Why I Work in Music
The lights go down, the house music fades. Stage lights brighten to illuminate empty instruments - eager, buzzing with latent electricity. The crowd erupts into a synchronized scream of anticipation. They’ve been waiting.
Figures emerge from the darkness, raising hands in the air as they walk across the stage. Five people take their positions while the expectant crowd continues to cheer with excitement. There’s a palpable energy in the air, thick and nearly sticky.
The crowd is here to get something they can’t get at home.
The bass player notices someone she recognizes in the crowd and gives a genuine smile and a wave as she relaxes into her instrument. She begins leading a familiar melody, eliciting more cheers and screams. The sound bounces off the walls and the ceiling. The crowd feels the bass reverberating through their feet, forcing movement, like popcorn kernels on the bottom of a hot pan.
As the band begins to play, the crowd sways together - 200, 2000, 20,000 people, all letting the music in, driven by the energy created on stage and amplified with electricity and machinery. The crowd becomes conduits for this energy, moving it from one place to another.
We accept it. We let it into our bodies and hearts and souls.
It mixes with our own energy, creating entirely new elements. Chemical reactions occur. Never before has that particular brand of energy existed, never will it again.
From this lies a world of possibility.
Everybody has the opportunity to share their energy with others. To create new reactions, new ideas. Sparks, changes, gifts. Musicians in particular thrive on this transfer of energy - this dance - this extended exchange of vulnerability and strength, openness and courage, sharing and bravery.
When a musician steps onto a stage, with an anticipatory crowd there to listen and ready to receive the inspiration they are eager to give, true magic happens. The constant give and take, the energy transfer of a live music performance is my lifeline.
In these moments, I feel most alive.
The show comes to a close, the lights come back up, the instruments are now quiet. The electricity turned off, the amps unplugged. It’s now the crowd that buzzes. The people carry the electricity, and it’s no longer latent.
It’s colliding with other atoms. It’s creating something supercharged and fresh. It will be carried forward into the night, transferred from person to person, released back into the atmosphere.
It will change people, it will shape ideas, it will carve space for new energy. It will make the world a slightly better place, if only for a day or two.
This is my lifeline.
This is my Why Music.