I attended a concert at Monks Jazz Club in Austin, TX a few weeks ago. It’s a simple space you could not stumble upon even if you wanted to. It’s located in an industrial area, and everything around it is as uninspiring as one would think such an area might be. Once inside the paint-peeling door, it’s as simple as it gets. A small stage. Old tables and chairs. No food and BYOB on the drinks.
“There are 100 other venues you could go to tonight and talk over the music,” the owner said as he welcomed the sold-out room of 40 people. “But only one where you are asked to let the music be heard and enjoyed and the talking to go silent. This is a listening room.”
“Of course,” he added with a knowing smile, “applause and encouragements of all kinds to the band are welcome throughout the night.”
He really did not need to add that last line. For 90 minutes the caliber of musicianship was so exceptional that it drew forth continual, new rounds of applause that did not stop until our hands began feeling a slight burn.
Even the few times the bass player plucked ol’ fashion quarter notes (instead of the ridiculous riffs he was usually keeping), he did so with a style and subtly that has you lean your head forward, marvel, and begin wondering if its possible to offer all of the quarter-note tasks in life with the same verve. Could washing a dish be that beautiful?
The piano player’s hands ran like water over the keys, dripping pressure upon them with imperceptible speed. It was less like he was playing the piano and more like his delicate touch was freeing the piano to finally play forth untold depths of beauty too-long locked in the unassuming ivory and wood. Like the way love melts hardened hearts unto new spring.
The singer’s vocals glided smooth, unassumingly, and then quite deeply into the heart. Then they picked you up and carried you right into the flight of the song itself.
When the trumpet player got up at the beginning he asked, “Hey, does anybody have a rubber band?”
Someone from the back came forward with a used green one, and the trumpeter promptly tied it around one of his trumpet valves to create some extra tension.
Who comes onto stage and at the very last minute jerry-rigs their trumpet with an old rubberband?! Apparently the only guy within five states whose crisp command of every note can so stun that you literally cannot wipe the childish smile off of your face for an hour and a half.
And then drummer. Wow. The drummer. That guy kept the most complex beats I have heard in a long time. Most of the time, I could not quite figure out how to catch onto the rhythm even as I readily intuited he was Absolutely. Nailing. It.
Taken together…
The complexity of the music was transcendent.
The simplicity of the space was grounding.
The surprise of unlikely notes, vocal lifts, and impossibly beautiful rhythms carrying the whole thing was…like hope.
And it had a funny effect on me.
The entire 90 minutes I had my cell phone sitting right beside me. Ordinarily, I would have checked it a good two dozen times. Emails. Social Media. Apps. Texts. I didn’t check it once.
In fact, I only picked it up to take a couple quick pictures, and both times I felt bad about it. It felt wrong not to be fully attentive to the gift of this much life five feet from me.
At work in me during those 90 minutes was something…
…deeper than my need to be productive,
…deeper than my need to be in-the-know-about-the-very-latest,
…and deeper than my need to say to people later, “Look what I got to attend!”
(see above for my humble-brag, guilt-ridden photo)
How did Howard Thurman put it so memorably? “Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
What I witnessed was People-Come-Alive. Or Soul. Or Heart. Or whatever it is when humans lean into that space that is beyond the reach of language and maybe sometimes only music itself can articulate its Truth.
Wouldn’t it be something if in the ordinary, uninspiring, BYOB-overlooked places of our lives we were but the turn of a rusty door handle away from a flood of Life rising? Better yet, what if all of life is a Listening Room? If we could but slow long enough to hear the beauty, even in the quarter notes. Especially in the quarter notes.
—
I arrived home pretty late that evening. Even so, I immediately opened my laptop and began working on this piece. Because the thing is…
Art calls forth Art.
Soul calls forth Soul.
Life calls forth Life (and goodness knows we need all we can get these days).
Where do you come Alive? Or, if that is not a great starting spot for most of us entrenched in the impossibility of this moment, maybe it’s this: Where might we go to let our Soul hear the gift afresh? Where can we be free to listen?
For Soul will surely call forth Soul…which then calls forth (yet more) Soul.
Which is the sound of Hope.
This speaks to me.
Enjoy your time being ‘aware’ of being present❤️❤️