Beams of Light

Thoughts on music, parenthood, memory, and Gregory Alan Isakov

The rain turns the highway into beams of light, and glowing brakes stretch into long red gashes. Miles behind us, the quiet countryside hunkers down under the October rain and an early evening darkness; in front of us, the city skyline emerges from the mist like some futuristic metropolis. Traffic is stop and go.

This is life now, where I am old enough to have children in college, old enough to have children home on break who invite me along to live concerts . . . concerts that I actually want to attend.

One of my daughters is in the passenger seat. The fact that she wants to be anywhere in public with me swells my heart.

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And I ran back to that hollow again
The moon was just a sliver back then
And I ached for my heart like some tin man
When it came, oh, it beat, and it boiled and it rang
Oh, it's ringin'

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Lucy’s college roommate invited us—her dad (my old college roommate) had purchased tickets to see Gregory Alan Isakov, and they wondered if the two of us would like to join them. Lucy practically squealed when the text came through.

This is how we found ourselves cruising into Philadelphia in our 2007 minivan, listening to GAI on repeat, Lucy asking me about my favorite college memories with my roommate who we were on our way to hang out with.

So I told her.

There were the long slow, August days, when we arrived at college before the rest of the student body for two weeks of soccer preseason. Eating together with the team in the mostly empty cafeteria, working our tails off in the heat, collapsing into the air conditioned dorm room at night and falling asleep, bodies aching.

There was the time we went out to celebrate our 21st birthdays (he turned 21 a week before me). Our friend J was there, too—he and I turned 21 on the same day. We bar-hopped and laughed and were driven all around Newark that night, the stars spinning above us in a cold December sky. We woke in the morning to a sharp cold, just days before Christmas.

There was graduation day, when we couldn’t have possibly imagined what was waiting for us: the joys, the heartache, the late nights, the sad days. The losses. Always the losses, and they weigh on my mind even now. There are things that wouldn’t happen in these years that I’m glad I didn’t know about when we were throwing our caps in the air.

We drank to each other’s health at our weddings and spent a glorious week together in England, the four of us, when Maile and I lived there and were aching for familiar faces. We celebrated the arrival of each other’s children.

In other words, we lived, a nearly-thirty-year-old friendship.

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Well time has a way of throwing it all in your face
The past, she is haunted, the future is laced
Heartbreak, you know, drives a big black car
I swear I was in the back seat, just minding my own

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We park in a lot surrounded by empty buildings, the rain falling heavier now. Cars glide, swishing through puddles as we scurry along the sidewalk, passing vacant shop windows, passing darkness, then under the freeway where a man sleeps inside a small cardboard house, his booted feet coming out the end.

We turn down an alley on crumbled sidewalks. The streetlights are yellow. Across the street is the venue, a converted warehouse, and the line to get in wraps around the building. A man trying to sell ponchos shouts out his wares, simultaneously trying to find customers while also berating people in profanity laced tirades for not buying quick enough.

Umbrellas are out. Hoods and hats are on. We huddle together with these strangers, all of us blanketed in our anticipation. Our friends emerge from the cloud of people and rain and darkness, kind faces smiling, the city skyline rising behind them, and then we are inside, and we are warm, and the music is nearly here.

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Cutting through the avenues
I'd always find my way to you
Beside the hook, the hammer lies

Fumbling round in the smoke
Spending time chasing ghosts
Hold me down, hold me down, child
Hold me down, hold me down, child

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Live music is a gift from God, the tangible sound of spirit and soul raining down around us. We stand there, packed in among people who no longer feel like strangers, the notes and the lights and the voices striking me like a prayer, or a blessing.

At the beginning of every song, my daughter and her friend look at each other in wide eyes, naming the song, reverberating with excitement. I lean forward and whisper in my daughter’s ear, things I notice, things I hear. She smiles and nods and this, I think, is the fruit of parenthood, this shared enjoyment of beautiful things.

We drive home, through the dark, after midnight, when the roads are mostly empty and all the house lights are off. I fight to keep my eyes open. Maile greets us at home, in the kitchen, and we try to explain the beauty of that night, the beauty of that music. The feeling of friendship and creativity, the joy of the songs, the energy of the fiddle player, the sheer talent, the quiet loneliness of an acoustic guitar, the beams of light that came down on the musicians like God’s grace.

Those beams of light.

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(All italicized words are lyrics from Gregory Alan Isakov’s songs. For more photos, check out my Instagram account, @shawnsmucker.)