Love came for me the other night and took me in. She placed me on her tongue, in the darkness, and let me dissolve until there was nothing left, and she whispered to me all the while about every true thing until I remembered I was the blood in her veins.
I would say to whomever would listen, never forget we are the blood in Love’s veins. We nourish every part of the great body, and the whole body nourishes us. Silence is the telling of this. The wordless, overwhelming joy that inhabits us is all that exists. It is the whole thing– the blood, the heat, the organs, the chemistry, the mind, the movement, the electricity, the tears.
Love came for me the other night to remind me of these things. To say we are real because we were given Life, and the offer will never be withdrawn, and that makes us the blood in her veins. At the time, I was standing in the Orpheum Theater. It was dark in there. The seats are old velvet that still suck up the light. They certainly aren’t there for the purpose of sitting. It’s kind of a joke we shared, we who are the blood and the heat and the glory. It was neon and trembling and we were gathered close. It was pulsing and refulgent.
It’s the feeling of clear joy, unfettered, a river of the stuff, flowing through you top to bottom, flowing through the space around you, flowing in every direction until you’re just an awareness bobbing on the tide in the center of your chest, and you can’t tell if the river is flowing through you or you’re the one flowing, a message to all points, and your memories are drifting off with the current, swirling, bumping into others, into the memories of those who are with you—strangers on another night, but not here, now now—and each one of them a humbling gift. No memory is yours. No memory is not yours. And time is nowhere to be found. Time is doing positive affirmations over in the administrative building, trying to put the pieces back together, pretending this isn’t happening.
Because eternity just pulled rank.
It probably helped I was standing in a darkness riddled with smoke and light, and waves of sound that came swirling through the blood. It probably helped that Metric is a band whose singer wrote a song or two about Love, though it terrified her, but she did it anyway. It probably helped when she confided in us that the modern world crushes her soul, so she has to do things like that. Sing about Love. She confided in us it was humbling to know their songs had found a place to live in our lives. What I think she means is that its humbling to know we were given each other for all eternity. It probably helped that Metric is a band whose mission at this point in their trajectory is to be authentic, to accept their identity as their own and revel in it, to be loving, to be the blood. They should be playing venues ten times the size, but it probably helped that everything is perfect. It probably helped the venue was small and intimate and dressed up like the engine room of a small star. It probably helped Love doesn’t care the route we take.
The glory of a good show is that you forget stuff. You forget you were worried, or ashamed, or uncertain. You forget you have a thought still festering in you like a bad tooth. You forget the momentum of the previous thirty weeks. You forget about the needs of tomorrow, and all the crazy things somebody said that still might happen. And when you forget everything, that’s when you remember the beauty of it all. When the barriers are down, it all comes flooding back. That’s when I have this feeling I call Jesus so present to me I can’t tell which of us is which. We’re just blurred together into one another, and everything else. That one moment has everything etched upon it. Truths appear on the walls. You remember that you’re the blood in Love’s veins.
This year I went to church on St. Paddy’s Day. It was dark, and we came apart and it was holy. I wore earplugs.
They closed with this one, and the video does a much better job than I’ve done here of capturing this feeling. Thanks for a great night, Metric!
Embracing Forever 
Music can transport us back to Eternity, where we are the blood of love. This is one of my favorites of yours Michael, I was transported too as I read each letter and inhaled each phrase.
Eternity just pulled rank, ❤
thank you,
LInda
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Thank you, Linda! Glad you enjoyed it. I know music has been a meaningful part of your own life. Even though the sounds are a little different from one performer to the next, I think the sensation of being swept away and joining together with others is quite similar… And yes, eternity just pulled rank! Such a wonderful feeling…
Peace (and you are most welcome)
Michael
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I am not familiar with this band but I played the video and I like her voice. Reminds me a bit of the lead singer from Renaissance. Very ethereal 🙂
Beautiful post.
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if only i could,
i would sing along
such a song of
love of life
in it’s silence
& deafening
brilliance, Michael 🙂
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Deafening is the word, David. Deafening and silent all at once. It’s the exquisite combination that shows the reality in between… You sing along quite well to the song inside of the song, and I know you carry quite a tune…!
Peace
Michael
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I agree with Linda. Beautiful post Michael. You did a great job of conveying getting lost in joy and love. I’m delighted that the music became your church to allow love to rule. Rock on sweet love! ❤
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Thanks, Brad. It was quite a fun night. Reflecting back on it so much of the experience I think is what we bring to it. I tend to feel this way at music shows, especially by artists whose songs are correlated to the times of my life. There arises something unspeakable, and even though it feels as though it’s a “special” bond, a melding of the music and your inner life, (and in some sense it is), you also discover so many others have this. There’s something we have in common, at or deepest points of awareness, of which we can’t even speak. That is a sublime recognition…
Peace
Michael
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Agreed Michael. What we bring to it, or simply relax and allow joy/love/god to flow. Music and nature can be energies that help us open to connect with ourselves, each other and life. Sublime indeed.
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Oh, what a night that must have been! That moment of being swept away by Love beyond time, space or separation.
“She placed me on her tongue, in the darkness, and let me dissolve until there was nothing left, and she whispered to me all the while about every true thing until I remembered I was the blood in her veins.”
To become Love like that, being “just an awareness bobbing on the tide in the center of your chest” and you can’t tell if the river of clear joy ” is flowing through you or you’re the one flowing.”
This is so beautiful, Michael! As Linda said, “I was transported too as I read each letter and inhaled each phrase.”
How is it that you can make us feel like we were there?! Such talent with words and heart. Thank you for sharing this moment with us.
Loved the video too.
So glad you went to church on St. Paddy’s Day in Boston.
Love and Clear Joy,
Mary
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Thank you, Mary! Glad you liked the video and the song…!
It is amazing to realize we all share this type of awareness. Otherwise no words could take us there, could they? The timing of this show was perfect for me, and I really savored the entire experience. It was like recalibrating my soul or something… and it was nice to bring a few friends along here through this piece…! I loved the energy that Metric brought to the evening, and the way it all just dissolved…
Clear Joy, Passing Through Us All
Michael
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So well put Michael, love is fluid; it flows and carries us over and above any woes we have, it fills our veins, our senses, replaces our eyes and the oxygen we breathe. All love does this to, and for us, whatever its source. Great post. – *nods a lot*.
– Esme upon the Cloud
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Thank you, Esme! I agree, regardless of our vantage point, when Love arrives, it blurs everything together into something familiar to us all… It lightens the load and carries us into new days… Thank you for drifting over this way… The cloud is surely home to a greaty many strains of cosmic melody…
Michael
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That is a beautiful description of a oneness experience. I can picture how you dissolved in the bliss during the concert.
Thanks for sharing.
Peace and joy,
Karin
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Thank you, Karin. It was a wonderful evening, and it still has not worn off… 🙂
Peace and joy to you also,
Michael
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Wow and again Wow! That first paragraph is brilliant and moving and a total hook into reading the rest [not that I would ever not read the rest :)]. We are the blood in Love’s veins. I’d never in a million years have a thought like that, so thank you for sharing it with the rest of us. Thanks too for the video of Metric – a great song. Love as always, Don
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Thanks, Don! Glad you liked it and the video, too! I always appreciate your enthusiasm and the way you smile through the words. Wow! Love to you, too, my friend. We are the blood, flowing and dancing and living and dreaming… I think the concert was like the moment when we flow back through the lung… Oxygenation is quite an extraordinary experience…
Peace!
Michael
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I agree with the above comments… We are the blood in Love’s veins… wow. ❤ I'm not sure my words can convey how beautiful this post is! So I will just leave it at that. 😉 Thanks Michael.
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Thank you, Aleya. I appreciate the words you’ve given here very much… We are the blood, all of us connected to Love’s beautiful heart…
Blessings
Michael
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‘It was pulsing and refulgent.’ Okay, so I had to look up ‘refulgent’ and by the time I got back, the next paragraph was already starting to melt and parts of it flowing in every direction – this curious joy all around. Very nice! I particularly like the thought that Metrics found it humbling to know their music was so popular. It’s this that makes the difference, this joy is not ‘mine’ it just happens and we know it and recognize it fundamentally…
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Thank you, Tiramit… You’re exactly right about the difference it makes for the artist to recognize the fans’ place in creating the entire experience. Sometimes they forget that I think… The way it all flows from relationship… I’ve witnessed a forgetting of this in other artists and it sours it somehow… Metric really seemed to play from a gratitude for what had arisen in that moment, and at one point they brought a group up on stage to sing a song with them. The singer grabbed a girl from the group near the end of the song and had her come to the microphone to finish a chorus, and you could just see she wanted the girl to understand… you are this…
Peace
Michael
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Oh, that is my kind of church! 🙂
What a great tribute to Metric. And I agree with Emily Haines about tuning in to what we want. The incredible joyous energy of that concert shines and flows through your words, Michael. This one made me smile all the way through. Thank you for sharing your gift of feeling that body of Love and expressing it so well.
Much Love and Gratitude,
Kristina
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Hi Kristina,
You read the links, too!!! I’ll borrow a page from Don’s book. Wow, and Wow! Ha! I think she makes a good point there about moving towards what we love, and being comfortable with what that is… I’m glad the joy of the evening shone through here and that it had some soulful liquidity like that.
Love and Gratitude to you also!
Michael
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Ha, thanks Michael. No, do not count on me reading the links, but this was music, and that is different. 🙂
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Ha! Yes… that is different. 🙂
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You are a proper writer, Michael, and this is some of your very best, to my mind. I know that sounds as though as I’m making elitist distinctions, but I do think there are such things as bad art, mediocre art, and good art. Proper writers make good art, and this is it. Myself? I aspire to mediocrity – maybe some day.
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Well, you are a proper friend Hariod, and I thank you from the depths. Though you may aspire to mediocrity, I am sorry to say I see you failing in these ambitions. I surmise it will be difficult for you to achieve such a state with any real alacrity, burdened as you are with the baggage of genius, wit and character.
Just my two cents.
Not that you should let me stand in your way…
With Gratitude for all that you offer us,
Michael
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Hi Michael,
That must’ve been some show! 🙂
Of course it was! I Love how no matter where you are,
Love finds you and gently wakes you… and in your case, turns you
into her lozenge! Speak of the throat chakra becoming you, and vice versa!
I AM the blood and body was said by the One. Brilliant and flowing share…
Thank you.
Much Love, Ka
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P.S. I posted about this blog post on Fimnora’s blog @The Quantum Hermit. She runs a Monday Music Medicine show, and she wanted to know what recent song I (we) had listened to https://fimnorawestcaw.wordpress.com/. Now I’m listening to Metric’s “Pagan’s in Vegas.” Today should just be great, great, great, and if not, quite good, for sure. 🙂 Happy Monday.
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Hello Ka!
Love wakes me often, because I still sleep so well, and so soundly!
Thank you for the kind words, and for the share, and hopefully your day has exceeded all expectations. It certainly got off to a joyous start! Didn’t we discover we both liked Metric once before here? I was thinking you would flow right along with this river… 🙂 We’re all in there of course…! Drifting in the blood of Life…
Joy, Spreading, Taking Flight–
Michael
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Beautifully said. And Metric does put on a great show! I’ve seen them several times.
Much love,
Sarah
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Hi Sarah!
Thank you! They are one of those bands whose live performance seems to trump the recordings. Sometimes when you see a band live you discover that little nuances of songs you really liked couldn’t quite be pulled-off in concert. Like there were more tracks on the album than that many people could actually perform, for instance. Metric seemed the opposite– everything had an added clarity and potency– which was nice. Those are my favorite!
Love to you also,
Michael
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Love the metric… And love your writing.
Cheers.
(I have not forgotten you emails or our long ago promise to share writing. Sorry about not having to been better about it. I will get there.)
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Yeah! Good to see you, O! Thank you for the kind words. Glad you enjoyed it, and all in good time, my friend…
Peace
Michael
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Wonderful writing and topic! Being transported. Perhaps the greatest experience to hope for or, in your case, to achieve. I used to be able to be transported by will. Now, with psychiatric medications, it does not come easily. Congratulations on this one, Michael!
Peace,
Ellen
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Thank you, Ellen. It is hard for me to imagine being transported in such a way by will, but it sounds very nice! It is a great experience to occupy the present without any worry or concern so fully that one is a joyful overflowing. I think the atmosphere of the concert helped, but also think it is an experience we can have most anywhere… I can appreciate the medications wreaking a little havoc with the contributions of the body’s responses, which would be hard.
Peace,
Michael
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Michael so loved this posting my friend.. You transported me into the musical energy that was so vibrant that all of us resonate with.. I Followed the links that you provided and watched several of their musical video’s .. And listened not only to their lyrics but saw the messages being shared in their filming..
The concert must have been awesome 🙂 Thank you for sharing this experience.. Would that we could all hold that vibration of LOVE and share it for eternity with each other.
Blessings
Sue
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Hi Sue,
Thanks for the kind words and for such an in-depth exploration! I’m glad you enjoyed what you found. It was definitely a positive and upbeat show, and being in a smaller venue always makes my experience of watching performers a little more tangible and powerful.
Yes, would that we all hold that vibration of Love, something I try to address in my next piece! Ha! You are one step ahead of me! We all do this quite naturally I think, we just get distracted by all sorts of other concepts, ideas and passing, over-hyped realities… 🙂
Blessings to you also,
Michael
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I always look forward to my catch ups with you Michael, and will look out for your next piece 🙂
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What a great way to tell the story of a great night. I wish it’I was there (no creepiness intended in that comment) however the way you write just makes me be present in your words and in this case the events. My move now, rediscover my Orpheum Theatre and my Metric. It’s all around us!
Peace, Harlon
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Hi Harlon,
None taken, my friend. We would have had a great time. Straight chillin’! I’m glad the words gave you a glimpse, and yes, it was a microcosm of what is all around us. Concerts are interesting. The lights go down. Everyone opens their heart space and donates it to the cause. All for one and one for all!
Peace
Michael
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I know, I know, had this one in my archives and waited to see it on the big computer to give it it’s full due. I’d never heard of this band but loved this and the way you captured the moment of being a part of the music, something I hope everyone will someday get a chance to experience. I know my or should I say several moments were spent in the company of John Denver and The Moody Blues (too many times to count) but I always likened it to a religious experience, joy, tears, the whole gamut. Sorry I took so long…glad I waited as it was well worth it 🙂
peace and songs out loud,
K
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Hi Kim,
Glad you enjoyed it! Yes, a bit like a religious experience. I can’t explain it, how music can release such emotions from within us. And that’s okay! I felt like I knew myself better when I left than I did when I arrived. Ha!
To knowing ourselves so blissfully!
Peace and Love
Michael
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