It takes a lot for me to want to go to a concert - or even get out of the house these days. The crowds, the heat, fighting for a spot to park, looking for a the seat you paid for so you could watch your favorite lifetime artists just seems…a little daunting. Not to mention, the cost of a concert these days.
All I ever really wanted was an intimate connection between me and the music…a quiet place to listen to the songs that have been the background to my adult life. But it seems like at concerts, all I ever got were the distractions around me - drunk people searching for their seats, coming in late, spilling their drinks on me, or even fighting with each other during a favorite song. Hell, one year at a concert, I even spotted a female running topless through the crowd.
“I didn’t come for all this BS,” I thought to myself. “I came for the music. I came for Dave.” (Insert whatever artist you love here instead)
“I didn’t come to hear 10,000 people sing Grey Street. I came to hear HIM!”
So there I was, hot and sweaty, stuck in the middle of thousands of people when all I wanted to connect with was the few people making music on stage, when the thought occurred to me - this isn’t about that.
After all this time it dawned on me that this was about connection. But not with the band…with the community around me.
It was never about my relationship with the music. Okay…well, it IS about the music. But it was also about how it brought all of these people together. My people, the strangers next to me, the couple fighting behind me, and my family lost somewhere in the sea of humans around me - feeling the feels. It was about the connection between all of us woven together like a tapestry that sounds a lot like music.
In the world we live in, where we are entering war s we didn’t ask for with leaders we never wanted in charge in the first place, it’s nice to see some commonality. It’s nice to feel connection to something big. For a moment this weekend, I lost myself in the face of the music. It reminded me to love and be loved, to give grace when I can, and mostly, keep connecting with those around me…and especially the ones right beside me.
Thanks again to the Dave Matthews Band for making life pretty dang sweet for certain.