Questions, answers, etc

I throw three coins down on my Orchard Street table.

Looking for answers. 2016.

I throw three coins down on my Orchard Street table.

Each coin’s side corresponds to a number. Heads is 3, tails is 2. Their sum brings a line, broken or solid. Three heads or tails indicates a special reading.

I throw three coins down on my Orchard Street table.

2016. My boyfriend has a weathered yellow book that explains it all. I’m bad at remembering the rules, so I always consult the notes he put in the book’s spine.

I throw three coins down on my Orchard Street table.

I throw six times. Pause after each throw to draw the lines from the bottom up, creating an ancient Chinese hexagram of divination.

the I Ching.

(I believe in it just as much or little as I believe in anything in 2016)
(More than anything I believe in this boyfriend)
(Believe in the safety of his arms)
(In the unparalleled confidence he brings to both walking through life and loving me)

I throw three coins down on my Orchard Street table.

2016. I’m 27 years old, one day away from a radical and drastic vocal cord surgery that will render me unable to speak or sing for nearly a year. I don’t know it yet, but this is the moment when the facade starts to fall away. When the first cracks begin to show in the veneer of how I’ve defined myself and my entire life’s structure. There’ll be so much progress to be made and so much pain to be felt.

I throw three coins down on my Orchard Street table.

Six broken lines appear.

K'un. The Receptive.

The corresponding reading, per usual, is fucking prescient. Indicates a time for quiet (woof on that vocal cord accuracy) perseverance. But one line sticks out to me enough that I write it down on a post it note at my little antique desk in 2016.

“The superior man lets himself be guided; he does not go ahead blindly, but learns from the situation what is demanded of him and then follows this intimation from fate.”

-I Ching

I remember writing it down.
Remember feeling furious at the reading and being in just enough pain to trust it.

And I remember forgetting it.

2016. I walk into surgery the next day feeling very, very alone. Look up at Dr. Woo and then count backwards from 10.

When I come to I make the mistake of speaking because I am high on anesthesia. The whole room panics as my bloody vocal cord emits a Freddy Kruger chaos sound.

(I shut up.)

Then wait for an hour and a half in drugged silence while my boyfriend furiously tries/fails to pick me up because he is not my husband.

(Hooray for puritanical societies)
(Traumatic enough, in any event, to make me decide that he will have to become my husband)
(Even though I remain extremely ambivalent re: marriage)
(It worked out I suppose)

I write it down and I forget it.

Life occurs. My healing takes a shockingly long amount of time, long enough to make me panic shift into songwriting in case my voice never returns. I continue to work with speech therapists and doctors who don’t take insurance and bleed me more or less dry. Ultimately I find the perfect Yoda king in Manhattan, who has saved or improved just about every voice in New York but doesn’t share the greed of the rest of of the vocal sharks I’ve met in this eye opening experience. He charges just $90 a session from his Harlem apartment, lets me do the first three sessions free.

(Jim’s method requires 3-6 lessons total and lasts for life, no books to buy, no capitalism noise)
(A trip to Hawaii and 6 of these lessons brings my voice back)
(A little bit of my heart opens back up)

Life occurs.
2017. I move to Los Angeles, a town centered around writing songs every single day.

Life occurs.
2019. I move back to New York. Everything is good and then the world falls apart. Somehow in the chaos I get a Grammy nomination for work done with my dearest friend and mentor.

Life occurs.
2021. I move to Amsterdam.
2022. I move back to New York. Then to Pasadena.

Life, to some extent, rights itself. A home crops up in a little craftsman at the base of a mountain.

And then pain returns, on a worldwide scale. 2023. A moment to look at everything right in the face, from a vantage point of safety for perhaps the first time in my life.

I throw three coins down on my Pasadena table.

(I believe in it just as much or little as I believe in anything in 2023)
(More than anything I believe in good)
(In the space of communal similarity we can find through humanity and culture)
(Even in horrific moments)
(Even when our hearts are breaking)

The lines come.

I’m struck, at first, by how it appears I’ll be getting exactly the same reading as seven years ago. But then a rogue unbroken line shows up, creating a new hexagram.

Yü. Enthusiasm.

Reading “enthusiasm” and the trigram’s militarily specific explanation in the beginning of the weathered yellow book turns my stomach upside down. But then there it is, like always.

A little answer.

Thus the ancient kings made music
And offered it with splendor
To the Supreme Deity
Inviting their ancestors to be present

I write it down. Hope, from this new space of safety, to not forget it.

(I believe in it just as much or little as I believe in anything in 2023)
(I don’t really know what I believe these days)
(But we all process the way we need to, and I personally have found myself most suited to make art)
(The experience finds its way through the art)

In a moment with no right answers and plentiful wrong answers I make music. I make art. And offer it, perhaps not with splendor, but offered nonetheless, inviting my ancestors to be present.

More next week.
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