Dreamweaver

secret city woods and the great beyond

I’ve been thinking lately about the role belief has in our perception of reality. I’m not talking specifically about religion, though that definitely falls under this umbrella. I mean that the amount a person believes in something can make that thing “true” or “real.” I use quotes there because to follow this train of thought, one must already be of the mind that truth and reality are subjective ideas. Don’t go trying to tell a judge that, by the way. It’s not that radical an idea though, even for you data driven minds out there. Science has changed its truths throughout the millennia same as anyone else. How many poor bastards have been burned at the stake for suggesting the Earth revolves around the sun? Truth and fact have always been malleable ideas. I doubt they exist outside of human consciousness. The world outside our brains, what people often call “the natural world” (the quotes here are because in my mind there is nothing outside the natural world. Humans are as natural as a prairie) has no need for frivolous ideas like truth. There is only food, territory, and procreation. I think we are not as evolved from that mindset as some of us would like to believe, and a lot of the drama that unfolds on the human stage nowadays can be linked to this small handful of motives. Kind of like what we used to say about Kevin Bacon: I bet you can’t find more than a few degrees of separation between anything that happens now and the basic needs of animal nature.

A while back we had a Lakota friend running lights for our band. He seemed to feel uncomfortable after each show and one night on the bus I asked him what was up. Our stage design at the time consisted of three massive owl heads, glowing eyes and all, suspended above and behind us. My friend explained to me that in his system of belief the owl was a sign of impending doom. He would not celebrate a walk in the woods that was interrupted by the flight of an owl. That poor guy was looking up at those devil birds every night, building up who knows how much bad mojo. Not only that, but our band has goddam owls on everything! The negative connotation of the owl is as real to that man as the Christian version of heaven is to my 95 year old grandparents. To them it is not a question of if, but only of when. My belief structure has never had that kind of certainty, and I envy it.

What got me thinking about this the other day was a simple sit on some tall grass and snow in the sunshine. There is a lake near my house and upon its winter ice I run my dogs daily when I’m home. Across the lake from where we start is a patch of what we call “city woods.” There’s no way for humans to access these trees except from the lake. I don’t really want to clarify that any further as I’d like this place to remain as secret as it is. Suffice to say, I’ve stumbled upon a little oasis in the sprawl, and I’ve been exploring it since we moved in a year and a half ago.

I had a dream a few nights back in which I was walking through those very woods with my dogs. In this dream I picked up a walking stick and when I carried that stick all sorts of magical things took place. When I set it down the magic ceased. As far as belief goes, I am a believer in listening to a dream. Whether you ascribe the subject matter to the emotional subconscious or a window into previous lives or freakin aliens or whatever, that, to me, doesn’t matter. I do think we get little clues in those scenes and I find it fun to follow them when a similar setting happens to show up in my waking life.

So, the following morning after crossing the frozen lake and landing in our little secret woods, I set about finding a walking stick. It didn’t take long. I whittled a little handle on it out of vanity, and continued up the hill. On top of the biggest hill in the area there is an old campsite. City woods are full of forgotten treasures. I like to walk up to the square fire ring and sit on one of the logs and take a breather after the climb. After this break, the dogs and I often head over to a little clearing in the forest. It’s mostly brome and a few wildflowers, and it’s generally sheltered from the frosty winds that haunt the campsite on top of the hill. On this day, with my new walking stick, I took our familiar path from the fire pit to the grass and I came across the skeleton of a turkey. The bones and skull were all jumbled up and they were surrounded by a handful of mangled feathers. I looked up and in the adjacent oak tree sat an eagle’s nest. There’s several creatures that hunt turkeys around there so who knows what went down, but it was a really cool find on a trail I walk almost every day. I thought about the bones for a minute or two and went to sit on my spot in the grass.

I sat there and was thankful for my dream and the healthy reminder a skeleton in the woods can offer. I wondered if I would have come across those bones if I had not grabbed that walking stick. Of course none of it matters. But, that’s the game of belief, isn’t it? None of it matters. We’re all going to end up like that pile of bones n’ feathers turkey in a bit. To me, that was the whole point of the dream: to remind me of the hilarity of it all. I’d been getting too serious, I think. The game is whatever we make it, and therein lies the true power of the human mind.

As far as I’m concerned, a dream can be a message and, if you’re paying attention, an owl or an eagle at just the right time can change a whole day. Those are little bits of the pile of stuff I choose to believe. Maybe you are a devotee of quantum physics or Jesus. To me we’re all saying the same thing. It’s interesting how much we humans crave mystery and how much energy we spend trying to rid the world of it.

In Trampled news I’m sitting in a dressing room in Birmingham, Alabama. We were supposed to play in New Orleans last night, but a freak blizzard postponed those plans. I have a little time to explore Birmingham today, and I’m excited to play with the guys tonight. Feels like it’s been a minute. We all survived Mexico somehow. I haven’t gotten much songwriting done lately, but I feel like that’s coming soon. My “normal” schedule of a flurry of writing at the outset of winter seems to be morphing into something else and I’m excited to see what comes next. It’s healthy to make some changes every decade or so. Here’s a few images from my point of view recently: