I saw the light
I’ve been baptized
By the fire in your touch
And the flame in your eyes
I’m born to love again
I’m a brand new man
As these words rang out across the stadium – quite clearly, surprisingly, seeing as where we were – my lips were already moving in synch, silently matching every word since the initial “I”… and tears welled in my eyes, beginning almost immediately to overflow.
I was attending the Brooks and Dunn concert at the rodeo tonight in Houston, kind of as a celebration of my life, for my birthday – something for me, on my own.
I’d asked my mom to stick around with me, but she was ready to head home, so I was okay hanging on my own for the musicians and their music.
When I was about eight years old, I attended the Brooks and Dunn performance at the Astrodome, also for the rodeo.
During their performance, when walking around on the dirt, they pulled two ladies out from the audience to dance with them.
I remember distinctly being upset and embarrassed as the one lady proved, after two quick but failed attempts, that she could not do any sort of partner dancing, let alone the by of two-stepping one of them wanted to do with her.
Rather than rejecting the lady, reading her out for a better model – that’s actually how my brain analyzed it at the time – he just grabbed her around her waist/hips area, and swung her around in a circle or few.
My frustration at this lady for having been unprepared for such a monumental opportunity – dancing with Brooks and Dunn – was not only projected blindly, but had me consider how I would have done, if I’d been the one pulled out onto the floor…
I was rather confident that I would have been able to manage it.
However, I fully acknowledged that I was not certain.
And so I made it my business immediately after this event to make certain that I knew how to two-step and could do it with just about anybody on demand.
Fast-forward a couple decades, and see me at the concert tonight… I found it almost ironic that, though I never anticipated to be pulled out to dance with Brooks and Dunn, here I was, two decades later, likely one of the best country western dancers in the entire stadium, knowledge, ability, and a world title to prove it.
Isn’t that at least a little bit totally crazy?(!!!)?
Anyway, so I can dance, and extremely well, but that’s only part of my mentioning all of this.
When the guys began playing and singing tonight, I was in instant and somewhat constant tears (even throughout the whole show!), right?
Right.
And it occurred quickly to me, This is the power of music.
I was somehow transported to my life when I listed probably daily to Brooks and Dunn music, as I simultaneously saw all that had happened between them and now, how what felt like a lifetime and ten different people ago had somehow led me to today, to who I am today.
There was a lot of good and a decent amount of bad in there, especially early on, and it was a very, very full time all throughout.
And, somehow, here I am, experiencing it all again, while feeling empowered by the open bliss and joy for life I felt back then, reminded of the sadness of what I went through off and on, and encouraged by the fact that I have made it to here so far, and I’ve plenty more wonderful expansion and beautiful growth yet to come for myself in my life.
All of this from music, specific songs and notes and voices and instruments all put together in a certain way, as though, almost, specifically and intentionally with me in mind.
It was of the best kind of medicine.
And this reminds me of how my high school band director always used to tell us that music is a language… tonight, their music spoke directly to me, throughout every place within me.
Post-a-day 2019
hannah ananas 