Brave New World Tour – The Show

Brave New World Tour – The Show

When I was in 7 years-old, I remember going to a show that my piano teacher, Jane, was leading worship at. I can easily recall the lights, the sound, the dancing and the crowd. I wore my favorite pink sweatshirt with a dog face on it. The air was like a fresh downpour– the moment the band started, I felt the internal voice box in my heart start to talk with the eternal God we were singing about and to.

The artists, dancers, musicians and singers were all communicating something in their own way about the eternal in the temporary confines of time– they were building something together as messy, beautiful people. I remember feeling the juxtaposition of being hemmed in, held together, all while reaching out of my skin and bones for something and someone beyond me. The vulnerability and transcendent quality of it took hold of me, and I have never been the same.

Maybe I was picking up on the crowd allowing the music to challenge and shape them. Maybe we were all open to new possibilities of healing and wholeness.

Perhaps we were discovering that we’re all tiny, eternal homes created by God because of and for love, and our songs made it possible for us to step inside, out of the cold, to believe it.

That night is one of the reasons why I believe that performance art is imperative to culture. It inspires us, provokes and moves us. Slowly and subtly, it changes us. It leads us. It can be a gentle way of reminding us to think for ourselves and ponder truth in our hearts.

Sometimes it interrupts a cycle of thinking we’ve had for 30 years and gives us the key to a new way of thinking and living. Art of any kind is a heart form of communication.

When we celebrate the performance arts as an act of worship, in the Love and presence of God, humanity and Divinity begin to have a conversation. 

As I reflect on the shows that have impacted me the most, like the worship night I mentioned above, the artists weren’t trying too hard to say something. They were just simply what they were– unapologetically committed to their season of growth and evolution as a person. Committed to staying a student of life, of God, of Love, of mankind, and presenting their artwork as an offering. I wasn’t being sold something, rather I felt as though I’d been invited into a living room, handed a hot beverage, and sat down by a fire to hear their story. I felt honored that they would let me in.

It’s different than the “salesman at the door” that we’ve made the mass production of art out to be. It requires more of the artists and more of me, the participant– more compassion, more capacity, more time for an exchange that truly means something. These are a few reasons why we’ve decided to take Brave New World out on the road – it breaks us out of the safety and isolated experience of our headphones and into a messy, human, beautiful group of different people every night. There we get to have a meaningful exchange, feel connected to each other in our individual quests, pause the business of life for a heart to heart interaction with the Love of God, cheer each other on, and to be reminded that in our aloneness, we were never, ever, truly alone.