The cosmic MEH (when Gaia says... go to your room)

​Summer drops like a flat heavy hand. I'm not sure if I'm gasping from the heat or because it's just hard to push through walls right now, of any kind. Humidity a wet fist squeezing my heart.

I think I'm a wee bit depressed. Not 'can't get out of bed' or 'where's the door' or 'woe is me'... this is more of a low grade existential hum, studded with stones. I just... can't be bothered.

I'm so used to rivers of joy winding through me, no matter what is going on, that this has taken me a bit by surprise. I haven't been writing, haven't been making music. And for those of you who know me, this one's a biggie... I haven't had any lovers. Not for lack of availability... I just...
Can't be bothered.

It's like a cosmic meh has settled into the spaces between my cells. Some godlike teenager has possessed my psyche, sulky and irritable, rolling its eyes and lurking sneaky-smart, looking for the moment when mum and dad aren't watching so it can disappear into its starry room and watch mindless crap on the universal internet.

There's a gorgeous intelligence at work in humanity, dancing. I watch myself doing the things that move me out of stagnation, because in nature, anything that stagnates, dies. I know this, and my survival instincts are strong, keep me Human, but these times are so strange, it's like I'm looking through lenses and someone's switched the colour spectrum, not much, but enough to keep me off balance. The landscape is different in here now. I'm questioning everything, tracking the cluster of feelings and thoughts and sensations loosely arranged into and through a body, this phenomenon called Gina.

I've realised some things.

I'm an introvert by nature, but I constantly throw myself into the middle of groups to keep me from floating away. I use extroversion as a survival mechanism. And without the constant call to engage and meet the need of a group that comes with teaching, facilitation, running classes and retreats and workshops and camps, there hasn't been the call to arms to keep me connected to people. I've kinda... drifted. The natural introvert that I am has nothing to keep it in check. It's very very easy for me to be alone, which scares me a little, because some of the ropes tethering me to people are feeling thin. I could become a wilderness version of the crazy cat lady, a hermit living in the bush, talking to the birds and clouds.

A couple of nights ago I caught up with an ex, one with whom I can be completely vulnerable. The love is still all there, so it's hard, real-time, for both of us, but we're finding our way in friendship and part of that is that whenever we get together we dive right back into a connected, delicious relationship of honesty and vulnerability. Capital R Reality, no matter how painful. Which for me is so good it hurts.

I started talking about my experience in life right now, and in the reflection of that conversation, in the compassion of another human heart, deeply listening without judging (or managing whatever judgement was arising, he's great like that) realised how far I've floated, in this year of social distancing, and how much our human connections reaffirm our identities, and without human contact, a different shape can arise in us. I see that we constantly correct our course, mostly instinctively, choosing the people and situations around us to bring us balance. It was so good to let the strange energy of formlessness arise and be witnessed so I could trace the shape of this part of myself in the world and in that mapping, transform the edges of it. Scientists have been saying it for ever. When something is observed, it changes.

I also see that this last six months has been the balancing comedown from the incredible creative explosion of the first part of last year, when I was recording my album. When I allowed myself to fully let go of all responsibility and blaze with pure creativity, fuelled by probably the most intense sexual affair of my life, sex and music intertwined, fizzing and vital and multidimensional, tapped into what felt like the main vein of god. Drinking from it like a greedy child, alight with pure vision. Music dancing me, effortless. Energy braiding me earth to heavens, body to heart to spirit, life to poetry to music to love to comets to an ocean of intensity, electric rain in my eyes. Insights flowering minute to minute. I know I can't live there forever, and the return hurts, there's a grief in coming back to mundane consciousness. I know why creatives can go a little (or a lot) insane. It's pretty big out there, and there are lots of stars.

The human heart thinks in metaphors. I see elegant patterns everywhere. It's like watching a seabird lifted by invisible eddies around high ocean cliffs. If you stare long enough, you can see the shape of the wind, traced by the wings of the bird.

Watching, noticing. Patterns. Chaos, upheaval, a change in perceived freedom. Last year, the many years before... I skipped through a life of travel, facilitation, running classes and workshops, adventures... all the hubris and privilege of a first world existence. The privilege of resources, enough to enable me to follow my desires. What they were is irrelevant. I danced my passions because I've been born in a healthy body in a wealthy nation to a family who love me, where all my needs are met. Riches.

And now, the cosmic teenager in me is having a tantrum, because I can't do those things any more in that way. And around me, the world of humans is struggling the way species do when their environment is under pressure. When their resources are under pressure. It's all very well to be in love in peacetime. Holiday affairs are blissful things, because they aren't real. It isn't until you get home and the every day reality of 'who takes out the garbage' and 'who has to work to pay the rent' and 'how do we manage this illness' and 'I feel like you're not listening' and 'why can't you meet me' kicks in that you either find the will to do the work or you bail.

Our culture, our modern first world existence, has given us a million opportunities to bail, when something feels hard. And now those options have dwindled, and we're faced globally with the capital R Reality of the realisation that holy shit, there is nowhere to hide, and we have to do the work. We can't leave this relationship, because it's with ourselves, with our planet, all the places we've distracted ourselves so as not to feel.

I love the genius of this. It feels kinda horrible at times but how amazing, it's like big mama Gaia has just sent us all to our rooms to have a good long think about things. And much as we can point the finger and throw blame around like dogshit into a fan, we can't change some fundamental truths and they hurt and are scary and we have to find ways to deal with them.

So although I'm a bit depressed, I'm not worried about myself. Curious, perhaps. I'm watching, and consciously putting myself back into situations where I have to reach through, find my humanity, engage. This is the first thing I've written in months and I feel rusty and awkward but I can see where the words are hiding and begin to coax them out. I'm facilitating Survival Quests and Vision Quests. I met with Tank a week ago to talk about launching the Gigi and Lovetank album, and I'm excited, we've got a precisely calendared schedule of staggered releases of singles, online performances, video clips... he's mentoring me through the whole thing with the benefit of a couple of decades in the music biz. I'm super grateful. I've just had a romp with a new lover, and it's like slipping into a delicious warm bath, remembering that dance, skin to lips to fire. I'm choosing vitality. Eating better. Waking up again. Choosing to move.

I'm remembering how to be alive.

And I'm naming all this because there's a thread running through the conversations I am having. Many of my friends are struggling in ways they never have before. So if that's you, if you're feeling a little lost or hopeless or flat or the cosmic teenager with the bad haircut and ripped tshirt with MEH plastered across the front has taken up residence somewhere in your emotional house, I see you.

I see you, and I love you.