The Vines fade out and Nina Simone fades in.  

They say it’s a Bob Dylan song but after listening to it – every time I listen to it – I cannot imagine anyone else singing it.  It cannot belong to anyone but her.  Except that it belongs to me right now.

It fills me.  It seeps and soaks.  Elevates.

Aches.

The version I love begins with her talking to the band.  She tells them “you all pushin’ it”, she tells them to put “nothin’ in it unless you feel it” that “it’ll go up by itself”.  She says, “let’s do it again.”  

And then they do.

And I’m reminded of an acting exercise I tried to teach in an intermediate acting class about stripping lines down to nothing.   Erase intent.  Erase assumption.   Just words.  Flat, shaped only by breath.  How it is nearly impossible to do.  How clingy and pernicious are assumptions and intent.

I’m reminded of how the most free I ever feel when I write is when I stop trying to write.  Stop trying to do anything at all.  Editing is fun but it is editing.  Writing is writing and editing is editing and there are so many ways this song is magic to me that have nothing to do with acting or writing – that have to do with loves lost and found.  All shapes and sizes of love.

Barricades built and broken.  

And I believe that it’s all been for something.

That it’s all been for something and that I too shall be released.