This Wide Open Plain

When we lose the taste for the malls and fairy tales and big houses and television shows and we've past the age of our own shining myth, what then? When we've grieved our grievances and swallowed the bitter bill of sorrowful realities and sang them and painted them and, finally, digested them and accepted that they will always be a part of who we are, then?

When we no longer long for things out of our reach and are not only satisfied, but happy, with our simple lot that will contain no fame nor stunning good looks nor great heroic acts nor material wealth of grotesque proportion, what is there after?

I've been raised in a culture that has drilled me to crave after more, now that there is little craving left in me, there is a strange uncertainty. Those who speak about 'just being' only have something of use to share with me if they can laugh and show compassion for their own toddling attempts at that state.

While driving fast down the highway today, coming back from an appointment for self-care that had left me feeling very yeilded and open, a song came on that use to help me wrench out all the pain and anger and deep refusal to pretend life was all glitter and rock stars, happily ever after and trim tummies. And I still enjoy singing it, but I found that there was nothing left to ring out. I had nothing to prove to myself or the world on that score - yes, I have suffered things. And yes, others suffer and their stories are denied and unheard by our culture. The truth lives in me and I am no longer struggling with it. There is no need to make others admit it anymore, no fury at how our culture denies and how others try to force that "happy" cookie-cutter on me. There is no raging against in me anymore, I am still where that energy use to lay.

And the fantasies of being pretty or rich or famous or owning a fabulous big house or traveling all over the world have left me too. First because I finally realized I would never have them, then because I realized I didn't really want those things when I looked at the price tag.

What music speaks to finding you are where you want to be and where you want to be is in a simple life of no particular note, living by your beliefs, stiving only to be more true and more present? And, more, that this is a happy place to be, a joyous place to be, after all the struggling?

This is the only song I've found so far that speaks to it:

'Tis a gift to be simple
'tis a gift to be free
'tis a gift to come down where we aught to be
and when we find ourselves in the place just right
'twill be in the valley of love and delight.

But I am looking for something more contemporary, a fellow person of my times speaking to the experience of loving the simple life, of not needing all that television and movies, and malls, and ads, and our peers once told us were the important things in life. Music that will speak to my experience. I wonder if it is out there, and I wonder if it is the kind of thing you can belt while flying down the highway.