Live Music Makes Us More Alive

Photo of The Wealthy Orphans by Hunter Richards

A live performance is something that is alive in the moment.  When the show comes to an end and the instruments are all unplugged and put back in their cases and the cords wound up it is over and everyone goes home. Maybe some one downloads some songs when they get home and later feel some how disappointed that the magic of the night before some how didn't make it into their iPod.

As a visual artist I have become accustomed to a certain physicality in the production of drawings and paintings. An artist working in the studio has the material accumulation of work for an art show somewhere and when you have been at it long enough the work spreads out around the world to hang in peoples homes and work places.  These people are now living with the physical out put of your creative journey in a very tangible way.  It is not the same with music for by its nature music is just more ethereal.

We have CDs and now again we can buy vinyl records. We have stickers and posters and digital photos of the show to post to flickr and yet the transitory experience of that show is as fleeting as dying persons last breath and always will be. Perhaps we can say that we are sometimes changed by the experience of live music. It is possible that not only can our soul be rivived like a cell phone gets recharged, but sometimes we are internally altered by the experience. It is as if the frame of our soul has been straightened out and our front suspension realigned. A good live performance is just that, alive, and to be present to it gives us the opportunity to become more alive ourselves again and again.