Moment four? Oh man, you don’t even know. A beautiful day in Ellicott City. 70-something degrees, sunshine, breeze. I’d had three occasions to be wandering town in the past week (actually, if we wanted to really push the point of exquisite musical moments, I’d come here after catching Ayreheart last Sunday and THAT was an incredible moment too). I fought a bit with the sound system (I need to delete ALL the settings I’ve put in play for playing at New Deal Café) but once we were up and running I had one of those PERFECT moments.
Do you know about PERFECT moments? When everything’s right? What everything coalesces and time steps aside to let you know that Life’s really worth Living? Can you have them in “real jobs”? It’s when the sunshine and the air stand in perfect alignment with one another and the heat from the one is carried off by the cool movement of the other. It’s when the sound is perfect and you’re ringing out on an audience and your hands are doing what they’re supposed to and you voice is doing what IT’S supposed to… a PERFECT moment when you realize that you are doing precisely what you were always meant to do – and that beyond that, there is no-one else who does it quite like you. That playing and singing like rob Hinkal are the things that I do better than anyone else… and then beyond THAT – beyond it feeling good and sounding good, knowing you’re having a good hair day and the audience is INTO it, hanging on every swoop of a vocal or run on the guitar – beyond THAT – knowing that you’re going to step off the stage and that you’re being PAID to do this. Knowing that what you’re on this earth to do, what you’re BEST at AND what you do for a Living all are coming together right at this moment.
I was standing on the beautiful stage they’ve built for us down on Tonge Row, playing my heart out under the setting sun, and it hit me: That PERFECT moment.
