timekeeper

i am the nightbreaker yet again. fighting sleep like my five-year-old niece. i thought i shouldn't go to bed without singing of the unsung. i had my music class tonight, the latin band, a sporadic thing that's what comes closest in my life to a workout. it is spanish chanting, harmonizing for someone so used to disconnection. it is where i blend in in some productive way, something that contributes to some worthwhile whole, not just a disappearing act.

i am one of the guys, one girl among guys but over years, a guy or a sis, with a sound like theirs, made up of many tongues, not just the obvious ones. there is english and spanish but there is also trumpet and bari sax and bongos and timbales and jokes and moans and looks and gestures. it's ten to fifteen of us in a little room coming together wednesday nights when the jobs or the stresses don't get in the way.

tonight i was energetic cuz i am between work and have had plenty of rest. there is monthly blood rushing thru me and that can throw off the notes sometimes, as if my instrument, this body, is out of tune, an equilibrium thrown off. it wasn't so bad today cuz the blood is a few days underway but there was a little tension in the muscles that can make the sound coming out of me a little sharp and eager. i got to a mellow place at one point going over a phrase with the director and the bassist, over and over, till i forgot the other people in the room and rode the notes, followed them towards something true. that's when the sweat on my forehead cools and i don't make eye contact with anyone cuz i've stopped seeing. it's all about the hearing. my head is tilted in the direction of the giant speaker in the corner and i'm inhaling the sound of me becoming the song.

today i felt my part in the band. we are all crucial pieces and there are times i believe i am not one cuz i'm not holding anything in my hand, except maybe the mic stand, holding onto it to ground me. but in this case i see it is as wrong to think you are nothing, you have nothing to contribute, as it is to think you are everything, that none of it could be without you. i am part of the time-keeping, the coro chant i get to do is often people's favorite timepiece in these songs, the one that is most obvious. what i bring is as essential as the rasp of the güiro or the clang of the cowbell (cowbell of my heart i used to call it). i make something as steady as those beats, something a little smoother even, ghostly words that get broken down into their parts, syllables, notes, spirits, as they are uttered. today i was repeating asi no se quiere a nadie, ah see no seh kee eh reh ah nah dee eh. that's not how you love someone. over and over. that's not how you love someone on a roller coaster of notes. i was hearing it and telling it, inside and outside of it, to me and the band and the walls and the windows. that's not how you love someone. this is how you sing that's not how you love someone.

i'm in that class because of a past love long gone. i abandoned it for a long time cuz i couldn't deal with the memory. but time passed and i have time to keep with a chant and a note that know a better truth than what's past. every time they come out of my mouth new time gets made. it makes me glad to be the savage beast i've always been cuz the cure for me is easy, cliche, well-known. the song soothing me, making me as i make it.