Songwriting in thin places

a quick musing on Irish mythology, one of my forgotten poems, and being a river

"I remember you falling into my river, and I remember your little pink shoe."

I am continually perplexed and amazed by the out of body nature of being creative. The phenomenon of flow state, the heightened and sudden rush of emotion that can translate effortlessly from body to medium. Recently while listening to the podcast On Being (I recommend it if you don’t already listen), the wonderful Krista Tippett makes a brief mention of “thin places”, which caught my interest. It’s an ancient Celtic spiritual term used to describe moments or locations where the barrier between our world and all that lies beyond it becomes porous. Dreams, parallel universes, the afterlife, chaos and abyss all seeping through the cracks of reality. The Celtic spirituality was also deeply connected with nature, believing in the unity of earth and presence of the divine in all things. It’s not surprising to me that there are so many ties between this belief and not only nature, but also magic. I think of magic as being always around us in these forms of the natural world and the mysterious things that occur within it. We can’t harness it, but we can take part, witness, and be in awe. I strive with my creative efforts to find this magical space. Not trying to be a creator in an authoritative sense but in a harmonious and unobtrusive sense.

Another way one could interpret thin places is that they are present when facing a particularly difficult season in life, or being somehow close to death. When you are incredibly based and broken down, your experience of reality can weave through the liminal “otherworld” space. Life can feel so surreal that it is maybe touching something that isn’t here. For those of us who have had near death experiences, or experienced the loss of someone very close to us, this concept is not very hard to grasp. There is a real sense of floating outside reality. It gets difficult to look at the typical conventions of life on earth and take anything very seriously. This state of being for me has become very familiar. It is beautiful, but it is also challenging because it seems no human system is constructed to function prioritizing and respecting unity, nature, and the notion that there is more to life other than money or power. It doesn’t serve the big machine to be concerned with these things.

My morning hike. It’s nice how even though we lose the leaves we gain so much light through the branches.

All of this mythology tracks really uncannily with how I have come to relate to songwriting. I have never felt very in control of my ability to write. It is as if I am static like the riverbed and the water flows over me when it rains. It is very difficult to explain but very obviously felt. I think there are parts of life experienced beyond the 5 senses. Love, death, and birth would be some obvious ones, but more unassuming events can be equally impossible to describe. Most of the music I have made I can’t really remember the writing process. I think of myself as a songwriter but I may more accurately be a channel. Not for god or something divine or even special at all, but really just for the energy all around that makes up here and there and beyond.

As always I don’t have any answers to the why or how. I don’t think that is really the point here. I think there is a beautiful communion in just trying little by little to focus more on these things, to find a thin space and sit in it for a while…

Here’s a poem I found in my hard drive from I don’t know when... It feels relevant.

i am cold, sitting on your piano bench 
does grief run like the rainbow 
light 
into the ground and deep into earth 
does it pass through rock and lava 
and through body and strong trees
is it a visitor like the dimensions and the particles 
of reality that we see today 
illusion and a desperation 
to wake up and say i am crashing don’t call me
humans please 
terrible things happen 
i am finding it easy to accumulate knowledge 
and difficult to use it for anything 

If anyone has reading or listening or research recommendations for diving further into otherworldly liminal spaces referenced throughout history please let me know in the comments. I am particularly interested in ancient and magical things with an emphasis on nature.

Here’s a photo of me on a very nice beach taken by my amazing partner, Véra. Can’t combine enough letters to express the gratitude for this scene, our health, and safety.

I don’t like to post a lot of photos of myself on the internet, but this one feels like a good way to simply say “Hello” and “Until next time”.

mle