An exception

I want to give you a coherent picture of The Singer and The Band.  Really I do.

But what I'm about to say is not very existentialist at all.  Really the whole problem with existentialism is that it lives in its head all the time and I suspect the truth is that life lives elsewhere, too.

Right this second, life is a sort of glowing tangle stuck in my throat because I feel deeply, oddly connected -- more than connected, entwined.  

I spent Sunday evening home alone with free reign of my domain... I cleaned up, did laundry, listened to music.  For the first time in probably six years I listened to Joan Osborne and got stuck on these lyrics:  

I dreamed about Ray Charles last night. 

And he could see just fine, you know. 

I asked him for a lullaby. He said, 

'Honey, I don't sing no more.' 

He said, 'Since I got my eyesight back, 

my voice has just deserted me.

No 'Georgia On My Mind' no more. 

I stay in bed with M.T.V.' 

Then Ray took his glasses off 

and I could look inside his head. 

Flashing like a thunderstorm, 

I saw a shining spider web. 

I dreamed about Ray Charles last night. 

He took me flying in the air. 

Showed me my own spider web; 

Said, 'Honey, you had best take care. 

The world is made of spider webs. 

the threads are stuck to me and you. 

Careful what you're wishing for, 

'cause when you gain, you just might lose.' 

What gives me the shivers is the fact that there are certain people with whom I have uncannily shared certain vivid images that have been meaningful to me for one reason or another.  Specific, deep-resonating images that floated into our minds in similar ways around similar times around similar feelings.  Actually until just now, I thought that had only happened (again and again over a period of years, actually) with one person...often during times of absence from one another.  

I believed then with all my heart that this kind of connection meant we were supposed to be together.  Right now I'm thinking that maybe some people, even people who will never really know each other, are just entwined.  There's a web they're both tangled up in on some deeper plane where image lives, which I hope is the soul.  

Can I still be an existentialist and hold out hope for the soul?  Some people call Emerson an existentialist.... 

Maybe the truth is we're all connected in the same web and some folks just have a truer vision of it.  Maybe under the silence, we're all thinking the same things.  I want this to be true.  I want to live under the silence for good and forget about the attachments on this plane that keep us all from truly connecting with each other:  Tear apart the apart we seem to think we are (which is the best line I've ever heard, even if TV on the Radio was talking about sex;  sex is just one way, albeit a miraculous one, to do that).  If anything in the world is true about me, it's that I want to live with a full awareness of how connected we all are.  That's why I gravitate toward people who speak openly, and even more toward people who dearly wish they could.  

But.  Sometimes -- like right this second -- life and its glow get stuck in my throat, too.