Sunday afternoon, I found myself walking onto a stage, in my regular day clothes with some friends from school and a large gathering of older ladies and gentleman. I had come to listen to a concert, rather than be in one, and so I said jokingly to one of my friends that: “This is more than I signed up for. This is more than I was ready for. I am not emotionally prepared for this.” Prior to standing up, I’d been fully enjoying and appreciating some great new music, but trying to pretend as though I wasn’t excited about it. I had no desire to be particularly seen or heard, I simply wanted to listen to great music, with my coat on and my arms folded around myself like a shield. I had been prepared for that sacred and somewhat solitary activity of listening to a concert, but I had not prepared to be a participator.

The organizer of the concert and the composer of the new works, Nick Platoff, is a fairly open and unafraid person. He is who he is, and he’s not afraid of being seen and heard. In fact, the only reason I was in the concert in the first place, is because I had seen his extremely genuine personality on his instagram stories, and I had thought to myself that I definitely wanted to hear what kind of music he was going to make. It became evident to me during the concert that he wanted everyone in the audience to feel a little bit freer. He began interacting with the audience from the very beginning, even though the majority of the audience was not ready to reciprocate his energy and joy at first. I, perhaps, least of all. The first half of the concert warmed up our hearts, with some great repertoire for brass quintet. This felt a lot like the regular church-like experience of classical concert-attendance, with the exception that there was some little interaction in between each piece. But I was still in my seat, I was still in my coat, I still had my arms folded around myself, and I still was constantly wearing my professor face. I tried to keep that persona for the second half of the concert but I couldn’t. It was impossible to listen to Nick’s music, and not smile. I was trying to intellectually piece together and understand all of his structural choices, his harmonies, his lyrics (and Abstract Rude’s lyrics in their awesome collaboration), his voice, the brass quintet playing and the sound effects. BUT, what I felt in the end, was an opening up of the heart.

I was particularly struck by a piece he wrote in memory of his grandfather. The piece included a recording of his cousin talking about the experience of learning to drive with their grandfather. Right away, I was paying attention, because I haven’t learned to drive. I am 25 years old, and I can’t drive. And to be honest, I’m straight up terrified of driving. For context, the first time I drove, at the age of 21, I ran the car into the side of the road and got a flat tire, and I haven’t done much driving since. Along with the recording, the brass players were playing beautiful and interesting harmonies, while Nick sang “Don’t look at me with tears in your eyes, cause I’m still alive…” He also included some sounds of cicadas, because of how he had been remembering his grandfather in a forest. It was a huge sonic experience , and there were so many layers to unpeel. I’m sure I could sit down with the piece and do a score study and write a nice long essay about it. BUT, the main take away, the part that hit me the hardest was when the cousin said that driving became a life lesson when his grandfather said “If you’re going to do something, do it with distinction. FLOOR IT.” Nick had at that point included the sound of a revving engine. At this point, I was smiling ear to ear and shaking my head. Flooring it, is exactly opposite to my life experience in every way, but this piece made me feel like maybe it’d be nice if it wasn’t. I’ve written a lot about fear, and bravery, and how courage is not the absence of fear but the decision that something is more important than fear. But there’s a lot of things that I haven’t decided are important enough to overcome my fears, and that piece made me truly reconsider a lot of those fears. What would I throw my energy into, if I wasn’t afraid of failing? If I wasn’t afraid of being poorly received by audiences or readers or loved ones? What would I do, if I could do anything? So much. I would do so, so many things I don’t do. I would compose more, and actually perform my compositions for people. I would actually publish my poetry and my works of fiction. I would play forte without turning red from embarrassment. I would do the concerto competition.

Right at the moment when I was considering what exactly I would do with my life, if I was the kind of person that “floored it”, Nick asked everybody to join them on stage for the last piece. To be honest, if the pieces had been in a different order, I probably would have just kinda quietly ran away and not gone up on stage. BUT, I had all this adrenaline from the piece before and so I went up. And, I was still kind of embarrassed, I was still kind of awkward and quirky and not fully aware of how to use all of my limbs as we clapped and sang and swayed on stage, but I was having a great time. I was having the time of my life. I was remembering what it felt like to be a kid, and to just genuinely enjoy the experience of music making, without being concerned if it was perfect. I left that concert feeling lighter, feeling freer, feeling that I could do anything. Feeling that maybe, just maybe I could….

FLOOR IT.