While My Soul Gently Weeps

Jake Shimabukuro's hauntingly beautiful ukulele rendition of George Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" speaks to my soul. It is one of those pieces of music that transcends the lyrics and reaches down inside of me and pulls up the desire for introspection and personal evaluation. Am I on track? Have I truly been the best ME I am capable of being?

You say, really, Dude? You mean to tell me that you get all that mushy spiritual soul searching crap just from listening to an old Beatles' melody? Wow, you must really be an emotional basket case and one of them weepy girlie manZ to get all gooey inside over such a trivial thing like a tune.

Hah! If only you knew, dear Reader. I used to "fear" such thoughts or comments from anyone who discovered my susceptibility to drop-of-the-hat weeping ... well, at least tearing up if not outright sobbing my eyes out. All at the slightest emotional trigger pull of a simple song or even a phrase out of the blue. The "trigger" doesn't even have to have any obvious linkage to the thought behind the tears. I can easily experience sort of a flashback to some other place and time in the past and feel all the intensity of the raw emotions just as if it were actually happening in this very moment of present time and space.

Yeah, it can be embarrassing at times or even inconvenient but it is what it is and I have grown to accept that it is what is right for me. Some call it "soft hearted" and some "in touch with your feelings" or others "strength" to be man enough to display tender emotions coming directly from very heart and soul. I am grateful for it, honestly, and consider it something that is a vital part of who I really am today as a person and a spiritual being. Maybe it is genetic because all of my children seem to possess the same tendency.

Take today, for example. I was chatting with a dear friend and we were discussing my previous blog work on Bad Monkey No Banana which is now a memorial to my brother Charles who transitioned after a battle with head and neck cancer. During the conversation I started tearing up and then outright crying and had to get up and close my office door and compose myself. All because of someone commenting on something that transpired six years ago. Not to say that losing a loved one, especially a sibling, is something you ever "get over" but just saying that this sort of thing can be a daily occurrence with me. Especially if I am going through rough times in other areas of my Life as I have been for the last four or five years.

So, when I stumbled across this video of Jake Shimabukuro playing "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" I was already getting misty-eyed in the first few seconds of playing ...

I suddenly flashed to being fifteen years old
sitting crossed-legged on the floor of my bedroom
back against my bed wearing those old big ass goofy headphones
hearing Eric Clapton playing lead guitar and George on acoustic
Beatles' White Album
1970
hot salty tears streaming down my face
in ecstasy as the notes pierced the core of my being
the deep inner me that was afraid to come out into the "real world" of my abused childhood
15 again
feeling the pain and fear
releasing my soul to fly on the very notes themselves
fly away to a place where I was free
of the pain and fear
forever

And then, just like a snap I was back in this moment, forty years later, feeling silly at being such a girly man with very real now tears on my cheeks.