“Why did you come to Ithaca?” people keep asking me. “I needed a change of scenery” is the only thing I can reply. How can I tell them, “I discovered the fight to end everyone’s pain is hopeless and I didn’t know how best do things differently”…. That wouldn’t even tell the whole story. “I spent 10 years searching and at the end of the tunnel there was nothing to report back home”. Maybe that would be a better answer. But my real truth would be, “I opened an old, dusty chest of dreams and decided that I would try them out one by one, see how they fit”.
Coming to the end of the ten years of my soul-searching, soul-healing, soul-sucking journey I just knew I needed to start a different life somewhere far, far away. Then I was presented with the opportunity to come to Ithaca by an old friend. My immediate emotional response was “Hell yeah!”, although I told her I would sleep on it. And no, I didn’t sleep, I actually stayed up all night with this whirlwind of an idea.
I could have easily kept living in the lovely Live Music Capital of the World, working wherever and living my daily life as I do now, no big deal. But I was done. I was so fucking done I couldn’t stand it anymore! I was done with my life as it was, with my gigantic family at every turn and ten thousand birthdays, anniversaries and baby showers to go to. I was done with the story I had lived, the pretentiousness that comes with being a musician and artist, and, most of all, the double life.
Let me explain about the double life part. I had two personalities, one which showed up at the social scene and one that stayed home to contemplate reality, heal, change, transform, etc. I felt fake when socializing, and only a very few friends knew what I was really about. This split affected my art. I felt that I had stalled as a creative. Nothing new was coming out and I had lost all inspiration. Quick success had caused me to start dancing to the tunes of the people who adored my work. But I had a mission to live, and I hadn’t tapped into it yet. I dreamed of reaching new levels, but I felt that in order to do so, I would have to become a new me. I didn’t even know that I was going to blog yet!
I just knew I had to go somewhere new, do something new, be someone new. Recreate myself, in essence. This is what I came to Ithaca for.
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