I said before that I hadn’t cried yet. I realized this morning that isn’t strictly true. I had cried, but not about the world situation. I cried about art.
Back in 2004, Texas had a bad cedar season, and I was spending a lot of time in San Antonio. My sinuses were so stuffy that I found I couldn’t eat. Every time I tried, my throat would gum up and close. The first couple of weeks involved a lot of smoothies.
Then I tried art. I would put on a movie guaranteed to make me full-body sob. (Field of Dreams was, and is, a favorite.) I’d cry until I had unstuffed my head, then eat before my body could react. That worked. I cried a lot that April. But I fed myself, too.
Art is physical therapy in the most real sense. Art allows us to access those parts of us that won’t release any other way, and the resulting emotional change manifests physically. I could maintain my body because of something designed to move my brain. Now, watching TV and writing poetry every day is helping me maintain that very link between body and brain, keeping me from dissociating, soothing my nerves when anxiety is peaking.
A couple of episodes of Deep Space Nine have let me vicariously experience parting with family and loved ones. I’ve been avoiding thinking too hard about such scenarios. But I have to prepare for the inevitable, whether it is near or distant. I have to find a way to accept that loss is part of love. And being confronted with that fact affected me more than I want to admit even here.
I wept for the characters onscreen, but for myself, too. I think that’s probably always part of it. We connect what the characters are going through to what we have faced or might face; art operates through empathy. It just feels more real right now.
A few days ago, I watched the latest episode of Erin McKeown’s occasional series Cabin Fever. She sat in her hammock on her porch, the nearby spring burbling, and played for an hour or so, closing with “Lullaby in 3/4“—a longtime favorite of mine. The tears came with the first notes. I thought about my time in western Massachusetts over twenty years ago, about youth and freedom, about pain and love and obligation. The weight of memory is almost unbearable sometimes. It was in that moment. It was what I needed anyway.
The point is moot now, so I guess it doesn’t matter. There was a moment I got choked up last night, when a dear friend noted we’re entering my birthday month. And during my Monday group meeting, I made a connection about forgiveness that hit so fiercely I had to turn off my video so the other members wouldn’t see me losing it. I’m still not dealing with grief head-on, but I’m finding side entrances. I’m slowly learning how to let go of the need to maintain my composure all the time.
Then again, maybe the point isn’t moot. Maybe I was only able to get here because I had strengthened that connection between body and brain. Art is exercise, warm up and cool down. Art is massage and warmth and soothing. Art is therapy and lullaby.
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