Johnny Cash

This title is a wee bit misleading because this post has very little to do with our beloved Johnny Cash. He serves more of an inspirational than topical role. So here is the tale of how I arrived in a foreign European city and played a show in the local music scene within a week of me being there. I can feel the suspense building!! Dun dun dunnnnn....

I had been out with one of the church families exploring a cycling festival. Naturally, men in very tight bike shorts and BMXers with crazy tricks was all good and fun BUT the night got even better. We passed by a cafe that was packed out and stopped to hear the really wonderful musicians who were part of a local music festival also going through town. I ended up staying for the whole performance and, in my foolishness, decided to ask the cafe's music manager if I could possibly take part in any upcoming open mic nights or shows. Then he said, "Ok, you want to play here? Get up right now." I thought this was some form of blunt and slightly awkward British humor....it wasn't. So lo and behold I had to play in the middle of this festival while I was still sick and jetlagged.

BUT apparently these beautiful Brits loved it because they asked me to play another three songs. I introduced one of my songs as my "Johnny Cash wanna be" (because, honestly, every musician would give their right pink finger to be a songwriter of his caliber). This eventually lead to another musician joining me on stage, a waiter coming up who played the harmonica, and an entire bar full of lovely English accents howling away to "Ring of Fire." This was one of those beautiful memories in life that you just want to take by the shoulders and give a sloppy wet kiss to in gratitude for having experienced them.

Then I was booked for an actual show at the end of that week, and got to have this lovely experience all over again! There is something so purely joyful about sharing your music with people for the first time...because in all honesty, a musician shares their soul with you when they play anything they've written. Even if a tune is dumb or a lyric unexciting, that person is showing you a wee bit of their brain. And how interesting that we get to look into the brains of musical people--probably some of the most weird and jacked up and funny and confusing bunch this earth has to offer!

There was a certain strength I could feel filling my lungs when I was able to just lay everything on the table to a packed out room full of people I've never met. What I have been hinting at in the past few posts about finding my song and my voice again was manifested in a really literal sense.

Being completely brokenhearted is not some lofty emotional ideal. You feel things physically. Tangibly.

Very literally my voice was weak and small for so long just as the very color of my eyes seemed to fade to a dimmer shade. I'm sure that room full of strangers had no idea what it meant to me to be able to have the strength to sing those thoughts so loudly...to not feel afraid to speak the truth. To have no fear about my past walking through the door in the middle of my struggle and beating me down to ground zero all over again. Nope! Not this time. This time I could feel strength in my lungs and voice. This time I could maybe give Johnny Cash a run for his money....JUST KIDDING. That's a ridiculous idea if there ever was one. If anything, I'm coming out of a ring of fire rather than going into one.

The French nihilist philosopher Albert Camus penned this: Au milieu de l'hiver, j'ai découvert en moi un invincible été...In the middle of winter, I found in me an invincible summer.

That has been music for me. An invincible summer from within.

A lil adventure in the main Square on the day of the show!

My lovely rommate!

Skaters in the Square