Displace Me

Before you read this, go read this post from Peter about Displace Me in Washington, DC. That will give you a pretty good idea what Displace Me was all about, because mine is more about feelings and reflections.

I'm lazy and I don't want to type out the general facts, so:

Read the official press release!

Look at the pictures while/before/after you read this.

This thing was life-changing. I was able to experience true unity and acceptance, and get a taste of culture outside of the SDA/BMA/home bubble. Not that I really consider myself SDA anymore, (yes, many many changes since last story time, kids) but still. I have been and am going through a time of searching in pretty much all the areas of my life, and Displace Me was a direction, a cause, something unquestionably right and noble to me.

As beautiful as that part of it was, the best and amazing thing for me was the people I met and my interactions with them. Real people, and it didn't matter who was what and if they did this or that. First it was the guys who I played hackysack with during the filming section. Then there was our next door neighbors, a big group of city homies who asked me to play them a song as soon as I had grabbed Peter's guitar. I played some Jack Johnson and some random stuff of my own for a little while, and then one of them happened to ask if we liked Crowder, and of course Peter and I were so excited. So we sung a few Crowder's and more people started coming, culminating in 15-20 people during "You Are My Joy."

Then there was Yle, (?) the friendly Korean girl who came over and said she had heard the guitar and she wanted us to play her a song, a love song to be specific. Peter sang some sweet little thing and man everybody in the world should have seen the beaming smile on her face. So we got to talking to her and ended up chilling with her during the activities of the evening (for like an hour at least!) She was so completely accepting and beautifully happy. During the very moving 21 minutes of silence I laid on my back looking at the stars, Yle on my left and Peter on the right and it just felt like we were all three old friends, and there was definitely a friendship love flowing between all of us. Soon after that she left to be with her group and I didn't see her again the whole time, much to my disappointment. And I didn't even get a picture, stupid me...

After that was the crazy dance circle, the sweat and smiles of the drummers and dancers mixing with the heartfelt words of our chants and floating up like incense to God who we hope transferred that straight to the heart of good ol' BushyBush like a brick. Yeah.

By some miracle of energy, I played my best game ever hacking with some colorful college guys and girl... it was the first time since I started seriously hacking that I was able to play with people better/as good as me. Good stuff, and after taking long exposures of the monument and flags for a while and listening to Peter talk to the super-chill Aussie girl with super-long dreads about America and justice and all kinds of things, me and him went down to our little cardboard home and started playing guitar. This was like 1 o'clock or something.

We started by doing Stars (Crowder, not Switchyfooty or Coldplayerz) and it was so beautiful. It didn't matter that I played the wrong chords. This brought I think about 4 people over who started just worshiping with us. We did a bunch more Crowder and some Jars of Clay and then there were some girls who didn't know Crowder so I played some Jack Johnson and we did a bunch of original stuff. It was so cool to be playing Banana Pancakes and see a few people around in the shelters pop their heads over their walls and sing along with grins of blissful recognition. The aforementioned girls fell in love with the original stuff that we did, especially "Laid Back." They said we should record them and we agreed...

By 2:00 the group filtered down to me and Peter and a girl named... Shelly I think?... She was an upperclassman in college and a very level-headed Christian. We shared a lot of our doubts and struggles with her and her soft-spoken and mature friend Katie who came maybe 15 minutes later. The four of us just shared and bonded and talked about everything, but mostly God and the questions we all had, punctuated by occasional idiotic statements/jokes by me and Peter that made all of us laugh and them wonder at our eccentricity.

About 2:45 or 3:00 a girl who I forgot her name came over and asked us if we had any pot, and of course we didn't but we invited her to sit and talk with us. Shelly shared her blanket with the girl and we got to hear some of her story, how she lived in New York but came to the D.C. Displace Me so she could get "as close to kicking Bush's ass as possible" or something like that. She was a senior in high school and a really nice girl with a colorful vocabulary, but I didn't mind that at all.

You see, it didn't matter. Not in the least bit. None of our faults mattered, and the masks were thrown so far away. I was completely myself, stripped down to the raw me, and it was such freedom and joy. I was so close to those people I had never met before, closer than I had felt to my long-time friends back home in months. No worries about impressing anyone, nobody judging, nobody telling me to go to freaking bed, and although I wasn't really speaking to God, I can't deny he was there. What I felt there is God's character. I feel like Christians have grossly misinterpreted him and also applied way too many labels to him. But anyway thats a discussion for another night.

My lasting image from Displace Me, the one that's burned into me and I long to relive again and again, came after we left our little place to warm our hands on the lights that illuminate the Washington Monument. Katie went to do something else, so it was just me and Peter and the girl who wanted pot (she was beautiful) sitting up under one of the flags at 4:00 in the morning. I had the guitar, and we were lost in our thoughts and in the moment, and I was singing "Soco Amaretto Lime" by Brand New, a soft emotional anthem. I looked up at her and we looked into each other's eyes and hers were screaming and whispering, sharp and dark at the same time, and in them I saw pain and confusion but trust and acceptance, and searching and weariness and most of all a desire to be loved and a desire to love.

Oh how I wish I could find her again and let her lean on me and talk to her about my deep dark secrets and listen to hers and be someone for her to be able to pour out everything hidden behind the mystery in her eyes on. I wish I could be for her the difference between joy and pain, the difference between the fleeting marijuana fix and the continual fix of love and God. Where is she now? What is her life like? Did she cry today, and what about?

Does she have somebody looking out for her, somebody to love? God, I hope so.

Unfortunately, security kicked us off the monument grounds soon after, and we went down the path to the monument and sat on the foot-wide pony walls holding the earth from burying the path. Super-chill Aussie girl met up with us there and she and beautiful eyes talked for a long time while I sat lost in thought and Peter slept stretched out on the wall. Around 4:45 I woke up Peter and made him move down so I could stretch out on the wall too. He had stolen my sleeping bag so I just had his thin fleece bag, but when I woke up he gave mine to me and I slept like a baby. Well, until 7:00 that is, when I was awoken by the bright sun and a gospel choir. I didn't get to say goodbye to beautiful eyes or Katie or super-chill Aussie girl, they were all gone when I woke up.

That night makes me long so much for the hippie life, the simple life, a different life than the one I lead now, but am I just holding onto one utopian night like it exists elsewhere and is it merely a fantasy that somewhere there is a place that's like Displace Me all the time?

That's what my heart aches for right now. Displace Me all the time.