Elle Potter

an apology letter

Dear Muse,

Hi, how are you?

…boy, this is awkward…

Look, I really want to apologize for not recognizing you.  That must have made you really feel like shit.  But I want you to know how much it means to me to know you just played along that whole time.  You didn’t try to prove me wrong and you didn’t screw with my head like you could have and I appreciate you not taking advantage of me.

All along, I was afraid you’d leave me, and I didn’t realize you ARE me; my breath, my passion and my spark.

I feared your voice was tainted and your opinions were set to misguide me, and I’m sorry I told you to put a sock in it.  I didn’t realize it really was YOU being genuine – I thought you were the whispers of someone else trying to trick me.

I haven’t been able to look you in the face for ages.  In fact, it’s been so long that I fear I wouldn’t even be able to pick out your face in a crowd.  And I’m embarrassed to admit I wasn’t even actually looking in your direction because I was star-crosseyed trying to keep focused on another lover.

Look – I realize now how legit you are.  You’re not just shouting arbitrary hogwash to me because you want to see how high I’ll jump.  You’ve been asking me to jump because you know I can fly.  Before I realized who you were, you couldn’t have paid me to have faith in what I was jumping into.  And now?  Now I’m purposely waiting on the cliff for the most perfect burst of air to rush up and meet me from all the breathtaking beauty below and toss me into a freefall extravaganza of faith.

I’ve been dense and stubborn, convinced I was running the show and acting like I knew what I was doing.  You’ve been patiently raising your hand, waiting for me to take notice and ask you to stand up and share your thoughts with the rest of the group.  What I’ve only just realized is how in love I’ve fallen with you.

I’ve fallen in love with you by falling into myself.

You are my inspiration, my passion, my intuition, my heart – you are ME.

Like, literally – I’ve been falling in love with myself this whole time.  No more middle man.  No one else gets the credit for this one – this was all me.

I can’t wait to keep falling in love with myself over and over again.

Muse, keep it real.  Remember I love you.  I’ll see you soon.

Thank you for loving me.

LYLAS,

elle.

how ella got her muse back

I had a very active little muse when I was young.  Together, my muse and I built houses in Gramma’s backyard out of sticks, fashioned balance beams out of old fence posts and sat in the tops of trees while talking back and forth to one another.  I sang, I wrote, I dreamt big dreams and I had big plans.  My muse had a million things in line for me to accomplish, and at times I was hugely intimidated by the endless sea of suggestions.

As is common, the older I got, the quieter my muse became.   In college, I had to flat out ask my muse to put a sock in it so I could focus solely on graduating.  Obligingly, my muse sat patiently in the corner of my heart.

After graduation, I had nearly forgotten about my muse.  I took it upon myself to play the muse for many others in my life, desperately trying to inspire friends, family and boyfriends to follow their heart.  I helped them apply for colleges and jobs, planned their fantasy vacations and cross-country moves, and tried to place their dreams in their hands even though their fists were shoved obstinately into their pockets.  It was the blind leading the blind; no one was listening to their own actual authentic muse.

i think this is where my muse lives.

I remember the first time I heard my muse speak again.  It began speaking at the same time I was cultivating a new relationship with someone I very much cared for.  The kind of person who tells you you’re beautiful, you’re talented, you’re amazing and you genuinely believe every word of it.  This new friendship was maintained over hundreds of miles of distance and in the beginning, through handwritten, heart-felt old-school snail-mail letters.  As this was the only means of our communication (and because I was living alone at the time), I began to have long talks in my head with the person I was writing on paper to.   The response back came in the voice of that friend, offering empowering words of support and encouragement straight to my soul, echoing the language of real-life letters that were written back to me.

He inspired me, he let me grow, he made suggestions and he had big dreams with me.  I began to write again.  Sing again.  I began teaching yoga.  Hoping to make him proud, I had obligingly took his inspiration to heart and became overwhelmingly proud of the woman we had created, him and I.  But as he became less accessible in real-life, I continued to have these conversations with him in my heart.  It was like having an imaginary friend – the comfort of memories of a real person, fashioned from real-life conversations, and still telling me all the things I needed to hear.

When it came down to it, I fell in love with my heart, which I mistook for someone else.  The person I had always thought I was having these conversations with through my heart was living a life separate of mine.  I got everything on the inside confused with the real-life person on the outside – and when that real-life person was not in love with me, I felt misled.

And then, because I had listened to that guidance from in my heart that I thought had come directly from him, I felt betrayed.

On top of all that, I had been having internal conversations that I was taking seriously for over two years – I felt like a nutjob.  A complete lunatic.  Basketcase.  Crazy.

Let me be clear about these voices; I’m not talking about the kind of voices that say, “Light the bedskirt on fire, Lizzy.”  Or, “Redrum.  Redrum…”

I’m talking about the kind of voices that say;

“You know, you’re the most incredibly beautiful woman I’ve ever known.”

“You should make a change in your life if it’s what your heart really wants.”

“Have I ever told you how much you mean to me?  How much you inspire me?”

Those ones.  The good ones.

I started telling those voices to go eff themselves.  Any of those thoughts that came through my head were the enemy.  They were being said with the voice of someone I didn’t trust, I didn’t respect and I was extremely, incredibly hurt by.  And so I shut them out.

My self-love diminished.  My love of others diminished.  I didn’t trust any thoughts, whether shared by someone else or thought of myself.  My creativity diminished.  My self-worth diminished.  I crawled into a shell and wondered what was even occupying it.

If I was having so many of these freaking love-filled heart-to-hearts without HIS heart, then who was I talking to?  Who was responding?

Enter: Breakthrough, Stage Right.  The kind of self-realization and –actualization that hit me so hard that my face went numb out of shock and my eyes welled up with tears.

I had been talking to Love.

It was Love that had inspired me to become the woman I am even still becoming.  Love reached out from the inside of my heart and embraced me when I was sad.  I had found support, strength and empowerment because Love had guided me to it.

All this time, I thought love had left me because he had – but he was never really there to begin with.  Love was.  All along.

Love had led me to accomplish so much because Love is my muse.

My muse isn’t him.  My muse isn’t anyone.  My muse isn’t even necessarily me – it’s much more than that.  My muse is the relationship I cultivate with anyone around me.  My muse is the passion that burns me into a flame of creativity.  My muse is Grace herself, Creation herself and Destruction herself.

When you cut through all the muck, all the muddle, all the bells and whistles and smoke and mirrors – what is truly speaking to you?  What is truly driving you?  And will you take the time to really listen to what it’s saying, not how it’s saying it?  Even when you are dreaming, your muse is begging you to listen.

Acknowledge the person who inspired your strength.  The person who made you first feel beautiful.  The person who showed you the greatest love. The echoes of their words become the language of your muse.  Carry those memories in your heart – but know that that strength, that beauty, that inspiration and that LOVE is already a part of you.  They cannot take it back and do not ever try to convince yourself it’s not yours.

tickling the ivories

One of the rooms in my house that I spend the least time in is the Blue! Room.  Aptly named, because it is painted the most BLUE! color you’ve ever seen.  Not, Congratulations-it’s-a-boy! Powder Blue.  Not, Drinking-pina-coladas-with-little-umbrellas-looking-out-at-the-Carribean Blue.  Instead, think: Spiderman Blue.  On four walls.  Pow.

The other day, I slipped into the Blue! Room with a cup of tea and my favorite book to enjoy some quiet time in my Great-Gramma D’s chair.  It was a rare moment of hush – no television, no people, no email – and I delighted in the faint dinging of my wind chimes on the porch out front.  I didn’t even seem to mind the loud-mouthed pooches next door.

I was absorbed in the quiet noise of the world around me for quite some time – everything continuing on its way as I sat in rare stillness.

…until Heart & Soul began tinkering on the piano just on the other side of the most solidly Blue! wall in the Blue! Room.  I live in a duplex, built circa 1902 – so the Blue! walls aren’t so much “walls” as they are “cheesecloth.”  The little girl who lives next door had begun her daily after-school concert, and I was officially distracted.

The problem is not that she’s playing piano.  The problem’s not that some of her songs aren’t exactly… songs.  The problem is that I just so happen to still speak Eight-year-old-pianist fluently, so every song she is playing is translated as an entire one-sided conversation inside my head.

She sits down and immediately delves into Heart & Soul.  This is her way of getting acclimated to the piano after a long day of whatever it is you do in 3rd grade these days.  It’s her go-to song.  And anyone who has ever learned Heart & Soul probably learned it in a way similar to how I learned it – buddied up with someone who lovingly, PATIENTLY, played the bass part while you tinker away with the keys far on the right.  Oh, and the day – the DAY! – the day you learn how to play the back-up is the day you officially become a pianist.  It makes me wonder who it is she’s thinking of as she’s playing.

Next on the playbill is a song that she knows oh-so-well.  Oh-so-well enough and oh-so-FAST enough that she doesn’t even bother playing it in tempo.  Check out her mad skills!  She’s flying through the parts – the melody moving so quickly that it’s more of a 1-2-3-4-5-4-3-4-5-4-3-2-1 movement that she’s memorized than an actual melody, and the bass rhythm is a hasty and almost over-looked B-B-B-Bam.  But check out how fast she’s playing it!  Pssh.  Anyone would be impressed.

She begins playing a newer song.  I can hear her thinking it through and know she’s hearing exactly how it’s supposed to sound; even though to anyone else’s ears it would sound like painful noise.  The piano abruptly stops and she begins singing the part she’s been working so hard on.  She sings it once, plays it back.  Sings it again, plays it again.  Back and forth over the same four bars, and at this point I’ve set down my book and in my mind, I’m playing the part with her.  You got this, girl!  You got it!  Don’t forget the F#!  Don’t forget the…. Okay, that’s alright. Try again, sweets.  Bum, bum, 1 e & a, ba-duh, duh, BUM!  YEAH!!!!  One more time!!!

And every song turns into a bridge which leads to an endless encore of Heart & Soul.

Suddenly, the music changes.  It doesn’t seem like a song learned in a Little Fingers Beginner’s Piano book. It’s in a deep, minor key.  It’s sullen and slow, and it’s hard to believe those same little fingers are playing something so profound.

Last Christmas, my friend called me on speakerphone from his sister’s house and placed the phone on top of the piano to play a song for me he’d been making up.  It was in a slow, heavy minor key and I was surprised because I didn’t even know he played the piano. In the moment my junior pianist began playing her song, I could almost see an image of my friend, sitting at the piano. I could imagine the look on his face that would appear blank to most anyone – but I know the intricate thoughts that would be spinning in his head. I could imagine his fingers playing so delicately across the keys, looking almost ludicrously light for their size.

I was so overwhelmed with such simple love and adoration of him that it brought tears to my eyes.

The music next door shifted seamlessly back to Heart & Soul.

When we love someone, we experience many songs. Sometimes we get into relationships where we’re so confident that we rush through the easy parts, showing off with how quickly we can move, without taking time to savor our favorite parts. Other times, we find ourselves in relationships that are difficult and almost impossible to read – but we keep trying, time and time again, because we’re convinced we know what it could be like.Then, there are the relationships that we always come back to, because they move from and are so very near and dear to our very Heart & Soul.

The most pure of our love comes from our Heart and our Soul. Therein lies no judgment, no expectations, no fear, no obstacles. And it’s that love that we inherently learn from everyone who has ever shown any method of love to us – your best friend who listens to your five-minute long voicemails, because they know you just needed someone to listen; the cousin who mails you random homemade I Love You! cards for no reason at all; your mom, who holds you while you cuss and cry when you’re upset; the barista that remembers your early morning drink; the friend who calls just as you were thinking about them; the driver in traffic ahead of you who gave you the “thanks-for-letting-me-merge” wave. It’s these painfully simple acts of love that give us a wave of remembrance – the remembrance that love is LOVE is love is LOVE.

Take away all the fights, all the jealousy, all the distrust, even all the inside jokes and all the good times. Set aside all the angry words, the hurt feelings, the disappointment, and especially the giggly romantic butterflies.Imagine never feeling obligated, rejected, accepted, free, or reluctant.Forget all the adjectives – both the positive AS WELL AS the negative.There are no words to describe Love. The emotions we experience are merely OUR embodiment of Love – not Love itself. It’s all the way Love moves. But Love – as LOVE itself – is that moment where there is NOTHING but Love.

Chew on that.

For that flicker of an almost half-moment that I imagined my friend at the piano –

Before I thought, “Oh, this is sweet…”

Or, “Oh, I haven’t heard from him in forever – when’s he going to call me back?!” …

Or before I even thought, “Oh, how I love him…”

…that was Love.

It always comes back to Heart & Soul.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful

I woke up much earlier than I usually do on Sunday morning. I took a nice hot shower and took my time drinking my tea. Enveloped in my bathrobe, I meandered quietly through the early morning dark of the house. I finally wandered back into my bedroom, beginning to think about putting on some stretchy pants when I saw my Blackberry flashing. There was an email from one of my students:

“Goodness! Today is no day for commuting. Will you make it up for class?” Confused, I looked at the time. 6:45am. Still half an hour until I usually leave to make the drive from Denver to Boulder. Perplexed, I finally opened the curtains of one of the windows. Outside was a fresh new cover of snow and more was falling, anxious to add to the growing mess.

I rushed into stretchy pants, pulled on three layers of shirts and slid out across the snow to my car.

The commute was a disaster. I’m not one to worry about driving in adverse conditions, but I found myself getting very worried on multiple occasions. I don’t think I ever got to going over 30mph, and there was never a spot on the highway that wasn’t packed with snow. I yelled at every car that passed me for being impatient, I tried in vain to stay between what may or may not have been lines and prayed that I wouldn’t get stuck behind any semis.

I couldn’t imagine I would make it to church on time (aka, my 8:30am Sunday morning class). When I finally slid into my parking spot at the Boulder studio, it was seven minutes past class start time. A small handful of students were waiting for me at the front door of om time. They cheered as they saw me walk up, so genuinely glad to see I was safe. I was shaking as I tried to unlock the door and scoot across the floor without slipping to turn off the alarm.

One of my students noticed I was shaking and suggested I run my hands under some hot water to warm up. “I’m not cold,” I said. “I’m just shook up.” It had taken me an hour and a half to get to Boulder instead of the usual forty-five minutes.
We all unrolled our mats together, taking our time to get acclimated to our own thawing bodies. I sat down on my mat and looked around at the ladies.

“So…” I said, finally able to authentically smile at each warm face. “Who’s teachin’?”

When you find yourself on a difficult path, what keeps drawing you forward? There is somewhere that your heart is leading you and even in the moments when you can’t see clearly where you are, it calls out its promise to continue forward. And no matter how hard the going gets or how unsure of how you will arrive in your destination, there are those who wait patiently for you. They are the people who endlessly support you, root for your success and pray for your safety. And when you arrive, no matter have far you may have strayed from them, no matter how lost you may have found yourself, no matter if you turned down any of their offers for help – their arms are open and they hold you fiercely to warm you back up.