High Mass at the United Center
Last night I attended a concert at the United Center. The Pretenders with Chrissie Hynde opened for Stevie Nicks. Nicks has been writing lyrics and performing her songs, album after album, since the early 1970s. Nicks is on tour with her band to reprise her songs written over a forty year career as a poet and performer.
Chicago’s United Center, home of the Chicago Bulls, and the Blackhawks is a state of the art concert venue. It can hold twenty thousand people. In my imagination the place is equivalent to St Peters Basilica in the Vatican. It is a dedicated space. It’s design purpose is to focus the minds and hearts of attendees upon one thing–the play on the basketball court or hockey rink, or alternatively the ineffable message in lyric, tune, visuals of a performer on the stage. This place is like St. Peters. Here the stage is the altar.
I struggle to select words that come even close to the message of life, love, and transcendence offered in the music of last night. How does one not use the language of theology? Redemption, salvation, renewal, and yes, resurrection. During intermission I stood in the mezzanine for a few minutes contemplating the parade of individuals rushing past. I noted that many of the females were attractively appareled. One dresses for such an occasion showing respect for what is to be offered. Overlooking my fellows, I thought, “what a motley looking crowd.” Relentless time and indifferent nature marked the majority of our faces
As I listened to Nicks, to her superb band of fellow musicians, I thought to myself once again, — the old established religions have run their course, have exhausted their generative power. The message has to be, and is being renewed, recast, and represented by the lyricists, the song-smiths, the performers such as Nicks who risk a career to express their sense of what it means to be human, the challenge before us to live and to love.
Her concluding number was Landslide. As is always proper at such moments of revelation, I and thousands around rose to our feet. One cannot remain seated when life itself is lifted up in celebration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqvD3pz3pCE
Only those of us who have lived and have reflected upon the ebb and flow of this remarkable experience which we call “life” could write such subtle poetry and present the message so sublimely. At concerts conclusion I along with thousands departed for home, blessed and transformed.
Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides
Can I handle the seasons of my life
