Occasional Saturday Nights

 

Occasional Saturday Nights

(“Therefore, everyone who acknowledges me before people I, too, will acknowledge before my Father in heaven.” Matthew 10:32)

What is it like to know people feel less lonely when they hear your music?
How do you move the air in beats and waves to persuade the soul?

He used to park in a neighborhood church parking lot
on
Saturday evening. The brick and white slats behind him,
the sidewalk slipping past his windshield. In summer he would
wait until the sun slid behind the pitched roofs
and streetlights slowed their flickering dark to on.

No one used the space between the diagonal stripes,
no one knew why a forest green Volkswagen van parked
near dusk
in the silence of a night
that no one went inside. No prayer, no preacher,
no choir, no lectern, no pulpit. Bibles and hymns
were racked in pews quiet and alone.

But one vehicle parked and probably left an oil stain
when it left an hour or so later. The boy, the driver,
the actor, the pretender, the writer, the singer, the seeker,
the haughty and humble lad sat in the driver’s seat and
left the radio mute.

He imitated the best, was afraid of any moves that would be
misconstrued,
or, more to the point,
be rejected outright by experts and talents, teachers who
challenged
what they did not know. It would take 50 years to
form what he imagined at 16. He knew he loved Jesus,
and was Dylan’s biggest fan (until he heard Tom Waits
and had to double date them.)

But he would sit in the vacant lot, with thoughts swirling larger
than his comprehension. He knew music was the medium,
he knew words were the dance steps he never quite learned.
But the silence filled the larger space, much larger than if
he parked on Sunday morning, and he kept turning the world
over in his mind.

And the beats and vibrations…the ballads were lullabies,
the blues his native tongue. He was homesick and subterranean,
sitting above the asphalt field. No one stopped to ask for a song,
and
he was afraid to sing when the keys were all wrong for his voice.
He never busked for money, never busked at all. Just sat on
occasional Saturday nights and wondered what passion would be spilled
once Jesus taught him what he needed to hear all along.

But the music still keeps him company, empty lots are his studio,
and churches, somehow, have lost their meaning to him. While
Jesus, Waits and Dylan still speak to him unencoded and raw.