It was low-hanging fruit, admittedly. I was taking an online "class" on dreaming big, and in the beginning we needed to basically freewrite our dreams until we got to the biggest, most outlandish things we could think of achieving. Some of the early things I wrote down were easy, imaginable realities. Find a new job. Focus on clean eating. Run a 10K.
"See Chris Bathgate live" was one of those early dreams that maybe wasn't quite so imaginable because it seemed like the guy never left Michigan. Nonetheless, I was spending many evenings a week on long bike rides then, following long stretches of paved trails out into the closest thing we have to wilderness here, surrounded everywhere by green and huge expanses of sky and sunsets, avoiding the grasshoppers and gnats littering the trail, catching glimpses of bobcats and armadillos. Chris Bathgate was the soundtrack for the unloosening I felt there, for the quiet revelations, for the easy letting go.
Even today, the first strains of "Buffalo Girl" create a feeling like a gasp in my chest.
This is how it came to pass that on Friday, March 18, my family and I loaded up the car and made the drive down to Austin to see Chris Bathgate in a live music showcase at The Tea Embassy, in conjunction with SXSW.
It was perfectly lovely, with blankets stretched out on green grass, a small gathering of people sprawled under the sun, soaking up the heat and listening to great music. Delicious iced tea in plastic cups with colorful bendy straws. Violet danced and then got tired and Madeleine was patient and then restless. I thought of all the memories being cultivated on that lawn, people who escaped the bustle of SXSW for this quick breath of calm, and people like us who drove a long way just for the one show, who would be driving a long way back home in just a few short hours.
Was it perfect, checking that item off the list? No and yes at once. Chris Bathgate only sang two songs I knew, "Cold Press Rail" and "No Silver." The rest were great, but from his new album and so I have no connection to them just yet. I couldn't give my full attention to the show while I was managing my hot, tired girls.
But that's where perfect comes in, right? Achieving a dream, no matter how small it may seem -- in between Madeleine whining because the bug she caught just escaped or Violet's restless wandering because she wanted to dance but was just too tired at that point, trying to hear the words to songs I wanted to know -- that's capital-L Life right there. And that brief moment in the middle of it, when the first song started and I stretched my feet out on the grass and raised my face to the sun and gave the universe a silent thank you - it's really the point of it all, isn't it?
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