Thank You and Keep Going

I just came back from the Japan Benefit Concert, and I am drained of all emotions.  I spent 60% of the show wiping the tears from my cheeks.  I've always loved singing, and I have been moved by various performances in the past, but tonight was different.  After spending the past 28 days, focused on little else than this challenge--warming up in my apartment, attending technique classes, facing my fears in performance classes, going to private lessons and coaching sessions, auditions and open mics-- I now have a much better understanding of the ridiculous amount of dedication, drive, and downright guts it takes to become a vocal performer.  I've been honored to stand beside so many of you in recent classes and performances at BDC-- and even though we don't always talk to one another, I see how hard each of you is working to reach your dreams-- so it touched my heart even more to see so many of you center stage tonight.  Whether your goal is to become a Broadway star, a recording artist, or anything in between, I'm sure the journey ahead sometimes seems long, uncertain, and terrifying, but for just a few minutes, I invite you to stand still in time, stop apologizing for what you are not, and take in the reality of what you already are.  You are performers.  You are artists.  And you are inspirations to people like me.  Thank you for sharing your talent with us tonight, and thank you for motivating me (and I'm sure many others) to keep working, keep dreaming, and keep evolving. 

I think I was so emotional tonight because my time in NYC is almost up, and nights like this remind me of the passion and artistry that I don't believe exists in any other city, and I'm going to miss it desperately.  If you have 2 minutes, please read this passage from one of my favorite authors, Shauna Niequist.  This passage planted a seed in me when I read it, and was a tremendous factor in my decision to leave my 5-year career as a high school English teacher in Texas to move to New York to reconnect with the arts.  I hope it moves you the way it moved me:

An excerpt from Cold Tangerines by Shauna Niequist:

Thank you.  Thank you and keep going.  Please keep writing songs.  Please keep believing in music, because we do, and we need it, and specifically, we need yours.  We need the sounds and words and rhythms of hope and the haunting twist of your voice.  We need the poetry of your lyrics and the spirit and force of your sounds.  We're desperate for great music, and there's so much out there, but never, ever enough.  We're desperate for great storytellers, great painters, great dancers, great cooks, because art does something nothing else does.

Art slips past our brains straight into our bellies.  It weaves itself into our thoughts and feelings and the open spaces in our souls, and it allows us to live more and say more and feel more.  Great art says the things we wished someone would say out loud, the things we wish we could say out loud.  When Ryan from Sleeping at Last sings, that's how I would sing, except that I sound like a five-year-old with a head cold when I sing, so I'm so glad that he does the singing, and I do the listening.  My friend Anne dances the way I would dance if I could.  My friend Sarah creates paintings that make me feel alive and free and like the world is more beautiful than it was before I saw that very painting, and I'm so glad she does, because I sure can't, and because I'm better for having seen her paintings. 


It matters, art does, so deeply.  It's one of the noblest things, because it can make us better, and one of the scariest things, because it comes form such a deep place inside of us.  There's nothing scarier than that moment when you sing the song for the very first time, for your roommate or your wife, or when you let someone see the painting, and there are a few very long silent moments when they haven't yet said what they think of it, and in those few moments, time stops and you quit painting, you quit singing forever, in your head, because it's so fearful and vulnerable, and then someone says, essentially, thank you and keep going, and your breath releases, and you take back everything you said in your head about never painting again, about never singing again, and at least for that moment, you feel like you did what you came to do, in a cosmic, very big sense. 


I know that life is busy and hard, and that there's crushing pressure to just settle down and get a real job and khaki pants and a haircut.  But don't.  Please don't.  Please keep believing that life can be better, brighter, broader, because of the art that you make.  Please keep demonstrating the courage that it takes to swim upstream in a world that prefers putting away for retirement to putting pen to paper, that chooses practicality over poetry, that values you more for going to the gym than going to the deepest places in your soul.  Please keep making art for people like me, people who need the magic and imagination and honesty of great art to make the day-to-day world a little more bearable. 


So to Pasqualino, Bear, Lauren, Chanel, incredible guy who performed "Fashion", CJ, Macy, Brandon, Setsuko, Marina, Erica, Jessica, Stephanie, Lory, Tim, Tituss, Sean, Kelly, and Kurt-- thank you.  Thank you and keep going.