Opposition to the Crowd!

The crowd. I have always spent my life avoiding the crowd. Think: lonely boy, lone wolf, marching to my own drum-beat. I never really have fit in. Never. Anywhere. I can remember have difficulty with others in Kindergarten. I remember getting into an argument over cardboard bricks, and being banished to my nap rug.

I have spent so much time in my own head, making my own plans, living my own little dream life. I have been most comfortable in those lonely pursuits: playing guitar in my bedroom, writing stories, poems, plays, blog posts, songs. It took a long, long time before I ever shared my stories, plays, poems, posts or songs. And the sharing is always a little awkward - Is something lost in translation? Am I really connecting? Is anyone really listening?

The loneliness hangs around me. I wear it like a coat. Put me in any social situation, and there's this bubble of solitariness that surrounds me. It's no mystery that I found meditation pretty early in my life, and that I practice it nearly every day. Sitting quietly in a corner, eyes closed, breathing, repeating a mantra, or visualizing elaborate scenes of peace and clarity.

I try my best to engage with the world, but I am coming from a very self-contained, or self-centered bubble. It's not really a choice, but a temperament, one that I have possessed for as long as I can remember. I do love to reach outside the bubble. I do love encountering others. I do love finding people - artists, singers, writers, playwrights, poets, guitar players, all those folks in the arts who also seem to be working from a very personal, solitary, self-contained place.

I do think of myself as part of that crowd, those folks who are coming from a profound loneliness. Folks who are uncomfortable in a crowd. Those who avoid crowds. Those in opposition to the crowd. So yes, alone, but armed with words and sounds, and ideas and reaching out… to see if anyone else exists out there...