listen...

Have you ever sung in a crowd? a huge crowd, like a concert or a festival with thousands of people surrounding you? it doesn't matter at all how loudly you sing. you could be singing at the top of your lungs, so hard that you'll have no voice in the morning, but no matter how hard you sing you still can't hear yourself, yet the noise around you is deafening. have you ever been in that situation and looked at the people around you? it doesn't matter their age, sex, race, nationality, any of your differences. in that moment you are bonded in this music, singing together at the top of your lungs.

it kind of got me thinking, why can't the world be like that? we all have different voices, different thoughts and feelings, but if you put us together with one person singing in front of us, we will always for an unseen bond and in that moment you embrace strangers as friends you've known for years. someone you might never have noticed, and all at once you're arm and arm dancing and singing.

i never knew before why i wanted to sing. i just knew that i loved doing it, and i thought i had a pretty enough voice. but then in a concert last summer, looking around me, i realized. i wanted to be the person who created that peace. it might sound like a hippy thing to say, but i want to be that person who created that connection between strangers.

every christmas i sing with the california revels. i've been doing it for 4 years now. 4 years, about 8 shows, so that adds up to about 32+ shows plus rehearsals for months before the actual shows. all that singing, and memorizing the songs become kind of second nature. and yet, every performance, no matter what happened before, i always find myself catching my breath as we come out and the audience starts singing christmas carols with us. i remember my very first performance it was so overwhelming that i couldn't actually find the breath to sing. i just stood there. and that's why i do it year after year. that rush, the unity.

so whoever you are out there, listen. music has the power to bring strangers together, it's all around us, inside us, and all you have to do is open your mouth and sing along.