I love the beach.
I love the messiness of the sand. The sun. The people around me that I don’t know who they are. The water in front of me that is absolutely endless yet is scary that you don’t know what’s under there. And you get to come in and out. Specifically with the Pacific Ocean, that tingling feeling that you might have to get used to within the first fifteen seconds.
And I just love it.
What’s under there doesn’t matter. That’s just imagination. At that point you just let go. If you were so afraid of what’s under the ocean, you would never go in. Yet I feel so at peace when I float on the water, the way the waves just come down and carry me, and I dive into the next one, and the next one.
There aren’t many moments like that.
But funny enough, I think about the first time I went out by myself. It was the eve before a flight to Puerto Vallarta for a wedding, a close friend of mine. There was a DJ at a club in Hollywood I really wanted to see, someone I admired, someone I would listen to very heavily. I asked all my friends. Either they were busy packing, or they just didn’t connect, or it just wasn’t in their framework or mind of even going.
And I said to myself, you know what, I cared so much it didn’t matter to me. I just want to go myself.
I remember sitting in that line and not having anybody to go to or to speak to. And then I was in the club, and something funny happened, and I turned around almost instinctively to tell someone, and realized nobody was there.
When I saw nobody was there, it was sobering for a second.
Oh. I’m by myself.
Before that, I was deducing. Nobody came, so nobody sees what I see. Nobody sees what I see, so nobody cares what I see. Nobody cares what I see, so I’m on an island.
I didn’t feel that. I deduced it. Built a whole world out of it and moved in.
So there I am, looking around at all the heads, the drunk people, the flashing lights, the setting. Where the fuck am I. Am I actually here.
I thought I was doubting something. Whether I’m enough without somebody standing next to me. But there was no somebody. There was just me, already there, already doing it. I was doubting nothing.
And I’m standing there thinking about the gap. Where I am, and who I could be. And who I could be was just me. The idea to even go out in the first place, that was me. Every step I took in that place wouldn’t have existed otherwise. I always knew it. But you forget. There’s an hour before your guy goes on and the waiting does something to you.
There was an opening DJ before the one I came for. Which means I had all this out with myself during the warm-up. Would any of it have happened if I’d walked in for the guy I actually came to see?
I looked at myself and I said, you are YEHUDA ATZMON.
Call it a pep talk. But it was more than that. I was there for music. I was there for something I cared about. Something I loved. And I knew I was in a situation where there’s no way I cannot be me.
The flinch was looking for someone else. But the someone else I wanted was me, the me who acknowledges who he is. I turned around looking for him and he was the one who turned.
I don’t want the flinch gone. Maybe flinch isn’t even the word. I want to be in constant check of realizing who I am.
I went straight to the bar. Got myself a drink. Went into the crowd, five feet from the booth, and I was in the zone. The same zen I felt in the ocean.
If I locked eyes with somebody, I met it. Danced with them, or just connected on a song. I cracked jokes with people on the floor. Built this whole energy around me with these people I didn’t know. Three of them and me, going to grab drinks in the middle of it, coming back.
I didn’t know anybody there. It took the fifteen seconds. Then I floated.
It felt real. It felt for me.
And I think they felt it too. Nobody said it. But when you show up as yourself, the person in front of you sees it, and something in them goes: alright. I’ll be who I am with you.