Completed, but not Ended
Isolation and the Power of Transformation: Lessons Learned from "The Isolation Diaries"
This week, I completed “The Isolation Diaries”. Completed, but didn’t end. When a project begins, we have no idea what it will morph into. We pretend we are in control. It's a comforting illusion. Yet how could I have known, that I would be bound to this labour of love for so many years? Was it written into its fate when I sat down at the table for the first time? That something within me, far deeper than my knowing, would bind me to it? It began with the pandemic. And then later, as the world opened, I found myself out of time. Isolation had gnawed into me. Navigating it living alone, I burrowed into a monastic chamber. You do not exit the basement of being on a whim. Rather, you have a choice: Venture deeper, in quest of the potential you seek. Or leave it and risk forever wondering what you left behind. And so, as the world opened up, I sought new parameters for my isolation. I wintered in the north of Scotland. Gales swung the van back and forth near vertiginous cliff edges. I stripped in the storm by the Black Loch. I felt the primal howl which connects us to our ancestors. I bellowed into the void & felt my feet tether to the earth. In a world too distracted to fathom its logos, I conducted the wind. You unmake yourself to become yourself. You lose everything to find everything. Isolation. Isn't the word so bound in negativity? I realise now I was reclaiming it. We were so quick to run from Isolation. But amidst the suffering and the tragedy, we also discovered something. And then lost it as soon as the shock wore off. Spiritual insight - atomised by the realisation we could argue about something new. Whoever thought society could split over the wearing of a mask? No, the spirit can choose its own path. For a short time, we remembered that we love one another. That we missed each other. There were love hearts written on walls and claps upon balconies. Even the stars wondered what was going on, stirred by the din below. The pandemic painted primal colours on me. In the fragmentation of everything, I pondered the canvas from afar. Mortality. Love. Meaning. These were something worth writing about. And so write I did.
My self splintered into different directions - but under the umbrella of Isolation. An anguish-filled unifier. When I talk about completion, it frazzles my mind. Why? Because what I complete only highlights the vastness of what is unfinished. What is completed: The musical side of the project. What is incomplete: 2000 pages of handwritten words. Are "The Isolation Diaries" ever to see the light of day? I started Substack because I had to bring agency to my writing. God's hoarder - no longer! More sentences than "The Brothers Karamazov". And not a page typed! So that was the goal this year. Type. Release stuff. And yet, I have no talent for piggybacking the past. I just carried on writing. But at least started publishing! And so now: Still hanging over me - the weight of the incomplete. Too dizzying to return to. Too pregnant to leave behind. And so I ask: tell me what to do. Why is it so hard to reach out? To ask for help when you are stuck? So here is my abstract cry! Burrowed amidst another weight of words. On the lighter side; this week was a celebration: I completed the final EP of "The Isolation Diaries"! Number #5 Well, that's not the whole truth. I finished the recording. I shall celebrate that dammit! So 20 songs are now recorded - from the hundreds of scraps I wrote during my wandering. Next: mixing and mastering. After: figuring out the release. I have a plan for bringing the musical side of the project to completion. 1. A Vinyl album - this will be a "best of" from the project. 2. A special release show - I think in Berlin in December. As I write this, dappled light dances on my fingers. I'm parked by a highway somewhere in Southern France. I left directly from the studio. Last howl. Mic drop. Exit. I wanted to consecrate the act of completion with something physical. To move. To change my space. Twelve hours into my drive, I am in its transition. The act of completing something invites the world. New energy. New potential. New conversation with the unknown. I am in no rush to fill it. Life will decide that. And in its own time. Yet the miles provoke a dreaming. The space invokes an energy. To complete something isn't an ending. It's an invitation to change. From one state to another. I hear the voice inside me. Its yearning is newly characterised. Time begins to shape it into something new. What I know: After three years of Isolation, I am ready to return. What that means, I don't yet know. What I do know: The lessons I sought are woven deep into the fabric of my being. This modern world; cynical about the act of transformation. That spiritual progress is possible at all. It is wrong. Obey your seeking. Listen to the questions asked by your spirit. The world obsesses with cancelling things. But there is only one thing worth cancelling: The Noise. It steals the voice inside you. Listening is your foundation. Hearing is your potential. If you follow what it says - and I mean really follow it - it will lead you to what you seek. That which you wish to become. It is not fixed. There is never an arrival. And perhaps that is its point. Be within the act of becoming. That is the heart of life. It is short. For God's sake: Don't waste it. The pandemic taught us about mortality. Terrified, we drugged ourselves up again with distraction. Psychologically: That is exactly what society has done. Are you choosing the drug you take? Do you have agency over your spirit? What does your gut reaction say? Listen to it. Capture it. Write it down. React to it. Life is speaking through you. Don't be so foolish not to listen. There is one chance. One potential. Acquiesce to it. Utterly. There is a flame inside you. Its withering is only the decay of what others have told you. Agency is to throw down hellfire. Are you not composed of starstuff? Are you not idiot enough to dream? Bow before life. In the act of prayer, you commune with all things. Life is radical. Yesterday, I was that. Today I am this. That is why we complete things. Because moving forward is a covenant. Keep becoming! I am not quite sure where I am going now. I am alive in the act of surrender. None of it happened as planned. Those eternal accidents: They composed my life. I want to give back. It doesn't preclude receiving either. I know what love is. To see and be seen. I am grateful for my Isolation. Part of it is woven into me. Part I now unstitch. The tapestry is ready for new thread. One day I will step back again, and see what it chose to create. And marvel as the light mingles with its texture. With love, Jim
Again another part of my heart opens up. Thank you for sharing this…. Have some friends get together and help type in the notes , you’d be surprised who jumps to help when you ask for it 🪷
I feel so grateful and blessed to have witnessed your journeys. Your words move through me and hearing them spoken especially gets under my skin. My experience of the pandemic lockdowns was so very different from yours, and yet…and yet I deeply resonate with your journey. Words often escape me when the entanglement is so deep.
Thank you for so generously sharing your experiences and reflections. I’m here to keep listening…