Are You Experienced, Or Just Alive?

Field notes on the Realness Beneath the Myth

06.25.25 Los Angeles, 7:02 a.m.

Some mornings arrive not with answers, but with the weight of simply being alive in a body that remembers everything. And if I’m honest, I don’t want to spiritualize this moment or wrap it in highfalutin wisdom. I don’t want to transmute the ache into insight too quickly. Maybe it’s just truth that doesn’t need to be alchemized into something prettier. This is just what it is. And maybe that’s holy enough.

Here’s a field note from that place:

“I ain't no writer. I’m nothin’ but a self-taught, dressmakin’, horse ridin’ so-and-so. All I got is a life insurance policy with a few names on it. Jimi (Hendrix) don’t know sh** about a woman.” -Carmen Evelyn

Today, I woke up like this. And I wonder- what is this frequency? Not depression exactly, not peace either. more like a raw hum beneath the skin, a quiet ache that asks to be honored, not solved.

We need mouths, arms, and hands- anything to remind us we’re still here. Still warm. Still wanting. There’s no valor in the freeze. No prize, no trophy for outliving the need for love. The untouchable woman is a myth, dreamed up by someone hiding in a hole of metaphors, afraid of the mess love makes when it’s real.

Jimi asked, “Are You Experienced?” No, not really. At least not in the way he meant. Not laced in guitar solos and psychedelic sex.

I’ve been experienced by grief. By silence. By standing barefoot in the kitchen wondering if I’m still allowed to want things. I am experienced in the way I know how a body folds not into desire, but into remembering.

You don’t get whole alone. And no one should have to live half-lit, half-hearted, half-a** alive. So I’m staying here- in the ache, in the truth that doesn’t need to be rebranded as “resilience” (that word- so often weaponized against women) or transformed into something more palatable.

Spare me the silver linings, the strength narratives, the polished pain dressed up as growth. Some days, it’s not about becoming better. Some days, it’s about not abandoning yourself in the middle of the storm. Let it be soft. Let it be bitter. Let it be embarrassing. Let it be messy. Let it be. Not everything aching needs a purpose. Not every crack in the wall is asking to be patched with grit. Some days, survival is enough. Some days, softness is the only protest I can offer.

Maybe strength was never about the reframe. Maybe it’s about staying with what is, even when it stings, even when you'd rather go numb, even when it feels like too much. Because longing isn’t weakness. Closeness isn’t a flaw. They’re not potholes in the soul to be filled with silence or stoicism. They’re just human.

Maybe I don’t need to “rise above” anything. Maybe I just need to sit with it and meet them exactly where they are, in my body, in this moment. No judgment. Just presence.

I don’t know. I’m not sure exactly. I’m drinking tea, watching the yard dirt blow across the street into someone else’s yard by a gardener named Eduardo. I wonder if Eduardo has a wife. I wonder if she’s ever been cracked open like this. If she knows the sound dirt makes when it moves. Maybe that’s what this is. Just a bunch of us. Fragments of earth, wind-scattered, trying to land somewhere soft.

And maybe, after all the smoke and solos, the misquotes and myths, Jimi knew more than I gave him credit for. Maybe he understood the kind of woman who bleeds sound, who carries whole love songs in her silence. Not the metaphor. The real thing. The kind of woman who doesn’t rise above the fire, but sits inside it, dances, and sings in the ashes and soot.

Maybe Jimi knew that being experienced isn’t about transcendence or escape, but about surviving the fall and still choosing to feel the burn.

And after all is said and undone, maybe Jimi knew. And maybe now, so do I.

Are You Experienced, Jimi Hendrix

“If you can just get your mind together
Then come on across to me
We'll hold hands, and then we'll watch the sunrise
From the bottom of the sea

But first, are you experienced?
Or have you ever been experienced?
Well, I have

I know, I know you probably scream and cry
That your little world won't let me go
But who in your measly little world
Are you trying to prove that
You're made out of gold and, uh, can't be sold?

So uh, are you experienced?
Have you ever been experienced?
Well, I have
Ah, let me prove it to you

Trumpets and violins I can, uh, hear in the distance
I think they're calling our names
Maybe now you can't hear them, but you will, ha ha
If you just take hold of my hand

Oh, but are you experienced?
Have you ever been experienced?

Not necessarily stoned, but beautiful.”