Trippin at the chicken in my room…

I just finished a most wonderful night of writing like I’ve not had in a long time. I think I may have mentioned before that I tend to notice my technical stuff leaps a little whenever there’s a break. Steady practice has definitely been critical, and it seems to come and go in phases. Sometimes I’m consistent writing/rehearsing 2 hours a day. Lately, I’ve been so busy working on the demo that my w/r schedule has gotten pretty, um, open.

So anyway, tonight, I lit some candles, and said some prayers, and found myself in that familiar place that is perfectly me. And of course, the Muse was there in all her divine deliciousness. Wrote four songs? Five, maybe? Got my arms around a lyric for a progression I’ve been working on. Spontaneously combusted into this beautiful rose-colored flame.

Speaking of flames…

I was about 3 hours into my session, and was totally lost in it. I felt more open and free and confident and strong with my voice and playing. I felt the groove and played in it like a surfer plays a wave. I wrote a few songs on guitar, further mastered a few that I love to play, saw my guitar skills rise a notch. In all, it was a really great night.

At about 3:20, I was just completely lost in the space – playing songs all night long… My back was starting to hurt (I’ve been sitting on the edge of my seat for a few hours now) and I was (and am still) frankly pretty frickin tired.

Despite that, I was determined to record a song I really want to have on my demo. it’s called “It’s Alright” So far, we haven’t gotten a really good take of it. So after all this celebratory playing, (and the onset of tired eye syndrome) I thought give it my last shot to nail a take.

I had a false start, which kinda snapped me into attention. I stood up, fidgeted a little to ease my aching back, and sat back down again, replaying the first intro. It felt good. The transition into the second intro went reasonably well and I ended up starting to get rolling into the verse despite my fatigue.

I’d just finished the first line of the song (“I know this preacher…”) and was ready to nail the second when I heard this noise like a loud chicken cluck and saw this flash of light to my right. Like someone had just lit a match. As soon as the TOTALLY incongruous thoughts untangled themselves (“chicken” “in my bedroom” “lighting matches”) I started freaking out. How did a chicken get in my room, and more importantly WHY is there a chicken in my room. Or (I was starting to realize there really wasn’t a cat or a chicken or any kind of animal in my room – I started comparing the noise I’d heard with a distressed cat, or some kind of wild furry thing. The only thing I could come up with was “chicken”. but why???) – “what the hell was THAT?!”

Now, I’ve had my share of transcendent spiritual experiences – moments of connecting with some other realm, or at least feeling closer to it. Well, I’d been in that space all night. And in a way, this experience was similar, but it was sharp and scary, and I absolutely KNOW that I saw and heard something.

Suddenly this crush of memories from my childhood tried to explain what had happened – “It’s Satan! They’re demons!” Then I thought “No, they’re just ghosts”, and then I thought “WHAT THE HELL ARE GHOSTS DOiNG IN MY ROOM!?!”

Between the rushes of ice-cold tingling up and down my entire body and a hyper-aware sensitivity to any movement or sound, I was pretty, well, freaked out. “What the hell WAS that?!”, I would later hear myself ask on the recording (i was till rolling). Something had just jarred me out of one of the greatest renditions of one of my favorite songs. It hit me like a lightning bolt – it was shocking and undeniable.

I had a moment where I thought, OK, what’s going on here? It was a moment of feeling really rational, not panicked. Just trying to figure out what the noise and flash
were that I undeniably epxerinced.

Three things happened next at the exact same time: my turned slowly to my right, I had a sensation I can only descibe as instant comfort and understanding, and I had a thought “Someone’s trying to tell you something.”

“Fine,” I thought…

“What?!” I said into the empty room, kinda like “This had better be good…”

As I turned around, I immediately noticed that one of the candles on my mantle had gotten totally out of control. I’ve noticed this phenomenon where these votive candles will go nutso, but just in this one place. And it had happened twice before with lots of times when it DOESN’T happen.

Just all of a sudden, the wax in the little metal cup gets super hot and turns into a kind of souffle of flame. As a result of all this flame, the metal cup gets really hot, too.

Trying to blow these flamers out is bad news. It just seems to make the flames get higher, not to mention being blown in the direction of other flammable things. Disaster waiting to happen. Or happening, as the case may be. Napalm in a cup.

Anyway, it became immediately clear that Someone WAS, indeed, trying to tell me something. My guardian angel? God? My grandpa? The relationship between this real or imagined noise and flash and the VERY real fire hazard getting out of control was undeniable and obvious. I can’t overly stress the redundancy. It WAS like heaps and heaps of obviousness.

I don’t mean to make a mountain out of a molehill. It wasn’t like the flames were very big. Just about 4 inches, more than enough to ignite just about anything.

After I’d put out my little 1 alarm fire, I knelt down at my bed, kind of trembling. Out of nowhere I’d heard a chicken and saw a flash of light that was so real that it stopped me in my tracks. Had I not been jerked out of my hazy songwriting space, I would have continued playing my little heart out until I’d either smelled the smoke, or saw the room get bright and flickery.

In either case – not ideal.

I just got down and thanked “Whoever”, Whoever being God, my Granpa, angels…the Divine Providence that clucked at me or whatever, turned me around to show me the imminence of an unattended disaster. I felt comforted and held, like a Dad putting his arms around you. “You really can’t let this happen again… It was a mistake, but it’s really important you never put candles back in that place, OK?”

I left the room to get the last load of laundry out of the dryer, and was surprised at the stark difference in the feeling of the two spaces – my room and the hall. I had this phrase come to me that I think will work itself into a song someday – “all the saints and angels are watching” or something like that.

Think I’m gonna rest easy tonight…