Out of Sync

Those of you that attempt to follow this Blog know that some times I am very prolific and other times the words lie fallow in limbo as I devote my time to video, FaceBook, and other projects. Maybe the rest of August will be productive. Much of it depends on the state of my MoviOp, A Song for Second Avenue, as I currently struggle with the text of the final scenes.

I know that I am out of sync with the world around me, with my friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, and more importantly with those several close allies who brought new definition and inspiration to my world. But there is nothing I can do about it, because this anomaly is a microcosm of the forces of the universe which control Time. It is all about Time.

In the mornings when I wake up (if luckily I have found a way to go to sleep), I find myself in a nether land of fantasy where I am imagining I have a performance later that night or perhaps tomorrow, and I have so much to do to prepare for the performance. It usually takes me several hours to descend from the stratosphere of that fantasy to the real world and the routines needed to survive the current day. Soon I realize that the performance I think I have is the accumulation of the energies of all performances past and future, and I am caught in a web of simultaneity where time is compressed.

Yesterday, after improvising at the keyboard for several hours, I walked down University Place. It was a wonderful August afternoon with rain clouds gathering in tall stacks above me. The city had slowed to a pace of expectation of a gathering storm. The rumble of thunder shuddered across the sky as though someone was rearranging gigantic furniture overhead. I was on the street, but also strangely absent. The silence, punctuated with rumbling, grumbling sounds of thunder had a mesmerizing effect, as though I was someplace else and merely looking at the scene through a looking glass.

The air smelled of summer rain, a fresh, humid smell that reminded me of my first days in New York. However, in those days I was more in sync with the city and my friends. I was always in the moment. But now I was out of the moment, an observer...until I started to feel the warm drops of rain. They were big, soft, splashy drops. coming slowly, almost randomly, urging me to scramble out of the path of the storm before it hit full force. But I was in the same frame of mind as when I wake up in the morning in a fantasy of performances awaiting me, moving at a snail's pace while my mind searches for the clarity of reality.

Reality hit me with the fury of a drenching downpour. I seemed trapped within this summer storm almost by design and desire. It was a way to connect with the world for a moment, even though I was disconnected from the immediacy of my friends. I could taste the rain, feel it running down my face... strangely connected and disconnected at the same time.

For some reason, my father's image came to me and I heard him describing his experience years ago of being out of sync with his world. He described it as a condition of growing older. "We are Time Travellers," he said to me. "As you get older, more and more of your friends who are travelling with you, slip away into their own rendezvous with Time, and your circle of close friends gets smaller. Soon you are surrounded by Time Travellers who seem parallel to you but are in a different dimension. Their needs and interests are with their fellow travellers. Although they can see you, they can't relate to you. You are an interesting constellation, an older Time Traveller without much in common with them...someone about to slip away to a private and perhaps terrifying destiny... like a comet burning itself out crossing the night sky. They will tolerate your presence, but they want nothing to do with you. You exist as a reminder that they too are on that same collision course with destiny. You are alone."

I can understand that I am on a different path, a different time, a different velocity. I can understand that this puts me out of sync with everyone that I cherish and love. I can understand why they can hardly tolerate me and need to be with their own kind. I can understand why I am alone. But I also understand it is an inevitable consequence of Time Travelling and the Big Bang.