Paula Josa-Jones in Dive.

I watched the video of Gaelynn Lea, winner of NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert competition last night.  I am not the same today.  I am changed.  By the end of her 22 minute set on the program, I was in tears.  Gaelynn suffers from Osteogenesis Imperfecta, or brittle bone disease.  She is, nonetheless, all fire, sweetness and beauty in a completely unexpected body.  As I watched, as I let her music move through me, move me, I felt like I was seeing something that is ineffable, impossible to tether to any one description.  By the end, I felt that she had schooled me.  That art and love are all.  That taking what we are given and rendering it to whatever perfection and devotion that we can is everything.

She reminds me of why I do not want to speak ill of any presidential candidate, as much as I am wounded by what they say.  I don’t want to go there.  I want to anchor myself in the place of passion, of desire for what is, in the language of the Buddha, right action, right speech.  In focusing on what I want, not what I fear and loathe. Gaelynn and her music remind me not to waste a moment in hate.  See it, transform it, one note, one gesture at a time.

I chose this photograph because of the branches and my body in them.  The anatomy of the tree.  The difficult anatomy of this musician I so admire and yes, love.  My own body – so willing, so fierce, so lovely.  Each of us rendering art “of these bodies” – of flesh, earth and spirit.