Of Dragons and Dollars

To be completely honest with you, I was hoping 2020 would start with a few weeks of just incredible good luck - the crazy kind where nothing goes wrong, everything falls into place swiftly, you find $100 bills on the ground with no one in sight…

Of course, though, life just keeps being life. If there were no challenges, no struggles, no pain- there would be no growth. Adventures require at least a little bit of danger and chaos to be adventures, otherwise you’re just going on a walk.

So here I am, still a full time musician, ultimately confronted once again with my nemesis - money.

Now, let’s be clear. This isn’t money’s fault. Money didn’t start out a bad egg. Money just happens to be part of a system that rewards those that have it with more of it, granting them power and an assumed authority, while shaming the rest of us for not working hard enough to be one of them. It wouldn’t matter if we were trading oxen, or shells, or labor- the types that have coerced money into this role would (and have) manipulated any system of trade to support their version of reality (that they are more important, and there fore worthy of more, than others)

It’s really the system, and the people that created and maintain it, that are evil. Money is just a dragon some greedy ass sorcerer has ensorcelled and bound to guard the gates of power.

My first, highly essential task before I get to move on to the next level, is to tame this damn dragon - if I don’t I might as well quit now, hang up my lute, and kiss any kind of life of adventuring good bye - or to shift back out of my metaphor at least for the moment, without figuring out how to finance my creative life all of the other wonderful things I hope to create in this reality will have to be abandoned as well.

No writing songs that help people fall in love with their lives over and over.

No carving a path so that other creative dreamer softies have an easier time of it.

And most importantly, no re-claiming my power from this manipulative, destructive system and destroying as much of the illusion that this is inherently how it has to be as possible.

So, you see, I have to figure out what to do with this dragon - and it’s a doozy, because not only is it intimidatingly large and bite-y, but I’ve also got a life time of stories about basically how much dragons HATE musicians. How much they will roast us on site. How they have no use or interest in us or our songs, and are particularly resistant to our charm.

It makes me think of one of my favorite fairy tales, East of the Sun, West of the Moon.

A girl is wed by her family to a Polar Bear, she is taken to his magical castle where all of her needs are met but she is essentially dependent and powerless. In an effort to regain her sovereignty, she sneaks a candle into her bedroom at night to see what the human shape sleeping with her is, only to find she’s actually married a handsome but cursed prince, and now that she’s taken power into her own hands all of the security she was given through her marriage will be taken from her , and the prince will be whisked off to a castle East of the sun, West of the moon in order to marry the Troll Queen that cursed him…

In a way, this particular dragon is an ensorcelled prince. He can separate me from the means to powerfully and impactfully create, or he can grant that power to me. In the moment that I stopped passively engaging with my life as an employee in an office who aspired to check things off of societies “success” check list, and instead chose to let my muse and music lead me, I lost him and he was seemingly turned against me. It’s taken me nearly a decade to get back to this place, to this cave, to facing him once again with possibly the right gift, the right skill, the right knowledge to free him and myself.

In East of the Sun, West of the Moon it was the heroes knowledge of laundry (I kid you not, friends) that ultimately saves them all. She challenges the Troll Queen to a wash off, and ultimately is able to erase the stain from the candle tallow that falls on the Prince’s pajamas , ultimately erasing the evidence of her previous mistake.

I don’t know what that might symbolize in this reality, but I suspect the answer may be finally and totally forgiving myself:

For not being organized

For not being the kind of person that can work at a “real” job and just make music a hobby.

For not always being able to keep myself protected and safe.

For not being the kind of woman that can just settle down, or settle for anything for that matter.

For not being able to buckle down and hustle and play the game.

For barring the gates of what is truly possible for myself.

For being the dragon the whole time , and denying myself my own wholeness.

For being the Troll Queen and trying to maintain control at any cost, and trying to FORCE happiness into happening

For telling the story again and again that value comes from struggle and suffering, not ease, pleasure, and magic, and certainly not just because I make people feel a little better.

In the end, cleaning up the evidence of our failure isn’t about trying to erase the past, or deny that the journey ever happened and we haven’t changed -it’s making the choice to stop punishing ourselves for it so that whatever new steps we take into the future are not informed by our shame of the past.

Maybe this is it, and the dragon is transformed. Maybe, it’s not and I’ll continue to be confronted with the jarring out of tuneness of capitalism clashing against my stubborn insistence that this is what I am doing with my life, damn it.

But, at the very least, I can perhaps stop believing that I am being completely insane for not giving up on this.

And hell, maybe I can free this dragon while I’m at it. I think I’ll call him Larry.