I've been working over this idea of Frissen in my life. I recall the last time of truly having a moment of frissen, that moment of excitement or fear from the possible future I was heading into.
It was while working with some really great musicians, the beginning stages of a band, a recording studio, and a life full of musical adventures was upon me. At the time it seemed we had all the necessary requirements to "make it" as a band, and that all it would really take would be to "just do it." It was a frighteningly excited time. My heart seemed constantly in my throat, and my head a-buzz with the possibilities.
We had an EP under our belts, quite a few live gigs and hadn't even come up with a standing moniker yet. The only problem was that soon, we would all be moving back across the country from one another. I had to finish school in California, and the others had school in Boston, Philadelphia and the Twin Cities. Ideas where thrown around how we could work around this and it seemed settled that we would work as much as we could collaboratively over the next year until we would be able to find a common place to call home as a band and finally get to work.
As I moved back to California one of the band mates joined me and we worked a little on some music but the passion began to fade. The recording studio was coming along nicely as far as equipment goes, I was able to bring in some friends and find work that way. But the songwriting stopped, went dormant. A fracture began as the realities of life set in.
The tension between excitement and fear had broken to fear. I made a few last ditch attempts to pull it back together, but it felt more like trying to hold together a castle in the sand while the incoming tide drew out the foundation.
Maybe it saved us all from a greater disaster down the road. But looking back I still feel a greater pang of loss of the frissen of the moment and the potential we had together than most of the last four years of time I've spent figuring out what to do next.
I've had very meaningful experiences in that time. In fact I met the love of my life and married her during that time. But I still haven't fully felt those moments of tension between excitement and fear. There has been little moments as we figure out our life, but the decisions usually present themselves so well to the future that they don't seem that frightening.
Ever since I was a little kid I have loved the possibility of an apocalypse. So much so, that in reading the Left Behind Series in high school I hoped it was wrong in its interpretation of end times so that I could both be a Christian and deal with such massive chaos (assuming of course it happen in our life time). It is in times of chaos that who we really are stands up, when our character is given its most full expression.
May I seek to find chaos in my life and to act accordingly.
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