Sublimation

I just finished working my way through the new Billy Strings album this morning...you know who that is right?

This particular album, So Much For Goodbyes, is an ode to his mother, who passed away last year, and, in my own listening, an expression of the grief he has endured because of that loss.

In a recent interview I caught him using the word sublimation in reference to his process of making music - a word that I really love.

Sublimation is the process of changing something's form. In psychology it is the process of altering a difficult or unwanted impulse into a constructive action. In science, it is when a solid turns directly into a gas. And in art, it is the process of transforming a given state of mind or embodied experience into a creative form...in his case, really good bluegrass music.

As human beings it is sort of our superpower to be able to process and recycle complex or complicated circumstances or events into a means of self-expression. It is something we have been doing since we lived in caves.

Sublimation is how we, as living bodies, avoid becoming storage containers of the past...it is how we move forward through the grief, sorrow, and pains of loving and losing...of living and dying.

It is why we come to the mat in the morning, take the guitar off the wall after work, or lace up our hiking boots on our day off..

To work through what we have acquired or experienced - to give it new form - and then to let it all go.

Hope to practice with you this week, or sometime soon.