I wanna write her name in the sky
Gonna free fall out into nothin’
Gonna leave this world for a while"
From "Free Fallin'" Tom Petty
Sometimes a thing just . . . hits you a certain way. You're not expecting it, and an insight, or a lesson, or just a new way of appreciating something just falls into your lap.
I've heard "Free Fallin" plenty of times. Tonight, driving home form work I heard it again and it was . . . different, somehow. I listened to that last verse, quoted, above, and I felt, much more deeply than ever before, Petty's alienation. And my own.
I've long had the thought . . . that the world is very broadly made up of just two groups of people: Those who belong and those who don't. By that I mean: those who are able to just go along and get along, adn those who don't. The former group never seem particularly unhappy, or stressed; the latter group never seem to be fully happy, totally relaxed, 100% at ease.
When I heard those lyrics tonight, it really crystallized it for Me. It was one of those rare and wonderful times when a song in a moment transports one to some other place, a place of immediately heightened understanding. An understanding that can only be described as bodily.
And from "Free Fallin" I went right to "You Don't Know How It Feels":
"But let me get to the point, let's roll another joint
And turn the radio loud, I'm too alone to be proudYou don't know how it feels
You don't know how it feels to be me"
One powerful thing about the belong/don't belong division is how obviously and strongly it cuts across all of the other divisions in life. Sex, race, religion, economic standing, gay or straight, kinky or vanilla . . . no accident of birth or life circumstance insulates us from belonging or not belonging.
Another powerful thing about this divide is how easy it is to recognize in people. We can meet someone for the first time, and within minutes, if we are looking for it -- and sometimes when we're not -- we know which side of the divide they fall on.
And, as far as I can tell, it's more or less impossible to "switch sides" in this divide.
That this divide is so universal, so easily recognized, and very hard to cross leads Me to logically conclude (or at least expect) that it must have some utility.
But . . . what utility, exactly? And what does any of this have to do with any aspect of D/s?
Well, for Me at least, knowing about it, thinking about it, swimming in it . . . revelatory musical discoveries about it -- don't help. To "not belong" feels just as bad when it feels bad . . . and retains its sour goodness when it feels good.
I wonder if D/s couples from opposite sides of the divide are a good match? For that matter, perhaps people from opposite sides of the divide make good (or no good) vanilla couples?
The way it feels to Me -- I couldn't imagine being intimately involved with someone who was happy-go-lucky, totally at ease with life. What would we talk about? But for others, that difference, extreme as it is, could be just the thing . . . I can see two people complementing each other like that.
For right now I don't have any overwhelming insight. For today, to have been reminded so powerfully, so totally, of who I am and where I stand on the side of this massive existential divide, was enough.
