Life. How do your portrait it; how do you discuss it? My bride Christi has improved my life. Bubba (my dog) has taught me how to improve my life. How to be a better human. Stories, perceived or real, can pass along what was to describe life. Some stories are told around the fireplace. Some are told on the front porch. Some in a small social setting. Some are read in books. And finally, told (and some times unspoken) through music. All portrait life because that is the foundation. There is usually some take away for the audience, for them to reflect on their life.
The person telling the story has the most investment. As a listener you have the prerogative to take what you are listening to and to do with it as you will. Tonight as Mark Mybeck went through his set list, I caught myself feeling like I was elsewhere. The first set was like a family gathering. The second set was like a rush of thoughts moving in different directions. Not chaotic thoughts, just intent in many directions that tied together. Both sets were life. It could have been a remembrance, whether perceived or real, but do you really know? The fact is the music brings emotion from the storyteller to you. How you choose to interpret can be strongly influenced by the teller, or by you the listener.
This is not to say Mark's set list was intended at all to take you on the trip I was on. What Mark's list was for sure, was his stories, told and played in a way that allowed you to do with it what you wanted to. No group head banging conformity (you could also say head nodding, foot stomping, finger tapping . . . remember the scene from Dead Poets Society in the court yard?). No local talking (first set), and an exuberance of noise while he played the second set because of an anxious human vibration in the air.
Here are some photographs from the evening. Enjoy!
Mark Mybeck
Nomad Planets
Austin Community Tavern
(on Steger Road, 1 mile West of I-394)
Steger, IL
708.248.6791
