There is an iron door inside us. It has weight and strength. Our inner architecture is ancient and massive. When we wall each other off we don’t use brick we use rocks, boulders. It is more like Stonehenge than Rockefeller Center. Powerful forces play out. Water runs deep and black. It has taken thousands of years to put in place: to fortify ourselves – to protect the sacred – to guard the source inside us.

Our tragedy, our sadness is that we have walled ourselves off too. We have lost our access. We hang out on the wrong side of the door.

Emerson writes, “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.” ^! The plucking of that string, its movement and tremble stir the ground, shift the foundations, echo through the walls and awaken memory. It reaches back. It loosens the hinges.

This is our job. To find the sound – that vibratory sound – the one that picks up on the frequency of rock, of iron, of water – the sound that penetrates the deep walls and the rock face. Fire will not help – it licks against the rocks and dies. We must breath into the core of our own sound – the bellows of the lungs – the muscles of the belly – to find the resonance, the pitch, the back wall. The well from which we pull the sound – the first roll of energy.

When I find the vibration – the sound in my body – I am met. It is sound current – the source behind the waves of universal sound.² I hit my stride, like when the singer lifts the room. The Spanish call it duende. We have no word for this. I am stripped down and opened. That place where the paint moves and takes on a life of its own. When I am one with it. When I get to ride the wild animal of my creativity. Let go the reigns. It may be a short ride but for that moment there is no limit, no me, no divide. Now I stir the tree tops, travel through the forests, buffet the mountain, lift the birds and unsettle the glassy surface of the lake. Now I pull on the long grass, turning and rolling over wide spaces. Now I touch the ears of the animals and blow on the long coats of the bison. I move, I gather strength, gather energy. I unsettle the air above the clouds, move the waters deep in the ocean. I am all gone, just the vibrating string. It is then I feel the weight of the door shift on its hinges. The door has balance and ease in its swing. It responds to the softest touch.It is all so close. Really nothing at all.