12/05/2016

I went to Take 6's Christmas concert yesterday evening. It was an exciting experience on more than just one level.

Me and dad, we had to leave our conference's winter meeting early to make it back to Tallinn in time for the concert. We had spent the weekend in a resort centre in the middle of woods, sitting through a lot of long meetings and worship services, preaching, giving/hearing reports, and socialising. I was so absorbed in all of this, the concert came as if from a different universe. I did not even have time to change my clothes when we got to Tallinn so I sat in the concert hall with my jeans, in the middle of people wearing their best clothes and purses and jewellery. I realised the thing was a massive social event for the bold and beautiful of this city (or maybe even the country?). Musicians, politicians, all sorts of celebrities had made their way to the concert. And I sat there before the concert began, looking around me, and I realised that for me it was different. It wasn't a public event for me. It wasn't the main concert of Winter Jazz 2016. It wasn't just a place to enjoy good quality music. Or to be fashionable and let other see the best of my wardrobe. For me it was one more precious chance to look back and bring out the best of memories from my childhood and teenage years. Because non of these fancy people around me could have known that I have listen to Take 6's music so enormously much it has become a part of my being, the soundtrack of my life. They couldn't have known that for more than 15 years one of our family's Friday evening Sabbath tradition was to listen to Take 6's first album (I still do that on those extremely rare occasions I get to spend Friday evenings at my dad's). Or that I used to listen to Join the Band and So Cool albums obsessively as a teenager. Or that I would start listening to their Christmas albums as soon as the first snow arrived (which often was in the end of October - I remember brother K. being really upset with me and fed up with those albums lol). Or the occasion when I was in Newbold a few months after my mum had passed away and I was sitting in a car with J. and S. and would start weeping uncontrollably when they suddenly happened to play Grandma's Hands.

This was a personal thing last night. Every song was personal. Every memory.

One bad thing about knowing their music so well is that I also know their arrangements by heart. I sat and listened to them sing last night and I couldn't help but pick out all those places where they've changed the arrangement or missed the perfection of the harmony or just couldn't hit the highest notes any longer. They're old. They really are old. Their voices don't fit together any more the way they used to. They barely touch the songs from their first (and best) album - the album you need young voices for. But they are still brilliant and I admire them for what they're doing. They're still my heroes, less so musically but more so personally - for staying true to their passion and calling throughout all these decades.

They also came to say hi to the audience and sign CDs after the concert. It was the first time I had seen them do that. So me and dad waited patiently until the bigger crowd was gone because I really had it on my heart to go and talk to them just a little. I also got their autographs but this means surprisingly little to me. (Oh, the teenage years are gone!) But what I really appreciated was the chance to actually tell them about this soundtrack of life's thing and about our Friday evening tradition. Their eyes went round and big and Alvin gave me a bear hug when he heard this. I couldn't speak for long because there were still people queuing up after me, there would have been more things I would have liked to say, but Alvin said, We'll continue this conversation when we meet again on the other side of Jordan. I agreed. And that really touched my heart. We share the same hope, and we share the same faith. We'll speak again.

It all felt a little bit like a farewell. I'm sure this was their last time in Estonia. I really don't think they would come back. And that's ok. I'll speak to them again on the other side. When Grandma's Hands song doesn't make me weep any more.

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