Heather S. Ingemar's Blog, page 3
May 15, 2015
May 13, 2015
Happy Place
Where is your ‘happy place’?
It wasn’t where I thought it was.
If I were the same woman of years past, I would have answered “the stage.”
It’s tidy. Glib. Expected.
But today, with joyful amazement, I realized my ‘happy place’ is
Sunday morning
Sun warming the tent
I slowly open my eyes
Hear the birds singing
Peace
Getting up
Greeting the quiet camp
Renaissance hymns upon my lips.
I think this is how a life well and truly lived should feel:
Certain and joyful.
Tagged: art, happiness, sca, singing, Society for Creative Anachronism
May 5, 2015
Life as a Song
Sometimes, I wish life were like music. No matter what instrument you hand me, no matter what kind of music is playing… I know where to go before I get there. I know what notes to play. I know how to find my niche and how to settle in cozily. I feel the right choices cascading out in front of me, I can hear them in my head and feel them in my fingers long before I ever reach that point in the song.
I wish life were like that. And sometimes it is, sometimes I follow that shining trail of decisions as easily as a 4th interval improvisation on an Irish tune in E dorian. Other times…. well it’s worse than playing a piano chord with your fist instead of your fingers.
But I try. I grab my instrument anyway and I try this combination of notes and that fill and those short cadenzas over there…
I think it’s related to honesty. Because the more I pay attention, the more I’m beginning to see that the times when the notes ‘click’ the best is when I’m not being anything other than Who and What I Am. I’m not trying to BE fancy, I’m not trying to impress. I’m just, Me.
A musician. A musician who wants to play the most beautiful and fulfilling song there is, even if it isn’t perfect.
A musician who, when the double-bar comes, can say “Yeah, I played good,” with the full satisfaction of enjoyment, love of the song, and the personal accomplishment of making it through that tricky section starting on bar 29…
Tagged: life, music, Spirituality, thoughts
April 29, 2015
Music Answers
I was driving home late one night after meeting my sis’s new arrival, a beautiful little girl. It was a scant three months after losing my own son, and as the darkness closed around me and the empty, open road. So desolate was this stretch of highway at 1am, that even the radio refused to pick up a station. I felt distinctly alone. I gasped for air as the tears threatened to overwhelm my vision, and my heart ached for my loss. I began to pray for guidance and comfort with nothing more than an “oh, God, oh, God” on my lips.
Just then, eight bars of heavy metal came across the radio waves, loud and clear as if I was still within city limits:
“You are not alone / I’ll hold you when the road is rough / I’ll be right here when things are tough / You’ll never be alone…”
I almost pulled the speeding car over to the side of the road, so stunned I was.
* * *
I listened to a pastor talk recently about the importance of a personal relationship with our Maker, and I definitely think that is true. Some people find a deep and profound spirituality with sports, or charity, or some other act that really speaks to their heart. Some people sense God clearly guiding them, others see Him in the uncanny, in the coincidental, in the karma and kismet evident in their daily life. However it is, it’s a personal message that helps shape us into the people we need to be.
I’ve always heard Him in music. The first example is only one of many. I can’t even begin to count the number of times I have been driving down the road, or doing something else while thinking about a challenge I’m facing… when suddenly, at the most unbelievable moment, the radio blares some such snippet of a chorus or verse that says exactly what I need to hear in that moment. Or a chord progression that moves my heart in great, unusual distances.
Like last night, I was mentally wrestling with the difficulties of forgiving those who have deeply wronged me — why I have a hard time letting my internal sense of Justice take a rest, why I feel so weak and like a pushover when I offer forgiveness (if it’s the Right Thing to Do), why I am still — repeatedly! — hashing over dumbass details and why it is hard to just Let Go.
No sooner than I ask myself these questions, then the next THREE songs on the radio are about Forgiveness: the importance of it, the peace offered by it, and the strength of it.
Thanks, God. I read you loud and clear.
And I’m a better {happier, more satisfied} person for it.
Tagged: Christianity, faith, God, music, musings, Relationships, Spirituality, thoughts
April 25, 2015
Tall Buildings
I spent the day on the mountain with my boys. We were busy planting oats for our cows’ winter feed. It was a long day, a blustery day, and we were exhausted by the end though satisfied with a good days’ work.
I was reminded of a song a fellow band-mate plays on occasion, about leaving the land and going to work “in tall buildings.”
About how we all think the cubicle job is the way to go.
About how we subvert everything that we are, how we stamp out the beautiful uniqueness of ourselves.
About how we forget the simple pleasures that make our hearts soar.
I saw a post on Facebook the other day about scheduling your priorities versus prioritizing your schedule: how you should make a list of the things you do that give you joy, peace, and fulfillment… then you should make a list of the things that you actually do every day and compare them.
And adjust if necessary. :-)
I think if more of us were honest with ourselves about our heart’s innermost desires, and how those fit with God’s path for us, we would live our lives very differently.
Standing here on this mountaintop — at the end of one long and tortuous chapter and at the beginning of a new and wondrous one — I realize clearer than ever before that this is what I want most:
Music, and LOTS of it.
Family
And the love a good man wants to give me.
Anything else {friends, success, wealth, power, chocolate-peanutbutter milkshakes} is just gravy.
And I’ll be happy forever if I can have my hands in the dirt and never have to go back to work “in tall buildings.”
Tagged: agriculture, beauty, creativity, Farming, healing, life, love, music, photography, songwriting
April 5, 2015
Because He Lives
I died.
The realization startled me today during church, but the truth of it resounded through my body. There are many ways to die, and I did — emotionally and spiritually.
Oh, I was still a breathing human shell — I went to work, I kept the house, I helped on the farm, I bought groceries and paid bills like any other human being you might meet. But for all intents and purposes, I was a walking corpse. My entire world crumbled to ash and life went on without me. My soul had been completely strangled to death.
Today, I feel like Lazarus.
In what I can only really describe as Divine Intervention, the worst hard time of my life slammed against the stone in front of my tomb. The shockwaves of each event rocked it and terrible revelations were like leverage points, inching it farther open. And through it all, it was like God was calling me as loudly as He called Lazarus to life: Come Forth!
And I stepped into the light, the trappings of my old, dead self slipped off like a former burial shroud.
As I stood there in church, the pastor talked about how when you find and accept God, He takes your old heart and gives you a new one. A beautiful, shining new heart that’s ready to be open and trusting and loving and isn’t broken. A vibrant heart that’s ready to Live.
I smiled.
Because I feel it, and I can honestly say that sometimes you have to die, in order to Live.
Tagged: death, Easter, grief, happiness, healing, Jesus, Lazarus, life, loss, love, resurrection, Spirituality, thoughts
March 25, 2015
Honest Love
Lying tangled together in the sheets
I’m suddenly drowning,
amazed,
under the absence
of the masks we used to carry.
Vulnerability stings like a bee,
and I’m dizzy,
unbalanced,
frightened,
heart pounding,
yet falling —
madly and joyfully —
all over again.
Tagged: happiness, love, poetry, vulnerability
March 23, 2015
I Looked for You
March 20, 2015
Coffee With God
Sometimes I talk to God.
I ask Him all kinds of difficult questions:
Why did I have to face this now?
How can I uncover my hidden pieces?
What am I doing here?
I carry on conversations
as if He is right next to me
and we’re drinking
coffee
eating a
blueberry scone
(because I would think God enjoys a good blueberry scone on occasion)
like the best of friends.
Sometimes He answers.
And like a best friend,
it’s not always what I
want
to hear.
Tagged: friends, God, poetry, Spirituality
March 16, 2015
Vanishing Bard
Photo by Morgan Donner, from my audience appeal piece at An Tir’s Kingdom Arts, Sciences, and Bardic event, March 2014.There’s an idea in Classical music, where the music is the centerpiece. Where if you get out of the way of your art, it will speak volumes to those who need to hear it. Where if you allow yourself to be a mere conduit for your craft to pass through you to your audience, it holds greater power.
Because it’s not the performer who matters; it’s the audience and their experience that does. You don’t touch your audience; your craft inspires personal meaning for them. Your notes resonate with events in their own life. Your song helps them make sense of their own world, uncovers forgotten memories, inspires the heart.
The more I play, the more I perform, the more I see it’s not really about taking center stage, it’s not about making a living. It’s not about wresting accolades for your own ego and pleasure, or any of the superficial things I see too many others falling into.
It’s about vanishing. It’s about becoming the song, while the song lasts.
It’s about sharing something meaningful.
* * *
This year, my musical goal is to share. To give my gifts to the universe with joy. To get out of my own way and shine so others can see their own way.
No more performances. Just me, with words on my lips and a tune in my hands.
Tagged: music, performance, philosophy
