Neil is the Real Deal

ALL WE THINK THAT MATTERS THAT MIGHT NOT

So how do we know what does?

It was all over, It was the end. And then it was not.

Grief felt unsurvivable and then a day came when you felt differently.

You became physically stoic and stopped falling apart.

What I have learned is that grief is a very physical thing. When you lose someone you love, your body aches. Your chest feels pain. Something inside seizes up. You feel fear and nausea and lack of mobility. You want to go to bed and bury yourself. You are timid as though you have survived a beating. Emotion overcomes sense. You are shaken like a wrung-out rag, flung into the wind. You are paralyzed. You are in a middle realm.

The last time I went to the Hollywood Bowl Henry James was still alive . It was hard leaving him,

even with a sitter. And now, here we were, back, to see Neil Young.

I'm not going to go into a set list or a blow by blow here. I wanted to write about the experience of seeing, from a distance, and feeling the presence of someone whose music has been a part of my life since I was a child. Neil Young wrote music my parents liked. All of us liked.

When I was very young and began playing the guitar, I learned Neil Young songs. My mother had a Joni Mitchell album when I was a child, and later I was to connect Joni with Neil, and to be riveted to each of them as songwriters. it didn't matter that they were decades older than I was.

Cut to September 15, Los Angeles, Hollywood Bowl. And sitting up high, regarding the stars, and the stage, so small before me, I am connecting everything. My childhood memories, the song Harvest Moon, the times I saw Neil Young play in Glasgow, the immense power his guitarwork had on me when I saw him live. This was thirty years ago.

There is such a thing as time, and when you realize a singer-songwriter has been with you your entire life you are suddenly emotional swooning: you connect with a song now that you sang as a kid. Only love can break your heart. And now you know that lyric in a different way, for you are old enough to know grief and loss, and the lyric is profound now. You are capable of having a spiritual experience, linking your past with your now.

Isn't this culture? Isn't this what great songs do? They knit together your life experiences, emotionally. The songs and the artist have befriended you through your life. In the sad moments, the lonely ones, the rocking ones. Neil Young's life in songs has been shared with you.

His songs are yours, and they belong to all of the members of the audience.

And funny. Young becomes Jung, as in Carl Jung, as in Collective Unconscious.

That is the real deal. This is CULTURE. Shared songs that help us to share emotion.

How healing and how cleansing.

This is why we write. This is why we perform. It's so clear.

It's not to "be a brand."

No, it is to merge, to lose oneself and to become part of something much bigger.

For that is exactly what love is.

And that is all that matters. the other stuff: fear, blame,rage,division,hatred?

It pales.

Grateful for the beautiful reality check.

And ready to move on.

Thanks Neil. You've always been there for me And for anyone who will listen.