Ready For Love…

**I need to say a big thank you to Spanishharlemmonalisa.com for posting the pictures from this wonderful night. I was too busy crying to take good ones of my own.

Without further ado…here’s the post…

I am ready for love

Why are you hiding from me?

I’d quickly give my freedom

To be held in your captivity

I am ready for love

All of the joy and the pain

And all the time that it takes

Just to stay in your good grace

Lately I’ve been thinking, maybe you’re not ready for me

Maybe you think I need to learn maturity

They say watch what you ask for, ’cause you might receive

But if you ask me tomorrow, I’ll say the same thing

I am ready for love

Would you please lend me your ear?

I promise I won’t complain

I just need you to acknowledge I am here

If you give me half a chance, I’ll prove this to you

I will be patient, kind, faithful and true

To a man who loves music, a man who loves art

Respects the spirit world and thinks with his heart

I am ready for love

If you’ll take me in your hands

I will learn what you teach

And do the best that I can

I am ready for love

Here with an offering of

My voice, my eyes, my soul, my mind

Tell me what is enough to prove I am ready for love

I am ready

***

This song has been with me for a long time, and I finally had the pleasure of hearing it live when India Arie performed at the Gramercy Theater here in NY this past December. It was a magical night, but this song, which was part of the encore, and not even in the original set, stuck with me the most.

She stood up there on stage with all of her regal grace and asked the audience what they wanted to hear next. She had changed out of her earlier outfit, and was now decked in a comfortable shirt made by her mother with the word “worthy” printed across the front of it, and some of the most comfortable looking combat boots, black Doc Martens with hot pink laces, which matched the pink head wrap she changed into. She looked adorable and approachable. Like she was just a friend, singing in her living room for a few of her other friends.

Audience members threw out many suggestions, but when she heard “Ready For Love”, she stopped, and put her hand up high in the air like it was her own jam. “Ready For Love?” she said, “Yes, I’ll sing that one because I am ready for love. Can we all please put that prayer out there for me? I’m ready!” She shook her shoulders like she just couldn’t wait for that kind of grace to rain down on her. She took a deep breath, and began to sing.

The song on its own is wonderful, but hearing it live was magnificent. There was raw emotion, soul, passion, and conviction in every single line and note. During the bridge, she picked up her flute and played a solo that puts goosebumps on me just thinking about it. I was crying by the end of the song. And not just because I  feel those lyrics so very much, but because I realized just how connected we all are. All us humans. All us beings.

Everyone is looking for the same thing. I’ve been searching for love for as long as I can remember. I was the little girl who would look up and talk to the moon for hours each night, wishing, and hoping, and praying. Waiting and making myself ready for prince charming. Then I realized that the world was filled with more possibility than that. It wasn’t all black and white. But charming shades of blues and purples and every hue of the rainbow.

And since then, that has been my constant mantra. I am ready for love. I have made an experiment each day of making myself that much more ready. Making myself more healthy, more stable, more steady, so that I can be there for someone else just the way I’d love for them to be ready for me. And to see this gorgeous woman up on the stage wishing for the same exact things as small, four-foot-eleven-inch me, it struck a chord so deeply with me. I couldn’t contain myself. I really wish that I had a recording of that performance to share with you. It was that magical. I looked at her and realized that maybe the search never ends. Maybe we are always looking and are always ready for love. But maybe the journey towards it…is that thing we call life.

I see you Miss India Arie. And I feel you. Guurrrl, do I feel you! I feel like an old soul in this skin, behind this face that makes me look like a teenager, I feel like a seasoned, weathered, wise soul. And yet, I feel like I actually know so little. But I feel like I am searching after so much could there possibly be anyone searching after the same things? Could there be someone eager to take this journey with me? Can we find each other amongst the unlimited other souls and merge our vibrations in a way that creates primal, universal music? Could there really be that person? Or am I simply looking in vain?

Either way…I am ready. Each day, it’s what helps me wake up and do the best that I can. It’s what tells me that I know I have things to work on, but that my issues do not define me. My shortcoming do not make up all of who I am. It is what makes me pledge to create each day anew and live wild and free and from the heart. There is promise. There is possibility. Do I know if someone exists for me? Absolutely not. I’m not in charge. But I have hoped and wished and prayed that there is. And I wouldn’t dream of stifling that hope. I need it. I live off of it. But until I meet them…I promise to do all that I can to make myself worthy.

I feel like I’ve spent so much of my life misunderstood. I’m ready to end that cycle. I’m ready to fit in the missing puzzle piece. I’m ready to complete the song riff that’s stuck in my head without an ending. I’m ready, not to complete myself, but to add to my own bright soul, with another’s sweet being. I’m ready to enrich my own life with another’s gentle existence. I am ready.

Wishing you Romance and Whimsy

Love,

~Ava