Sometimes life moves so fast that it feels like I’m standing still and events are just sort of swirling around me in a whirl wind. I reach out and grasp something solid here and there, but mostly it feels like I’m floating down life’s river, carried on a current. Other times, life takes a breath, the world slows and I see my path stretching out in front of me.
Yesterday, we flew from Maine to Arizona to visit my grandparents and to play for the 60th Wedding anniversary. This is the first time that the band has flown somewhere together and it was a really amazing and special experience.
We had a three hour layover in Atlanta, so we got our instruments out and worked through some songs that still needed working through. We tried to be as quiet and unobtrusive as we could be so as not to bother anyone. It was the first time we all sat down and played music together in a non-musical environment. At a festival, people expect music, they welcome it. I wasn’t sure how well that would pan out in an airport, where people tend to be so focused on where they’re going and how they’re going to get there. The power of music amazed me yet again. People paused. Some with longer layovers, stopped and sat and listened to us play. One airport employee with an office nearby came out on his lunch break and thanked us and asked us to keep going. We even made some tips.
Usually, traveling is a headache, but I think that if from now on I travel with an instrument and a song to sing, it could make traveling less of a headache and more of an opportunity to give a little beauty to an otherwise ugly day.
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