A while ago I had the privilege of attending one of the best concerts I've ever been to. This morning as I was curled up with my coffee, a good book and music created by my amazingly talented friend, I was reminded how much I need creative people in my life. The post I wrote then resonates with me now.
This one is for all the creative people, the writers and musicians and painters and anyone who creates in any capacity. Thank you for creating. The world needs you. I need you.
People pay for concert tickets to be entertained. I come to
be inspired. I sit before the artist, hands open wide, holding out my heart and
saying “Can you open this for me?”
The best ones can.
The best ones take a wild swing and crack open the rough exterior enough for me
to feel something for a designated period of time. The ones that can’t allow me
to walk away feeling disappointed, clinging to any and all belief that art is
like a stripper of the soul.
…
As I sat in that chair, pressed between my mother and a
stranger, hot, sticky and sweaty bodies crowding into a stadium the very size
of an NHL hockey arena, nothing else mattered. At least that’s what I told
myself.
For the next 90
minutes I let the music flow through me like a drug, let it slip all tension
from my veins into its medicating chill.
I think rock concerts
are a little bit like church. I think one of the ways I experience God isn’t
when His people are gathered together singing His name, though surely in that
too, but when hundreds of strangers come together to drink and laugh and
celebrate good music.
For the next few
hours it doesn’t matter that I normally wouldn’t say hello to the woman on my
left if I passed her on the street. It doesn’t matter that I’ll never see 99%
of these people again. It doesn’t matter that when tomorrow comes the band will
move on to inspire a new city of wanna-be-believers and the woman on my left
will return to her dead end job she hates and the guy sitting in the aisle
below me will still go home alone after breaking up with his girlfriend and the
young girl over there with her hand’s in the air will go back to a school where
she’s bullied day in and day out for being different, or that when tomorrow
rears its head I will march with all the false bravery I can muster into a
doctor’s office and pretend I am not scared to death. What matters is that we
have tonight.
Cell phone
flashlights lighting up the stage and loud, off key, drunken singing and I want
to know what it would be like to be an artist who inspires this many people. I
want to make people forget about tomorrow and live in the moment, to truly feel
something – maybe for the first time – and to laugh and kiss and make messes
and make art and make babies (and how maybe all of these are the same thing).
Tonight it doesn’t
matter who we are before we walked in the door. We’re all united, coming
together for one purpose. And I think that’s a lot like church. I think it’s
every chapel and cathedral I want to worship in. I think it’s every mind
blowing, good song that makes me want to believe in better things that I want
to dance to.
I want to play these
songs blasting in the car on my way to work and remember this moment, and how
alive I felt, and how nothing else mattered because I had right now.
…
Creative people inspire me.
Their passion is
contagious and their dedication infectious and their excitement makes me
delirious. It makes me want to stay up all night crafting something that really
matters with my own two hands that I can look at in the morning and whisper in
holy reverence, “My God, did I really make that?”
It makes me want to
feel, and to capture that exact feeling on a notebook or a canvas or my kitchen
wall.
Creative people
inspire me to create. They inspire me to feel, to be present, to live and laugh
and love and not worry about getting hurt along the way because even a few
bruises make damn good art.
Their creative energy
passes through them into me like it’s a form of osmosis, like a blood transfusion,
and I know to them I’m just another face in the crowd but I want to grab the
face of the lead singer and look into his eyes and tell him thank you for
daring to create bravely.
Because the world
needs more people to come alive, to truly say what they think and think what
they say and to let their thoughts and feelings be the lifeblood that guides
them. Because I need them. I need more people awake and alive, daring greatly
and failing miserably and then trying again bravely all in the name of good
art. I need them standing around me continuing to create and inspiring me with
words and pictures and lyrics and beats, because it’s like they are standing
around me with hands up, keeping me safe and reminding me to do my thing.
Us artists, we’re a special
breed, one I feel honored to be among. I feel honored to be a part of the
movers and shakers of this world who want more beauty and light and unity and
feeling. The genuine souls, the ones that create bravely, are the kind of
people I want to surround myself with. The intimacy created between you and a
few thousand strangers, that’s what I want to witness over and over again,
letting it change me.
I want to be around
people who birth beautiful things: even when it’s hard, even when the world
says you should quit. It inspires me to keep writing my own birth story, to
gently shepherd out this huge story blossoming inside my ribcage.
I want my life to be
this story, this art, this creation. I want every moment I am alive and
breathing to bear witness to the fact that I lived and loved and maybe I failed
but at least I tried.
And with every broken bone, I swear I lived
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