feelings I felt I had no other way to say. Every time I made a new song, I felt reprieve from the crushing depression I lived with for my entire life until I reached my 30s, which is when I finally began to figure out how to live in ways that naturally started to erode the depression through direct action.

My purpose in writing shifted as my mind evolved and I began working in longer form to convey more complex ideas. I began collecting monumental experiences to write books about them, as well as weekly essays about Consciousness here on this publication. (Thank you for reading 🤠) But one fact remains the same…

Writing is not a passing fling in my life. It is not a phase. I am a writer through and through, and I absolutely need to write in order to live. Just like I need daily sunlight in my naked eyes, to elevate my heart rate with exercise, to eat food and drink water, and to play with my puppy every single day. Without these practices, particularly the expression that happens through writing, I would not be truly living the way I need to in order to feel alive.

When I make music these days, I mostly sit fingerpicking my guitar while singing about life to my pup as he tries to chew on my toes. One day though, he will chill out and nod his head to the tunes, I just know it 😉

With the experiences I have created for myself in the past few years under my belt, my perspective on life has greatly evolved and depression is long behind me, left in the dust kicked up behind my bicycle wheels. The words that now flow through the creative channel within my crown mostly tell the stories of the Great Force of Consciousness that I have no idea how to work into conversations with folks who mostly want to talk about politics and the weather. These essays and my music are still a vessel for the things I need to say but do not know how to in any other way than through art that my readers and listeners choose to experience on their own time.

This week I am pleased to share a folk song I wrote and recorded in December, just before 2022 began. The song calls the listener to embrace the understanding that while the body dies, the energy that powers it will live on infinitely. And that the fear of death is simply a well-veiled fear of living.

Thank you for listening, the lyrics are below the video if you would like to read along.

“there is no end”
by Sean Colin

You and I, our soul will never die
You and I, our soul will never die
You and I we both were born to fly
I’m saying you and I, our soul, will never die

Life it can be bitter, babe,
But it can be so sweet
And you’re the only one that
Gets to decide just what you’ll think.
If you don’t know who you are,
Then they’ll tell you who to be,
And then you might just come undone
Trying to be too many things.
If you open all the doors
To all the truths locked in your mind,
The demons will all suffocate
Without the fear to bind.
You have to truly love yourself to travel deep inside,
And when you have the strength to go
Be sure to bring a light.
There are bats perched in the shadows
Of the cave and they can fly,
But they can never hurt you
Once you look them in the eye.

Cus darlin’ you and I , our soul will never die
You and I, our soul will never die
You and I, we both were born to fly
Honey you and I, our soul, will never die

You might think that because they’re gone
That they are outside of your reach,
But grief is here to show us
The lessons that love has to teach.
Energy it never dies,
It’s always recycling.
And every thing will meet its end,
Yet love will always be.
You and I, we are both stars
In the cosmic sea,
And we both know, deep down inside,
That this life is supposed to mean something.
But it’s hard to trust your instincts
When you’re drowning them in that drink.
And staying up all night
Pouring your tears into the sink.
The image in the mirror,
It will show you everything,
But you must be truly present,
If you want the gift to see,
That naked in this moment
We have everything we need.

Cus darlin', you and I, our soul will never die
You and I, our soul will never die
You and I we both were born to fly
Oh honey, you and I, our soul, will never die

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For this week’s practice I invite you to work on some sort of creative self expression that will allow your soul to speak through you. At this time, Earth is not the most comfortable planet to live on, but perhaps the Great Force of Consciousness is calling us to action by upping the pressure to live that it places upon us. Perhaps these surreal times and events are meant to encourage us to let go of the great weights we carry in order to remember how to fly.

Journaling, writing music, doing martial arts, drawing, painting, dancing, and many other expressive activities, can help us to express the things we do not know how to say otherwise. This week we will work on things that make us feel like we are alive.

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Drop a note in the comments to let the rest of us know what you are working on, would ya? I am imagining my like-minded readers finding collaborative partners to build their dreams with, and oooooo-eeeeEEE, I can already feel the magic brewing.

Whatever you choose to work on, have fun with it, and do your best not to judge your creation! The point is simply to create, not to decide if your creation is “good” or not.

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If you are asking yourself, “Who the f&#@ is this guy and why am I sitting here reading what he has to say”, then start here at #1.