On Ritual Time
and how SOFI TUKKER saved my life
Over the last few months, I have fallen back in love with going to see live music. I put it down while keeping alive infants, then babies, and then toddlers who rose at the crack of dawn needing my body. Then COVID put it down for all of us. Maybe it took me too long to pick it back up, or maybe the teacher presents itself when the student is ready.
It was my friend Molly who drug me back to live music with enthusiasm and clarity. She somehow knew before me that our dignity and vibrancy depended on it. I noticed a little of my mother’s soundbites surface in me at the invitation (You mean I have to take off my sweatpants? It’s so expensive. Ugh the crowds. How late will we get home? And where oh where should I park?) which was enough for me to let her drag me. And then, at the shows, I remembered. I was desperate for ritual time. Concerts have a clear beginning and ending, and in the middle, you get to drop out of time. There is nowhere else you need to be. There is nothing else you need to do. Your schedule and your to-do list fade into the background. You don’t have to manage anything or anyone. Time fades away. You get to live in deep time. For the duration of the concert, I get to put down my role as mother, spouse, teacher, and caretaker and the vigilance and time management that those roles can require. I get to be a human receiving nourishment. And my body deeply understands the language of music.
I told my friend, who knows how much of my work is intense and relational, about my recent love fest with live music and he asked, “Do you think part of it is that you don’t have to talk or give? You can just be? You can just receive it?”
Yes. Yes.
My firstborn is about to turn ten, a looming date that has invited me into a season of deep reflection and mild existentialism. I have had a child on the outside for almost a decade. The nature of our tethered-ness continues to shift and shimmy. I marvel at how he grows and unfolds. Scanning the ten-year memory reel in my mind, in addition to preciousness and closeness that feels like one of my great romances, my body also feels the weight of the responsibility of keeping a vulnerable human alive and supporting his thriving day in and day out with utter attention and care and with such little societal support or recognition. It is good work, maybe my best work, and I am tired.
When I turn toward the layers of parent fatigue and do some excavating, one thing I see is the relentless vigilance it takes to parent. Today, he pours his own cereal, tracks his own homework due dates, and self-regulates in ways beyond his years, yet he does still need me. Even when he is at school or with a babysitter, I don’t fully put down the role of parent. I track. I watch the time. I manage. I resist dropping all the way in. Over the last few months, as I have been reflecting on my decade of parenting, I have also gone to see a lot of live music, and it is the concerts that remind me how important it is to drop way in now and again, to be multifaceted. To just be.
A month ago I went to the SOFI TUKKER concert with some of my favorite people on the planet. My souse was on his way home from a work trip to Sri Lanka, and my kids were with a great babysitter. My spouse texted me when he landed and said, “I’m on my way home. Have fun.” I took the text to heart, I knew I was not needed and would not be called on, and dropped into ritual time. Surrounded by friends, dancing, receiving, I temporarily put down the vigilance, I put down the roles, and allowed myself to be pure energy. With the structures softened and the responsibilities on pause, I got access to the aliveness, eroticism, and freedom breathing in my body. It healed me in ways I am still exploring. I keep stepping out of routine to seek out live music, I keep experiencing it as deep time, and the nourishing continues. After, when the lights come up, I realize I wasn’t thinking. I wasn’t doing. Memories are blurry at best, but something undeniable has shifted in my body. There is more spaciousness and feeling of expansion. Music did work in me. Each morning after the concerts, I open my arms to my kids, ready to snuggle, feeling renewed. Feeling multifaceted. Feeling alive.
As a yoga teacher, I am clear that one of my jobs is offering folks access to ritual time. One agreement we have as people step away from their computers and their routine, as they put down their phones and their caretaking roles, is that I will watch the time. I will hold time, keep time. I will stay upright, alert, and vigilant so they won’t have to. They get to be in their bodies, moving and breathing. Thinking less and being more. I will guide them from one shape to the next, and I will let them know when it is time to return to ordinary life. While they are in the studio, they are free to drop into deep time. Each time I teach, it is a reminder to me that my body, too, needs to step away for rest and nourishment now and again.
In our highly scheduled society, where are you, what (if anything) are you doing, and who (if anyone) are you with when time falls away? When you can put down some of your roles and just be? What is one tiny way you can prioritize access to deep ritual time?