Finding Shelter: How Art Reminds Us We Aren't Alone

I was ready for 2020 to be my year.  

To be honest, I’ve been waiting for A YEAR since 2014. You know, the finish line year where, after a montage of hard work and dedication I would finally get to reap the benefits. Get the guy. Ride off into a sunset for once.  Instead, the Shetler in Place order came the weekend of my 34th birthday. 

I wrote “Shelter” in the aftershock; before the reality of empty streets and isolation had fully set in.  I was reading Charles De Lint’s book “Moonheart” , trying to re-spark hope within myself, burying my own heart withing the nourishing fantasy of that world.  I let myself descend into every feeling in search of pearls of poetry to string together. 

“It felt like you were singing right to me” is the most humbling phrase any songwriter can hear. It doesn’t matter how unique the circumstances seem to me, the more vulnerable I am on the page the more resonant the music is .  We’re hungry for confirmation that we aren’t alone.   pain Your pain can still feel like a shameful secret, even when you’re in a global pandemic and you know your friends and neighbors are deep in the fray with you. Then you hear some line, some lyric, someone says exactly what you’re thinking and it all comes out like a sigh. 

The power of art,  especially music and story telling ,  isn’t so much that it makes us feel, it’s that it unites us in our experiences. You get a glimpse of the web that connect you to every other human be-ing.  What looks like avoiding reality can be a re-calibration  to it– a reminder that struggle comes with the territory and when we embrace it together, we discover that there is an undercurrent of joy even in the darkest of periods. 

It may sound crazy, even sacrilegious to talk about joy right NOW.  Rent is due!  Unemployment is running out!   Your family feels all to vulnerable, and the longer this drags on the more likely it seems that someone you love won’t be here when the vaccine is finally made  (if you are lucky enough to have gone this far without close casualties) the whole word feels like it’s falling apart and our hearts are breaking with it.   

“Joy”, you say, “Should we start dancing at funerals next?”  

Remembering our interconnected nature and the pleasure that it brings gives us power to face whatever might be ahead of us. It’s like finding a foot hold in tug of war, you can leverage that moment of remembering you are held within a context of community towards greater and more meaningful shifts individually and communally.  It is more important than ever to prioritize whatever practices we need to feel our connection to each other, to remind us that despite apperances we are NOT in this alone.   

With the future uncertain, we must root into the present and find within the shelter of a good song, our favorite television show, a well crafted book;  a much needed reminder that, as Terrance said, “Nothing human is alien..” to us.  

Watch a special video performance of Shelter I made for Ballard Vox’s Viral Video series here.