Disclaimer: This blog post is going to make sense to very few people, if anyone at all. This is Jules’ attempt to rationalize the primal.
When I have moments where stimuli get really overwhelming, there are two things that I can get completely lost in and it has the most amazing soothing and calming affect on me. This affect is on a primal level. These two things are water and music. I have written before about my love affair with music. I have also said that when it comes to expressing emotion, dance does this most effectively as it allows me to combine to of my favourite things: movement and sound. But I am not talking about outward expression of emotion here. I am not talking about ways that I find it possible for me to relay to others what I cannot on a rational level. I am speaking about a primal affect water and music have on me. Something that I get completely swept up in as this “something” swells up inside of me, awaking a part of me that few can touch, let alone see. It is almost tantric.
When the outside world gets too much, when the outside vibrations and stimuli vibrate out of control, when I feel the world is spinning faster than it should, when I feel I am a microsecond out of sync with reality, when my brain gets ever so twitchy, I can submerge into water or into music and vibrate on a different level, a primal level, a comforting level, a precognitive / prenatal level. Now even so things are awakened and stirred within me on a subatomic level where as I feel I am vibrating from the inside out and if the vibrations do not cease, I will be split apart and turned into the spaces separating these vibrating subatomic particles within me, I am calm. I am at peace. I am at rest. I am light. I am heavy. I am tingly. I am here and I am elsewhere. This despite the fact that within me I am moving faster than the speed of light and at any moment the forces that bind all of the particles that hold me together will be ripped apart and scattered throughout the cosmos, floating in perfect freedom. Time and space become no more. Freedom.
Sometimes I wonder if this has anything to do with a subconscious awareness of living surrounded by water. I am going to describe how I achieve this chaotic, primal bliss with water. Water from the sound of rain to the sound of a creek or river, the sound of the waves on the ocean, the sound of water as it is poured from a tap or just of water, calm me. Submersion does this most effectively. When the world is twitchy, I run a bath. I fill the tub as full as it will go. And then I will submerge myself in the water so that only my nose is out. The world disappears and all I hear is the sound of my breathing, whooshing of the beat of my heart and the odd muffled noise from the outside world. I often wonder if that is what is sounds like to a baby in utero when they hear the rhythm of their mother’s breathing and heart accompanied by a few muffled noises from the world outside. Whatever it is, it brings me peace as my rational self flys out of my body leaving nothing but the vibration of the primal.
Before I was born, I was surrounded by music. This carried through my entire life. My mom may have been very horrible on many level, but she was a brilliant musician, both artistically and technically. There was not a time in my life where there was not music. I find music freeing. If I am having a bad day, I can put on music and escape. Now for the whole, music offers me specific emotional releases. I can say this song causes me to feel this way because of this. But then there are those reality shattering pieces that cause my body to sing and vibrate on that primal level which can also be accomplished by being completely submerged by water. As I listen to one of these pieces now (Beethoven’s Symphony No 7) I wonder if it is because the rhythm and waves of the music mimic and simulate that of the rhythm and waves causes by the beating of a heart or the lungs as they expand and collapse as they inhale and exhale, but they just carry me away to this whole other place. I am sure there is some way to test this hypothesis but you know what, these are one of the few cases where I don’t care how it works or why, I just need to know that it does.
Why am I typing all this gibberish and stuff that when I am back and grounded firmly in reality will probably not make any sense to be either? Because of the awesome Denise Hudson and her bringing Nimrod to my attention. Within less than a minute of listening to it, I was ripped away to this other place. This primal place where nothing exists. Freedom. She tweeted to me “the part between 50 seconds and a minute describes a pretty deeply encoded part of my personality I can’t put into words.” to which I responded, “you know what! I think I get it! And very shortly I am about to blog as to what it does for me and then you can tell me if I have some idea of exactly what you are talking about!” And you know what, I probably failed miserably at trying to rationalize and articulate this because I do not think there really is a way. Especially when I am in my current state of vibratic Euphoria.
wow. i don’t have words. as i’ve said. in words.
so just … thanks. because you DO have words.
i liked both posts. a lot.
i guess ‘thank you’ is two words.
i’m done now then..
nightnight