A Letter to Live Music

Sweet friend, 

It’s almost been a year.

The only thing I can count on right now is the distance between us.

At first I hated that fact, but even still it’s the line that ties me to you.

I miss how you could fill up a room.

Low lights, turning strangers into friends with one drop of a beat, or a riff, or pause.

How we all could forget we were adults long enough.

And laugh.

Laughter you can see - not hear, laughter narrated by the drums.

We were a soundtrack being written. 

...

I’d love to float into the sound of bleeding honesty from a guitar again soon. 

You taught me that people tell their secrets to instruments because they know emotions are too vibrant for words - 

Emotions must spill out in all their complexity into the hum of a language so raw that it’s an accessory, a vessel - never the thing that gets the spotlight. 

Some weights are too heavy.

The heart articulated is only left to reverberate in a smooth, fashioned body of alder.

‘Nothing can contain it’, you’d tell me when I whined for a clear cut definition, a way out of the riddles. I’d try to force the outcome, but you knew that people need time and space and the ability to make up their mind, or change it. 

You’ve always understood that, so you let us linger. 

But as they say, “it’s more than a feeling”.

It’s how you invite people in.

You are a place for people to read from their pages, 

but not in the detached way I’m writing this.

Not a far off delivery and then a running away from the letter you just wrote, 

No you call the brave out into the middle with their beauty and mess and tell them to speak.

Then you let us stand by, for support, to feel it too, or maybe just to remember one more day of trying is enough, then one more day, then one more day. 

...

It’s probably cliche to write you this way.

You haven’t got hands or our a voice to speak what I’ve written to you.

But I remember a child, mesmerized with heavy eyes. She loved how the sound wrapped around her. How what had only been in her ears was dancing out in front of her now. All the people made her nervous, but she watched them as the notes fell. Their posture changed, they became softer.

She was young, and her parents told her they couldn’t stay the whole night. She cried as they left.

I can still see the large round concrete circles outside the venue, blurred through my 8-year-old tears and the lights of the city. I should have known then it’d be a lifetime of hating to leave the room where you were. 

...

You’re not perfect. I know I paint you that way. 

Sometimes you’re too loud, and the acoustics are bad, or someone spills a beer. You let people who just walked in, push past me after 4 hours of waiting in that spot. I’ve never felt so dehydrated or annoyed by the close proximity of people. You allow the opener to play their WHOLE EP. Goodness, the band just never plays the song I want them to. I’m sweating, it’s hot - I hate being hot. They play the same set as when I saw them 6 months ago...

...

But when we’re sitting down, 

the glow of our phones is forgotten.

We forget what time it is, or what time even is. 

We’re sitting together, and I think of how many times we’ve done this.

How many times we’ve danced, and laughed, and let a stray tear fall. 

The lyrics we mouth and turn to each other with blazing dramatics,

Only to see my friend’s already turned to me to lip sync the same line. 

It’s how we stop and inhale sharply after just two notes have fallen because it’s her song. 

It’s those three sets of eyes and watching them take in the melodies as they waft across the air. 

They made all of this better. 

They made time with you even sweeter. 

...

dear friend,

Thank you for teaching this pair of writhing, fidgety hands to clap, even if it is off beat. 

You never missed a chance to help me to see the moment while I was in it.

Thank you for teaching me to cherish what can’t be fully explained, but joyfully welcome it to hang about and marvel at it.

We’ll tell stories again together, I know. 

Thank you for teaching me how to really listen.

Love, 

An Old Friend