An unexpected touch...

“If your heart is open, what lies around the

corner might just take your breath.”

- Author unknown

My dentist posted a short video from a concert of Mozart’s music he attended in Prague – Mozart’s home. The orchestra was dressed in period costume. The music was thrilling and brilliantly uplifting…it doesn’t get much better than that.

My earliest girlfriend and her hubby Dave posted pictures from Lisbon and Evora Portugal as part of their overseas holiday. The photos were stunning.

That's them...

While they were sampling culture and history at its best, I was watching short video clips of contestants performing auditions on ‘The X-Factor UK.’ 

You know these kinds of shows. People show up to perform, who typically say, “...music is my passion…” or as a 12 year old once said, “I’ve wanted this chance all my life!”

Most of the contestants are everyday folk who either feel they are gifted, or have been told by someone they were…most are not. Even the winners of these sorts of shows, seldom emerge into a sustainable performance profession…life in this business requires more than a good voice.

I suppose Susan Boyle, the 50 something, cheeky and unkempt woman is the exception. She looked like a chimney sweep’s mother until she opened her mouth and sang, I dreamed a dream from Les Miserable…no doubt she was a phenomenon who has found a career.

'Under the covers' so to speak...

It might be argued it is a guilty pleasure for me to hear some of the stories and listen to the boys and girls/men and women, sing covers of artists we all know – hoping this will be the golden ring to remove them from the small towns or jobs they are hoping to escape.

I don't have the patience to watch the whole shows, so I just pick up the actual performances. Maybe some of my psychologist friends might have a thing or two to say about my attraction to these ‘…putting it all out there without a net…’ kinds of efforts.

At the end of a long day of auditions, a young car mechanic, Josh Daniel, loped on to the stage to cover a song by a fellow named Labrinth – an artist I had never heard of – called Jealous. It’s a plaintiff piece about the loss of love and the raw, open feelings about it.

Part of the lyric refrain goes like this:

'Cause I wished you the best of

All this world could give

And I told you when you left me

There's nothing to forgive...

It's hard for me to say, I'm jealous of the way

You're happy without me

The singer said that he had a different take on the piece, because he had lost his best friend a couple of years earlier and when he heard the song, he felt a sense of jealousy that his friend, now in heaven, was happy without him.

I was watching this with the casual interest to which I have become accustomed, until he began singing the lyrics. In the context of this young man's interpretation of the song, I immediately thought of my sister, lost much too early, in 2012 to the opaqueness of Alzheimer’s.

This led to a cascade of video images racing through my mind of people who I deeply loved and have lost.  I had not really considered their exit from my life as a freedom, nor had I thought that somehow their lives (consciousness) are better without me…until…until I appreciated I have some time left before I - as they have already done - ‘go home.’

Going home…I don’t really understand what that means…I know the words, for God knows I have studied them and have faith...I think I have just been busy enough with my own journey and considering the here and now, to be caught up in the '...what might be...'

This performance, however, put my brain on pause.  I thought of those I love who still have breath. I felt an inexpressible longing and I wept.

I have been blessed to be touched by the music of Mozart and other masters and seen a lot of the amazing architecture of the European Continent…but this reached into a deeper place than I can probably express.

I am so often amazed that there are those wordsmith's, so gifted, who in a few short words can reach so deeply into our hearts as to strike such rich chords reminding us a our common bonds...amazed, yes, but more so grateful...

ted

You may, if you wish, watch this performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra_iiSIn4OI