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GIVING BACK
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Bojangle’s
Posted on 25. Feb, 2010 by Bebo in Blog
I’m on I-40W right now heading from Nashville toward Memphis…in the middle of a two-week run of acoustic shows with Meredith Andrews. Gabe’s driving and it’s an absolutely beautiful day outside. Still cold, which I am WAY over this far into the winter season, but blue sky and beautiful nonetheless. This little batch of shows has really been a breath of fresh air on a few different levels. For one, playing acoustic shows – just me and Gabe – is the epitome of what I love about playing live. I tell people all the time that my hope is that these acoustic shows feel more like conversations than concerts…and that has seemed to be the case so far. We’re also intentionally playing much smaller venues for the same reason – mostly crowds of 400-600 or so. The intimacy that can happen in a smaller venue acoustic show is like no other, and in a lot of ways, is what I fell in love with about live music way back in college watching people like David Wilcox, John Gorka, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Shawn Colvin. That’s what really defined the direction that my own live shows went in years later, and I feel like I’m getting back to that now…back to the heart of the things I love about playing music. After all, my first love is writing songs, and I do that in very small rooms on an acoustic guitar. That’s how the songs are born, and in so many ways that’s how I feel they are best delivered. We’ve also been driving to all of these shows, another breath of fresh air, because we’re sort of forced to see the landscape and inevitably we end up deep in conversation rather than sleeping through the night drives on a bus or settling into our seats and into our headphones on a flight to somewhere. We tend to drive a good bit on acoustic fly-dates anyway – it’s sort of our M.O. to fly into a certain region of the country – me, Gabe, and a tour manager – rent a minivan at the airport that’ll hold all of our gear (mostly just all of Gabe’s dang instruments…good grief he plays a bunch of crap), and drive to a long weekend’s worth of shows routed fairly close together. This run of shows was originally intended to be two separate runs, one based around flying into Chicago, and the next weekend flying into Atlanta. But a few extra shows landed in the middle and it just made sense to drive in and out of Nashville. So here we are, driving on a beautiful day, having just wrapped up a good long talk about real life stuff, and now listening to Brooke Fraser. Meredith’s asleep now, in the seat next to me…she flew into Nashville this morning and we picked her up on the way out of town. She’s been another breath of fresh air. It’s always nice to have a female presence around anyway because I think they just soften things a bit relative to a bunch of guys travelling around together. But Meredith’s just a good soul in particular and her heart is genuine and good. And her voice is beautiful and her songs are true. And she likes Bojangle’s chicken and biscuits. She’s from the Carolinas and so is Bojangle’s… so we celebrated that together this morning. So now I have a very full belly, but still room enough to take in yet another breath of fresh air.
The Hardest Thing
Posted on 18. Feb, 2010 by Bebo in Blog
As I drove alone on Wednesday morning toward the Starbucks in downtown Franklin I noticed in my rearview mirror a couple in a minivan behind me. I obviously couldn’t hear a word that was spoken, but it was plain to see that they were deep in the throes of their own private war. There were bursts of conversation – she was doing most of the talking, a lot of it with her hands – followed by long silences and empty stares out of opposite windows. It’s amazing how far apart two people can seem in such a small and confined space. Back when I was still single, it seemed like everyone I knew who was married would proudly declare, “marriage is the BEST thing you’ll ever do in your life…[long pause]…and also the hardest thing.” The same was often said about having kids or certain career pursuits or any number of “life adventures” but the “also the hardest thing” always seemed to be saved for last, almost like an afterthought…or maybe a secret. Both parts of that statement have proven themselves true over the seven years that Roshare and I have been married, but some days it seems that the “afterthought” is the only thought. Roshare and I had a hard day on Tuesday. We had one of those arguments that in the craziness of the day followed us from the living room into the car – we too felt that same profound distance in a similarly small and confined space. I wonder now if maybe someone caught a glimpse of our battle in their rearview mirror. We were having the same kind of argument – lots of silence, never all that heated, but loaded with innuendo from things gone unnoticed, or at least unspoken, for too long. One of our mantras in marriage has always been to keep everything “on the table,” painful as it may be, so that the hidden doesn’t have his chance to silently build and fester into secret and suddenly exposed resentment. Needless to say, there are always those certain things that slip through the cracks, and, long story short, there was just more to be said that day than our busy-ness would allow. She dropped me in Nashville to pick up a car and we set off on our diverging paths of parenthood and errands and work. By the time I saw her again that night she was fast asleep, exhausted from a long day and a late night class. I know it’s often declared that you shouldn’t go to sleep with things unresolved, and though Roshare and I subscribe to that notion for the most part we’ve also found that exhaustion can all too often cloud even the healthiest attempts at resolution. That said, we slept on it. And we both woke up Wednesday morning with clearer vision, a fresh bit of discernment, and genuinely contrite hearts. So as I walked out the door to leave for the next five days, fresh on the heels of sweet and sincere apology, we both understood quite clearly that though there was still much more to unpack emotionally and relationally we were indeed on the same team again. It’s odd to me, though at this point I suppose it shouldn’t be, that timing has everything to do with everything in relationship. It’s not just how something is said but when it’s said. And as timing always seems to go with a travelling occupation, there is often so much left to be sorted out the very moment that the bus or the car or the airplane is leaving town again. And so I drove, alone, toward the Starbucks in downtown Franklin, the minivan behind me fully engaged in their own version of “the hardest thing,” and it occurred to me that uncovering the depth of knowing someone, truly knowing them, is a never ending thing. How beautiful. Seven years in with my beautiful wife, and still uncovering. ONLY seven years in, and despite the awkward and desperately painful turns that are inherent in the very nature of what it means to be exposed and uncovered, I pray, Lord Jesus, for seventy more. Thank you Jesus that I know my wife more deeply today than I did on Tuesday – that I love my wife more deeply. What a gift we have been given.
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03/06/2010 Lakeland, FL
First Presbyterian Church 7:30PM
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Lakeland, FL 33801
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Bethel University 7:00PM
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St. Paul, Minnesota 55112
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http://www.bethel.edu/benson-great-hall/events/bebo-norman
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