dance.

living in the "Live Music Capital of the World" has provided me with lots of opportunities to hear some amazing music. not the least of these was austin city limits. it's a legendary event, and i was completely blessed with the opportunity to go and be involved with it. there were at least ten thousand moments that weekend that were pure beauty. at each concert, whether i knew who was playing or not, there were so many pieces of beauty. the music was all breathtaking, the sight of each of the bands there completely surrendered to what they were doing and completely enjoying it, the thousands of people unified by a simple tune. it all added up to an unforgettable experience. and the culmination of it was sunday, which included two of the most memorable experiences i've had in austin so far. one was being blessed by an old man after the eagles show, which is an experience i'll definitely be writing about later. but the one i want to describe here was at the edward sharpe and the magnetic zeros show on sunday afternoon. at the end of the set, they played their song om nashi me, which means "oh infinite nakedness," "no meaning," or what i think best describes the experience of the song, "no boundaries." as the song built and built and built, we threw our bags down, discarded all hindrances, and danced. we freed ourselves from the constrictions society places on us, what's right, what's proper. it's one of those perfect moments of complete disregard for what anyone else is thinking of you. if you've never expereinced this, i'm sorry. i'm so sorry. everyone needs to do this at some point. just dance. i like the way david crowder says it in his book praise habit: "dance. dance until we can see your soul." that's the complete surrender we need to live out all the time. and because we can't be dancing around constantly, although that would be the best world ever, it's good to be reminded of this every once in a while. whether it's at an outdoor festival, sweating, singing, loving, screaming, dancing with 65,000 people or alone in your dorm with the music turned up loud, DANCE. forget what everyone else is thinking about you for a few minutes and let go. let go of the stress and the restraints that hold you down. dance so that you can look back and remember that moment and live in that freedom. cause that's the freedom that christ calls us to live in all the time. i don't know about you, but i find that incredibly exciting.



"Om nashi me
I love you
And I love you forever
And I'm loving you now "

Fireflies

Yesterday I went on a bike ride. It was a crazy day on campus as many of you know and I just needed to get out and do something. So I took off on my bike just before sunset with Jon Foreman in my ears and a half-formed idea of where I might go. Rounding corners, speeding up hills, smiling all the while. (sidenote: I find it hard to compare anything to the feeling of pure release that comes in flying down a hill on your bike). But, after a chance meeting with some friends at a stop light, I headed back to campus as it was starting to get dark. While riding through some neighborhood with overgrown lawn and trees blocking out the little bit of light that was left in the sky, I saw some flickering lights in the distance. In the lawns. As I hit the brakes to see what exactly they were, I noticed they were fireflies. Fireflies. Little beautiful flashing dancing fireflies. It's rare that things make me stop what I'm doing, hold off on where I'm going, take out my headphones, and just look and enjoy. Sometimes it's as if God puts things in nature purely for our enjoyment and to make us stop. Stop and smell the flowers. Stop and be overwhelmed by the fireflies. In the midst of the Chaos, He continues to provide small scenes of beauty in our lives. God-winks. Little things. A rainbow over the tower after a crazy rainstorm. A song that comes on just at the right time. The contrast of a fiery sunset against a purple sky. Conversations with a new friend about the beauty that surrounds us. Cool breezes in late September. Fireflies. But we can only enjoy them if we're paying attention. So this week, I'm gonna keep my eyes open for signs of peace in the midst of chaos. For little moments of beauty. And I'd like to leave you with a few lines from Anis Mojgani's poem Direct Orders as a poetic reminder of this:

"Rock out like the streets are empty except for you, your bicycle and your headphones.
Rock out like music is all that you got.
Rock out like you’re standing on a rooftop and the city’s as loud and glowing as a river below you.
Rock out like you got an empty appointment book, and a full tank of gas.
Rock out like Jimi has returned carrying brand new guitar strings.
Rock out like the mangos are in season.
Rock out like the record player won’t skip.
Rock out like this was the last weekend,
like these were the last words,
like you don’t ever want to forget how."

back to the future

i realize it's been a year since i've posted anything...sorry. more for myself than for anyone else. as anis mojgani puts it, "i dream too much and i don't write enough." i'm just starting my first semester as a full time legit college student. it's amazing. in the whole 8 days that i've been here, it's already started to feel more comfortable and i'm more in awe of what's happening around me everyday. everything about this city is beautifully imperfect. i love the fact that after a ten minute drive, you might never know you were anywhere near a city of any kind. much less a city with nearly 800,000 people. just ten minutes (without traffic that is!) and you're surrounded by the natural beauty of water and trees and wildlife. wild life. that's it exactly. and that's merely the surroundings. the people are a whole other story. and the campus is another story on top of that. there are so many people that i feel instantly connected to. it's something i've honestly never felt before. it's that moment when you mention something you are passionate about and that resonates completely with the person you're talking to. sometimes i find myself just standing on a streetcorner, smiling. because this is where i am and i am so content with that. yes...content (definition: in a state of peaceful happiness). i hope to continue posting up here as often as i have a story. which could be every day. i'd like to end with another quote from anis mojgani's poem called For Those Who Can Still Ride An Airplane For The First Time as a commission for both you and me this week:

"Slow down and hold what you see
Just a little while longer
For in a world of fast faces,
I'm looking for God everywhere
Trying to figure a little better
This little thing he made called a man."

school...

so, this summer's been a little crazy. obviously no writings have been posted, but tomorrow begins the first day of classes. if a good assignment comes along in english, it might get posted here. hopefully i'll have some more stuff up soon. lots of changes in the air, so no guarantees though.

goodbye summer: it was nice knowing you. hello fall: time to get back in the swing of things.

the wind...(05/13/09)

the wind is a curious thing. i don't think about it very often, i just get mad at when there's too much of it or get mad at it when it's not there. but when it's present in a perfect quantity, do we take time to feel its breath on our skin? or as i tuck my hair back behind my ear, my hair that just a little breath of wind blew out of place into my face, do i wonder where it came from? do we set aside even minutes of our time to lay below trees full in the greening garb of may-springtime, to watch the leaves be moved by this mystery? how in the world does this...thing, this breath, this wind, there's nothing else to call it, it's not like anything else, how does it move leaves? how can it teach leaves to dance? and in teaching leaves this complex footwork, they teach the branches and the shadows. the clouds must be the first to learn. even when the air around you down here on the surface is stagnant, it feel like yours swimming in this mass of paralytic molecules, you have to force them out of your way, if we would just take time to look up above us at the things bigger than ourselves, these cloud bodies alive in the blue sky, we could see that they are moving. that ignites a small spark of hope somewhere deep inside. knowing that even though you don't have any tangible proof it's real and you can't even feel it's reality sometimes, you can see that it's still moving. it's still working and it'll come back down to you eventually. you can count on that. life's not all about you. there are other things that are more important than you right now. that's comforting, knowing that you aren't the most important thing going on in the world right now. but when you acknowledge its presence and the great gift of its being there with you, it's the best. if you take time to feel it breathe on your arm. to listen to its soft voice that calms your spirit. that voice, that breathing fans that small flame that was ignited. it doesn't extinguish it, it intensifies it. until the flame has grown into a huge bonfire of hope inside of you. the fire of humility and hope and passion and present being. when you take time to feel the wind, to hear the wind, just to close your eyes and listen to its truth, you don't want to be anywhere else. if only this could be all of life. if i could be this present, this aware of every hair on my body, of every exposed millimeter of skin. just to lay and ponder the mystery of wind. where does it come from? how does a breeze blow? there are somethings scientific equations can't do justice for me. somethings i'd rather have left a mystery. i don't want to know how the sun gives off heat or how the wind blows. i know that it does and i'd rather sit outside and feel the wind breathe on my skin and feel the rays of sunlight touch my leg and be thankful for them. for where would we be without the wind and the sun? how would the birds fly? how would the plants grow? see, life isn't just about us humans. it's so much bigger than us. if we would just take the time to realize that, we would live so much more alive.

pianos - (02/18/09)

i've known many pianos. there's my little upright at home, i've known and loved my whole life. it's taken me from hot cross buns to shostakovich's second piano concerto. from faber to bach. it's where my love for playing music started. it's seen me through many hard days. it was there for me when i couldn't even reach the pedals. it was there for me when the judges were horrible mean. its' a part of me. and that's just one piano. another one that sticks out in my memory is the piano in the peppers house in uganda. i only played it once. i should've played it more. it's nice to have that constant all around the world. music. lyrics change with language, but melody is constant. i played the same tune on a piano in south africa and uganda and israel and houston. it's constant. i imagine that's why everyone's attracted to music. everyone understands it. i remember all my friends pianos and the songs that have been played on them. some pianos don't like to be played boldly in large groups. but who does? they've heard some bad stuff. i'm sure they've also heard some amazing compositions though. some badly out of tune pianos. they play the classic sing along's quite well. songs that are sung out of tune anyways, so it doesn't matter that they keys aren't in tune. some hear crazy contemporary pieces that sound impressive. i don't know what they are, but they have one too many dissonant notes for me. the pianos that are learned on with blue tape peeling off on the central two octaves, the keys a little sticky. there's the many pianos from gold cup. they've been touched by countless kids anxiously shaking fingers. and there's all the pianos at the church, the slightly out of tune grand in the sanctuary, the sticky e in the kids choir room. the almost always locked nice-but-slowly-going-out-of-tune one in 212. the sticky eb in the choir room. the once-gross piano played for many a christmas recital in the great room. the out of tune upright on the 3rd floor. oh and i remember seeing billy joel's piano at forshey with mr. marsh. impressive. i've had so many good memories with these thousands of hammers and strings. i love pianos.

singer/songwriter - (02/02/09)

lately i've been on this girl singer/songwriter kick. i think as i've developed as a musician, i've grown to like stuff i relate to more. i can't really relate to the chick bands cause i don't really play with anyone. it's usually just me and my guitar or my piano. so i've grown to like band that are like that. gregory and the hawk, holly brook. and i like bands like that cause they're honest. and i know what they mean. when the girl in gregory and the hawk sings "i guess it doesn't matter what i am or pretend to be, cause it's her you'll always love and her i'll always envy...i swear i'm gonna cry, i'm sick of trying to be tough," i know what she means. she describes my feelings perfectly sometimes. "just leave me your stardust to remember you by." i like artists whose shoes i can walk in while they sing. yes, guy singers are amazing. i love to listen when they sing and play, but there's a different kind of connection when you really mean the words you sing. you don't have to interpret them for you. they're already translated into girl. broken-hearted girl. "cause no one listens when you wanna be heard." that's me. i mean, i love bands like dashboard confessional. buy they can only get so close to your heart when you can't directly sing them. you just have to imagine this invisible guy you don't know singing it to you. it's so different when you can sing the songs yourself and mean them. it's as close as i'm getting to writing my own songs for now.