Heaven

The divine Xan organized tickets to the One Night Only performance of the Young@Heart chorus, the OAPS featured in the film of the same name, currently in theaters. I was expecting it to be sweet. I was expecting a few ironic, knowing laughs. I went in feeling flip and clever. And I came out moved, exhilarated, thrilled. It was poignant, beautiful, funny, sad. At one moment, after "All we Have is Now" by the Flaming Lips & "Heaven" by the Talking Heads, I actually experienced that moment where you are face to face with your own mortality. We are born. We live. We die. Life is ephemeral. We create art to celebrate life (not, as Billy Collins suggests, death) and there we were, all two thousand of us in that little theater on Wilshire Boulevard, whooping and stomping and squealing as if we're in a room with the Rolling Stones circa 1974 watching three rows of slightly frail old people in their black trousers pulled up to the true waist, and red shirts displaying odd shaped boobs and lumps and bumps, and tiny, shriveled faces. But the sound that came out was explosive and powerful. One beautiful old lady, with a face like Nico, if one could imagine Nico at 83, sang in a piping reed of a voice "Fake Plastic Trees" by Radiohead so sweetly that the woman next to me dabbed away the tears from her eyes and I got goosebumps up and down my arms. Her little face and her pretty, wavy hair surrounding it, in the spotlight, all eyes on hers, and her tiny voice. It was the fragility that was so poignant, combined with the full-on bear hug embrace of living. I do sound like a total prat, I know, describing this, but it made my little soul feel light. I described this to Jumby in the kitchen this morning, with his arms around me, and I told him a similar feeling for him would be his neurons crackling like sparklers inside him. What a wonderful case for not fading away quietly, not whimpering but banging, and banging very loudly. All we have is now. It doesn't sound very hip or clever but it does feel true.

Listen to "Fix You" by Coldplay here and see the movie trailer here.