A random glance through the local free paper recently led to the realization that Chris Botti was coming to play the Ryman. Over my protests, my daughter purchased tickets, and so it was that Wednesday evening was spent in awe, and my iTunes are still stuck on my Botti playlist. Music may be my second language, but I still don't know the words to describe jazz. My initial fear was that he would be some blow-hard (pardon the pun), stuck on himself pretty boy who only wanted the spotlight on him. How wrong I was. He celebrated everyone's contribution onstage, was self-deprecating, and was genuinely fun to watch. It's almost as if he had come to play in my living room, entertaining a few hundred of my friends. We were thoroughly entertained by a master showman and trumpet player, and his supporting band members. And I will never look at Google's "did you mean" the same way again.
Here I stand again, speaking to an empty room. My thoughts aren't worth the cyberspace they would take up if I cared to tweet or post to Facebook, but here I stand anyway. I had no idea how long it had been since my muse had forced me to write. I used to write almost daily, poetry mostly, when I was younger and believed that someone cared what I had to say. I wanted to be e.e. cummings or T.S. Eliot or anyone who seemed to be so comfortable in his own skin to pour out his emotions onto a blank page. It took me a few years to realize that the writers who filled my pantheon of literary deities were not that comfortable after all, but wrote because not writing was more painful than the spilling of emotion. So I think I will take up my keyboard once more, wade out into the battle, and write.
Comments