Gimme Shimmies

The Shimmies

Written awhile ago, December 2009? Or Jan 2010??

"I’ll break until I bend," so they wrote. They are the most tangled set of talented boys who grew into fill the empty space that their vocals left ringing in our ears. Strumming all the chords you wish you knew but never could ever find, they changed my life slowly, note by note. 

"I want my life to be, a picture of light. And I want my bones to find their way home…" They wrote and spoke, and mostly laughed gently as the rising sun kicked everyone’s ass and we all rolled around in our pain. We were thankful for the sickening spell we were under, the one that came from music. We were thankful to feel the shadows that danced around us, teasing and trailing a wetted finger clumsily across our hearts.

They came in, and when I met them, I didn’t know. I knew something about this chaotic freakish mess felt warm and good and just right. But I didn’t know. I pushed them quickly to sleep in the sheltered hut of my hurried life, swept up behind us all, and dove straight into the freezing river that was my patterned life. I looked back and wondered about their comfort, realizing only later that they were not with me. They were ahead of me and behind me, blazing a trail of wind and fire with concurrent casualty, and they dragged a stick dripping with mud in order to lead a generation through the battlefield of broken hearts.

And we felt them because we loved them so much. We reasoned that our lives were touched up in an electrical saturation of love because they sang to us in a vibrating staccato that made sense. Their music, it slipped right off the edge and we all reached out to balance it between our eyes. Once, I listened to two guitars dance in such a harmony that my fingers itched for days and they even continue to squirm today. Another time, they writhed on the floor of passion with so much conviction that I became overcome with bloodshed and tears and so I slid my hand into yours. They told stories that were my life, but I knew that they could not be because they were not me. They played me a rhythm that shook my guitar laden brain and made it pulse in and out of a rock and roll train, and then I realized I wanted to be on that train, I wanted it, and then it was gone. I realized they were aching too, they were aching here, clearly with sarcastic, love-inspiring pain. Best of all, they knew how to listen better and with more sincerity than anyone I would ever come to meet again. 

That’s why we listened to them I suppose; if you hear and listen, then the ability you have to touch others gains a life of it’s own and people jump right on the highway. They did that for me because they heard it all and then we clutched them as we ran away into the streaming sunset. Brothers, and lovers, they taught without meaning to and that’s why we were so addicted.

That’s why we are still addicted. I watched them today, in my heart and through the eyes of my life, seeing a playful mischief, one that loves to dance and dances with love. They gave me something; they gave me a picture of light even though they couldn’t find one for themselves. And I want my life to be. A picture of light.

Listen and you will know.

http://theshimmies.com/

This blog was inspired by my dear friends and true artists, a band of young men called The Shimmies. They are from Chico, CA. Please visit their website and purchase their music. Even better, attend a concert near you, as it will surely and definitely change your life.

Music is sustainable because it makes us feel and experience our world, allows us to express ourselves in creative and therapeutic ways, and connects us to one another.