More than words can say

Musicians bond with each other deeply, sometimes instantly. It happens because our neural networks synchronize when we play together. No really, it's a science thing, they've documented it, look it up. So because our brains start grooving together when we play together, we get deeply lodged in each other's heads and hearts.

And sometimes a musician, say a mandolin player just for example, happens to also be a fantastically good person who practices deep compassion and kindness, who inspires everyone around him to be kinder to each other, to play more and better music, and to live gently and love everybody. A family starts to grow up around such a person, based on that whole synchronized neural network and heart combo platter thing. Everybody adores everybody, because the dominant vibe is love--love of music, love for each other, love for the audience, for the place, for the time. Life gets so good. It's beautiful and magical and precious.

Then that mandolin player finds out that he's got cancer, so his musical family, which by now is HUGE, gathers around him and says "We're gonna do whatever it takes to keep you around because the music and the love and the vibe are too good to let go, and we love you like lightning loves thunder, do you understand?" So everybody gets together and raises a bunch of money, treatment is given, and the mandolin player gets better and all is well.

Until the leukemia happens. And then it just hurts and hurts and hurts. The family gathers around the mandolin player again, but this time everybody feels helpless and scared and utterly bereft. But they hold him tight, and they check on each other, and they say "I love you" to everybody so many times it seems unreal, but because of him every time they say it, it means more than it did the last time. And they wait.

And then the messages go out, he's gone. It's over. And it feels like the heart has been ripped out of the whole community, and yet the relief that his pain is at an end is equally great, and the two feelings whiplash back and forth and through the family for days. But the beautiful thing is, everybody talks to everybody, bonds are renewed, hugs are exchanged, and one person helps another heal, and that person helps another, and so on, like great ripples in the shared neural network.

I was at folk club when it happened. It was my friend Kimberli's turn to share a song, and something inspired her to sing "Death Come a Knockin'," and just after that the message came through. Bobby has gone home. And we knew, we all knew. She had the profound honor of singing him home. And her eyes shone from the tears of deep sadness, and from the fire of knowing she helped him find his way.

There's a hole in the world where Bobby used to be, and no one yet knows how deep it really is, or how far it goes, or whether anything will ever heal it. Nothing and no one will ever replace him, but hopefully that hole will slowly fill up with the kind of love we found playing music together. Blessed be, safe journeys, and hurry back. We got tunes to play, my friend.

Oh, the Dreadful Wind and Rain

Well, wind anyway. I played Saturday night outside in gale force wind. It wasn't that cold, but wind that strong sucks the heat right out of you. I had to play like a maniac just to stay warm, and as soon as I got into my car, I was drenched in sweat. What an odd combination of discomforts. All in a day's work.

But it got me thinking about all the elements, and how much I love to play music out in the world, walking through a field of wild grasses and flowers with my fiddle, sitting on a fallen tree with my guitar, or just singing softly in the center of a forest. All of these situations are usually totally spontaneous and uncontrolled, and most of the time they have been flat-out magical. But try to control an outdoor situation and often it becomes unmanageable instantly. Blazing, burning sun, high winds, storms blowing up out of nowhere . . . And that's just spring.

We are, believe it or not, wild animals, too, just like the wolf and the bobcat and the falcon; we have just excused ourselves from being part of nature, like petulant children confronted with a healthy, organic dinner: Scoffs, rolls eyes. "May I be excused, pul-lease?"

Um, no. We're part of it. We are, somehow, a vital part of this ecosystem, though I can't imagine what good we are possibly doing any other living thing. We can shut ourselves in our houses and complain endlessly to our friends about how stupid our weather is, but that doesn't change anything.

Matter is energy, and energy can become matter. If I put some energy into making amends for the extreme abuses humanity has inflicted on the planet, for example, by going out into the woods and singing to the trees, good things happen in my life. If ten of my friends will go into a forest and sing to the trees, good things will happen to them. If ten of their friends do the same, good things will start to happen all over the planet. We may not be able to redeem ourselves, and we may not have much time left, honestly. But music is power. And power can be used for good. And there is no better audience than trees and birds and bugs and flowers.