Shining On

Any of you who follow me on any social media site know that I've been quite focused on Sarah McLachlan lately.  I had the good fortune to be able to travel to Toronto this past week to see Sarah perform at a small club and had the chance to meet her after the show.  For any Sarah McLachlan fan this would be a big deal but I wouldn't consider myself a die hard Sarah McLachlan fan... well maybe I would now but before this past week I would have considered myself to be a casual fan.  There is more to this story than just being able to meet a Canadian music icon.  The truth is this obsession could have been something completely different and triggered in any number of ways but in this particular case Sarah happened to be the catalyst to elicit emotion.  I have a feeling she's quite good at doing that.

For the past four months I have been dealing with the grief brought about by the sudden loss of the love of my life.  Dealing with intense grief I found that I was often struggling with a way to articulate what I was feeling.  Not because I need to let other people know how I feel but I felt that I had some deep need for catharsis and being able to express how I feel seemed like the way to do that.  I recently found a copy of my old Mirrorball CD.  It was all scratched up and mostly unplayable but luckily iTunes was there to help me out.  There were quite a few songs from that CD that helped me find that cathartic release.  Not long after re-discovering Mirrorball I received an email from Infinite Visa.  They quite often have these exclusive offers to see artists or experience some gourmet dining event and for the most part I've ignored these emails.  This time, however, the exclusive offer was a chance to see and meet Sarah McLachlan in Toronto.

Normally I wouldn't look at this kind of offer and think, "Yeah, I really should book some flights and travel more than 2000 miles to see this person perform."  In this case, for some reason, I felt that it wasn't just reasonable but necessary.  I struggled with that for a while because when I looked at it from a logical perspective it made no sense at all to do something like that.  I'm not part of the jet set crowd.  I managed to shut the logical part of my brain off, bought the ticket and booked my flights.  I am very glad that I did.

This Toronto show was part of promoting Sarah's new album, Shine On.  The show was in a small club called Revival and seeing her perform in such a small venue allowed me to see this iconic person in a completely different light.  I listened to her sing and watched her feel the music she had created.  I also had a chance to listen to her talk about the album, her inspirations and her own struggles, losses, love and heartbreak.  By the time the show was over I couldn't help but feel that Sarah, McLachlan is the kind of person you could have a beer with and have a great conversation like you would with a good friend.  She is a real person and the what goes into her music is real feeling and not just some formulated concoction of melodies intended to create hit songs.  Her new album in particular shares a lot about her own struggles like her divorce and the death of her father.  But it's not a dreary, sad collection of tunes.  It's quite the opposite.  It's about dealing with all of these challenges in life and growing from them and finding a way to carry on and continue living and loving and enjoying life and being thankful for the experiences that life has offered us good and bad because they all blend to make us who we are, in other words, Shine On.

In addition, I met a great couple from Halifax (there are my new friends Jan and Lisa with Sarah to the right).  They were kind enough to invite me to sit with them at the show and we had some great conversations, shared some wine and some really great Spanish food after the show.  So not only did I experience a new revelation in my own struggles with grief that is helping me to see that I can get through this and maybe even live a little bit more each day with less sadness and a little more joy, but I also made some great new friends!

So my current obsession is not about just meeting a famous singer/songwriter it's about the realization that I don't need to be afraid of dying I only need to be afraid of not living and I will Shine On.




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