American Idol March 7, 2012

I’m watching Idol and Jimmy and Mary J. Blige are explaining a moment with one of the contestants.  She had been running towards the big note in a song, kind of like an ice skater headed for a triple jump.  Mary J told her not to anticipate the note.  Sing everything up to it, forget about it, feel the song.  The girl sang it again taking her advice and truth clicked in her perception and awareness.  She got it.  For a moment, she held the secret.  But come time for the performance, she choked.  She lost the leap of faith the task required.  

Jennifer told her “There’s nothing in that song you can’t do.  So why think about it?  Just tell the story.”  

Immediacy.  I think I learned that what they all were talking about was that singers, really great singers, don’t just sing.  They feel what they are singing.  It is their truth, their pure emotion that floats the fire on the oil of their words.  

That’s the secret.  Even though a book out there has held the title for ages, “Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow.”  As usual, probably too many focused on the word “money” to really get the message.  

Do what you love. 

Accept no substitutes.  This life doesn’t go on forever.  It isn’t so it will pass more pleasantly or smoothly.  It is your connectivity.  It is your purpose.  What you love is what you will do well.  What you do well is what you contribute.  The more people who are living at this level, the more beautiful the world, the greater the potential.  

We are not living at our potential.  

If there were a God, he would weep.

I imagine the world set off like a perpetual motion machine.  Perfect.  Synchronized.  When was it then, some human took the first mis-step?  When did they shift the motion to emit this clanging?  

Fear and anger.  Hate and racism.  

If makes me afraid.  Once something in perpetual motion gets moving, particularly out of sync, isn’t the end result destined to be everything running off the tracks?  Falling to oblivion?  How could we possibly love enough to provide the nudge to shift the momentum?  How to shift so many people who don’t even speak the same language to be told how they’ve lost their boundaries?  

Labeled as freak somewhere akin to Christian but with less credibility, your message would go unheard.  

But instinctually, don’t you know it as truth?  Mechanical things that fit together work smoothly, almost as if they are happy with each other.  Almost as if they are doing what they love.  There is no resistance.  Smooth like a newly graphited lock.  

We’re so mystified.  Bewildered.  We can’t even begin to tell you what it is that we love.  Who it is we love.  Surely what I love must be what that guy over there said he loved.  Yeah, I’ll have what he’s having.  I’ll value what he’s having.  I want mine.  Settling for someone else's dream, yet wondering why they are never happy.  Shoving goods into the torn patches, those empty clumps missing their stuffing.  

The minute it isn’t about the rewards, the rewards will come.  That same minute you would do it for free just to be able to do it.

Love it.

Live it. 

Be it.  

That’s what I think that girl on American Idol learned in that moment.