For a really good preacher...

As might be evidenced by my last post, I'm a huge music lover. I'm especially enamored of singer/songwriters, I think mostly because I'm also a lover of poetry. There's just something about

Listening to music at home is great. I'm a big fan of car karaoke - playing a CD at top volume and driving around singing along. It's better than therapy. And it's really good to have background music for your life. I like to fall asleep to music. I like to listen to music while I walk, when I'm on the bus, when I'm knitting. But the best thing about music for me is going to concerts. As a performer myself, I understand the draw of both performing and being in the audience. It's something a friend of mine called "the feeback loop," where the audience gives the performer their energy, who then feeds it back to them, who feeds it back to the performer, etc, etc, until you have what I experience as a spiritual experience.

In my Sociology 101 class back at Mills, we discussed a concept that really captivated me: the sociology of God. The basic premise, as I understood it, is that when a group of people gets together and focuses on one thing, they create a presence, an energy, that is greater than themselves. Whatever this thing is, was the beginnings of what people called "god". I don't mean to discount religion, or to explain it away; I just want to say that this is how I experience religion and spirituality.

You can have a spiritual experience at any concert, but every once in a while you meet a performer who can truly channel that energy. I'd liken them to a really charismatic preacher - they know what the audience is reaching for, and they know that they're the link that can get them there. I remember the first time I was really able to put that feeling into words was when I was 19 and went to see the Butchies at the Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco. I remember how uplifted I felt through that whole concert. I still remember how it smelled, how Kaia looked from the front of the crowd, how the music sounded, how the energy pulsed through the crowd, through my body... I remember coming home and saying "that concert was a spiritual experience". I had a similar experience at the Erin McKeown concert - I think she might know how well she manipulates the energy of a crowd, and if she doesn't, she should. Concerts like those are transcendent - they are why I listen to music, why I go out, why live music is so important. If I can't afford it, I find a way to go.

I go to church for the community, but I go to concerts for the energy rush, the spirituality, the connection to god.