The Real Live Preacher hits another one out of the park.
Which caused me to want to write about something that happens to me sometimes. Not very often, but often enough to keep me on the “glass half-full” team. More than many things, this is why I am a Christian. Well, it’s why I’m a theist. The Christian stuff comes from somewhere else, possibly. What am I talking about?
Well, it happened most recently last weekend. I’d spend Friday night “holiday” partying with the GTABloggers, talking and laughing and drinking into the wee hours with a group of people I’ve grown to love. But it didn’t happen there.
On Saturday morning, I reluctantly woke about five hours after I’d crashed into bed, to accompany Brooke downtown. She was running in the Santa Shuffle, a 5K race to support the Salvation Army. I was being a good husband, showing my support for my closest friend and life partner. But it didn’t happen there, either.
It happened after she’d raced away from the starting line. I had about half an hour to wait for her to finish, and I went back inside, into the warmth of a nearly empty food court, where I sat with my coffee and listened to my iPod.
Sometimes I think music is like prayer. It’s a language to express things that can’t possibly be expressed any other way. Words and music blend together to speak about something much much bigger than any of our individual lives. I’ve noticed a certain earnestness and emotional vulnerability coming back into the kinds of music I listen to lately. Irony and cynicism are being stripped away and it’s now ok to be hopeful again. I call this the music of crazy optimism. It’s one of humanity’s most enduring traits. Hope. Longing. And it always speaks to me. Basic truths I try not to forget: life is so so good. And we’re all connected somehow.
I was listening to Modest Mouse‘s Good News for People Who Love Bad News (actually, the title has a sort of double meaning, I guess) and something about these lyrics from “Float On” just made me a bit weepy.
I backed my car into a cop car the other day
well he just drove off, sometimes life’s ok
I ran my mouth off a bit too much, oh what did I say?
well you just laughed it off, it was all ok
and we’ll all float on ok, and we’ll all float on ok, and we’ll all float on ok, and we’ll all float on anyway.
I’m not really expressing it well, am I? Well, that’s why we have music, I guess. Go and listen to some that you love.