An Ode to Cali

I’m back in San Francisco for a little while, sitting in the window seat and reveling in the morning. A big cruise ship rests at Pier 27 and I put myself in a state room for a moment, gazing through a porthole at the pastel hills of San Francisco and I can feel how I would long to live in such a lovely landscape. Outside this window, hummingbirds are doing that funny thing, hovering, lifting out of view, then dropping like little green daredevils into the fig tree below.

I have been spending so much time in the Midwest, helping family members, that people have started asking why I don’t move there. My ring of friends there is wider than in San Francisco, and the city of Omaha is finally booming, with art galleries and concerts and restaurants flourishing. The standard of living is gentler there, and even the location is more conducive to touring bands.

After entertaining the idea for a while, I came to a conclusion that is all the more solid as I sit in the window, listening to the crows and watching the pale silver clouds drift over Berkeley. I am home here.

It’s funny to think of myself growing up in Southern California, never feeling like I belonged. Longing to go to college in New York and settling on Santa Cruz for financial reasons. Graduating from college a year early to finally run away from this place. I loved New York, and believed I would be there forever. When I came back to California it took me a couple of years to wrestle with that decision.

Then, one day, I walked outside my apartment to go to dinner, and the sky was that deep jewel blue that is all the more profound behind the white buildings set out beneath. The parrots were squawking and the ships in the bay were lowing as a ribbon of fog snuck stealthily through the Golden Gate. The spires from Peter and Paul caught the last of the sunset in their golden gild, sabers of beauty saluting the moon. My last resistance to this place rolled down the hill and left me.

When I am here, I feel inspired in a way unique to here. I imagine that when rent control finally ends and I am forced out of this apartment, I will find another place to call home that I love equally or more. After years of traveling, however, I realize that no where feels like home more than California.

It’s an intangible thing, this feeling of belonging to place. I have always reveled in being peripatetic, and my life as a musician is a glory to that. For years I have traveled down roads and spent time in cities new to me. I have played in all states but one, and as I arrive in each place my imagination runs wild. Perhaps this city will draw me in, ring a bell of familiarity and catch me mysteriously in its lovely web. The Carolinas, Minnesota, Sedona, Wisconsin, Chicago, Oregon… all have held this fantasy in my heart. What would be like to set down roots in a place in which I know no one, a place with no connection to any part of my life up until now? I admire the brave immigrant who moves to a place knowing nothing of it. I feel the thrill of discovery when I imagine that.

Through all of that, sitting here, I realize how much I appreciate this land, this state, this coast as connected to something deep in my cells that feels like comfort. The light seems more golden and the window through which I see the world is clear and familiar. The air is softer and my physical being breathes more freely than anywhere else. I often have the thought that if every human experienced this light, this air, this landscape, this sky daily, there could be no question of war or of unrest.

I imagine the folks in traffic on the 101 feel differently at the moment, but I’m sticking with this vision.

We think this days in terms of politics, and of bonding together with the like-minded, and I imagine that my connection to California will seem to some as representative of this mentality. I want to be clear that finding our home in no way means denying the same experience to anyone else. It’s not the best place in the world, due only to a special few. It is just the best place for me.

My friends in Nebraska for the most part share my political views, if the greater culture there doesn’t. My friends in California vary in their views, but the energy of the place feels more expansive, probably because I understand it more deeply. I guess I can’t rule out the political influence when choosing to live here, but it’s never at the forefront of my mind.

My writing about politics is usually vague and yet I imagine that my leanings are pretty obvious. I don’t know the answer to anything, and I don’t study enough history or economics or policy to say I have a handle on any problem or solution. I have strong opinions of course, but I struggle with wanting to speak out versus contributing to more division. What I find most interesting is to see how discussing politics both aggravates and feeds on fear.

I have a friend on social media posting long tirades against people who vote as I do, people with my background and ideals and beliefs. I know he has been troubled recently with personal struggles, and politics seems to be something on which he hangs all of his unexpressed rage, frustration of feeling left out, and mostly, fear. I watch and worry about him as he seems to spin off the rails with every political rant, and I see myself as I get offended, as I watch my own frustration and anger rise and fall.

It is necessary to speak truth to power, to call out injustice, to make clear statements of right and wrong. These things I believe. How we do this is not as black and white as I have previously believed.

I see this in my vocal friend. When I read his posts, I see that they are mostly about the issue of gun control. From there, he spews vitriol on all of the associated issues, and people, and political parties, and human rights issues, that seem to branch off from that one issue. Does he change my mind about gun control? Actually this is an issue for which I am relatively moderate. I am more open to discussion about this one than you would maybe expect. Do his aggressive posts make me believe that he should have a gun? Certainly not. He is not convincing me or helping his case.

Perhaps I am weak for not confronting this person, for not giving it right back to him. What I choose instead is to cultivate my own peacefulness, my own joy, my own compassion and comport myself in the world the way that seems most true to me. Confrontation after confrontation does nothing to help anything. I might write him a letter, check in and make sure that he’s okay, that he knows that I am here to appreciate his sweet heart that I know that he has. A political discussion helps no one when one person is blinded by anger and fear. A personal discussion may be the only thing that would call him from his animosity and open his mind to other ways of being.

In the life of the band, I have steered clear of posting about politics, not because I feel at risk for hurting the draw of the band, but because I respect my fans to puzzle it all out for themselves. When I get on stage, my goal is Oneness. When I get on stage, my goal is to express my power, as a woman, as a drummer, as a Led Zeppelin lover. When I get on stage, I want my every expression to be one of love. This is my truth to power, reflecting my goal of unity. In love, in compassion, we can overcome the struggles of the small issues so we can open to the possibilities of solutions for the largest of problems.

Politics is about community and how small lives add up to the collective. The microcosm becomes the macrocosm. I release my fear and prejudice believing that this will affect the greater good.

How I admire those who speak out forcefully and elegantly enough to make a difference. Somehow, I have never mastered it. Every time I state a strong belief it feels as if all I’m doing is adding to division and the energy of the big problems, which is that no one speaks of the bigger picture in all the haranguing about the small stuff.

Just so we’re clear about the way I see the issues of the day, I vote according to the Golden Rule: I will treat others as I would like to be treated.

I hope to develop fearlessness. This is the point of life, I believe. When I don’t write about specific issues, or call people out, it’s because when I do these things I feel myself dragged into this ocean of fear that keeps us separate. I feel manipulated, clutching to my sense of my small self and forgetting that to see each person as holy elevates us all, beyond these political and philosophical differences.

In Nebraska, I am subject to a family member’s daily habit of the local news. I haven’t watched network TV in years, and I limit my news intake. In Omaha, as I am preparing dinner, I hear the drama unfold, and I am always baffled by it. Why do I need to see the woman weeping for their child? Why do I need to see the car wreck, the humiliation, the murderer? I’ve never understood it. Every night, a woman has been abducted. Every night, some grisly event. I steel myself each dinnertime for what is going to be dumped into my brain. Every night I wonder, what is the point of this?

I flew to the East Coast, and I was on a train sliding up the Hudson River, and we passed a lovely little cottage near the train tracks, in a wooded glen. A thought came through my mind, “that would be a place you could get abducted.”

Yikes! The Local News had lodged that little nugget in my brain. I’m a woman, I should be vigilant for abduction locations, and every sweet locale holds terror just slightly at bay.

Ah, here is the point. To keep me in fear. To keep me terrified. To see humans as brutal, evil, other. To realize my vulnerable place as a woman so I don’t leave the house. To realize I must need a gun to protect myself. To keep fear after fear blooming and blossoming. I should never leave this house, I should protect what’s mine and myself at any cost, lest my story be chosen to be set out as an example of the folly of letting our guard down.

Needless to say, the local news doesn’t come on in my apartment in San Francisco. I don’t need to hear about all that every night. I don’t need to have more fear instilled in me, I’m trying to let it go. I have a healthy self-protection instinct and street smarts of having lived in less than stellar neighborhoods in my life, and I understand potential dangers, but I am certainly not ruled by them, and walk happily down streets.

I also make my peace with the fact of life, which is that anything can happen at any moment to change what is happening now. No amount of spending time in fear will change that fact.

I will not get sucked in to irrational fear. I am meanwhile going to believe that each interaction with a human is an opportunity for connection, for openness, for seeing each other as our highest potential.

Somehow, this is all I can do. I can vote, I can express kindness and yet firm resolve when asked to speak out for policy I believe in, and when I feel I can do nothing else. I will trust that we’re all figuring it out together, even with differing opinions of the small issues.

At heart, I am a California girl because I love the light and the air and this history of folks finding a kind of freedom here. Whatever the current dichotomies and those of history, there is still a hue of openness that I respond to. California is here in my heart, and that doesn’t go away. When I am in the actual place I feel aligned and peaceful and I’m going to keep choosing it as my home, but I am not in any belief that this is the only place, or that here is better than anywhere else. I don’t mean to make some rallying cry against one place and for another. Our preferences for these sorts of debates are so much of what keeps us in misery.

Speaking with love for one place should only open up the field of love for all places. Speaking of my home should not be a desire to force others from it.

I’m a drummer in rock bands. I love this role, because I believe that music can call all our differences together. It is like a glue that connects us as we gather, and I revel in knowing, looking out into the audience as I play, that all our differences fall away when we are in this moment of celebration. What I wish for you, and for me, is unity, peace, compassion, understanding. Clear-minded release of all fear, and speaking those truths we all know. Liberty and justice for all.

***

You can hear me read this on Soundcloud HERE or as an iTunes podcast HERE.

Please consider supporting this writing HERE, and receive guided meditations and other goodies. www.patreon.com/clemthegreat