Cornerstone, Part Two

Here’s a revised entry that I wrote in my diary on the morning of July 1st. I’ve shortened it a bit, edited it for clarity, and taken out a considerable amount of shameless gushing about a certain violinist. The events of June 30th were a major reason I loved Cornerstone so much— it’s a night I’ll hold forever in my heart. 

*  *  *

Last night, after eating s’mores with Josh and Emily [two other good friends at our campsite], I headed over to the Photoside Café show with my friends John, Ryan, and Mrs. Hengst. We arrived at the Chelsea Café tent and looked around for a place to sit. I knew there was a violinist in the band, but I didn’t pay any attention until the sound guy called for a mic check. A tone of pure gold shot through the air, playing the main theme from Pirates of the Caribbean. My head whipped toward the stage as if someone had slapped me, and I saw Photoside’s violinist warming up his instrument. I knew this was going to be a good concert.

I would say there are no words to describe Photoside Café’s live show, but I am a writer so I must try: utterly transcendent. The lead singer/guitarist, happy drummer/pianist, talented bassist and guest guitarist are all excellent, I’m sure. However, I only could hear and see the violinist and his rapturous instrument that he played with the beauty of autumn sent sailing into the air in a heartbreakingly sweet tone. 

I was instantly in love. I wanted to dance among the stars, or run on the ocean waves, or become a leaf in an oak tree lashing in the wind. Every turn, every song, every phrase was a new adventure, a tone or note or sound that spilled deep into my heart and filled it with joy so unspeakable that I could only tremble in my folding chair as tears slipped down my cheeks. 

Photo by Sharon Curry

When the set was drawing to a close, they played so fast and furiously I was afraid the violin would snap in half. They finished in a huge chord, and I leaped to my feet for a standing ovation.

After that, I half-collapsed onto a wooden tent support, gazed up at the stars, and basked in euphoria. Mrs. Hengst and John patiently waited for me to calm my jubilant heart. I realized at that moment, beyond doubt, that I could die right now and feel that I had experienced all the beauty this life has to offer.

At my friends’ urging, I talked to the violinist after the show. I waited my turn, then said, “Hi,” and earnestly gushed for several minutes. We talked about violin, the band, Cornerstone. I didn’t want to keep him long, but on impulse, out of the joy of my heart, I gave him a tight hug. For an instant I held in my arms a young man who God has blessed with the gift of pure Beauty. Then I said goodbye and raced off.

By all the standards of fairness, there should be a limit to how much joy someone is allowed to experience in one day. Reasonably, the night should have ended there and it still would have been an evening to remember forever. But I had committed to see the Flatfoot56 show at the large tent across the grounds, so I wrapped on a back brace, grabbed some earplugs, and scuffed my feet in the dust to the show, feeling that anything would be a comedown after the wonder I had just witnessed. I was wrong.

The huge tent was packed out, but I found a space in the mass of sweaty people, many of them dressed like superheroes, since that was the theme of the show. After a dramatic John-Williams music intro, the band took the stage— wearing masked big-brained batwing-eared supervillain costumes. As the members grabbed guitars, a mandolin, and bagpipes, they announced their plan to take over the world by destroying all the superheroes at once… with music!

For the first two songs, I worked on edging my way closer to the circle pit near the stage (a circle pit occurs when the fans run in a giant ellipse, pushing and shoving and trying not to fall down). Flatfoot is apparently renowned for having friendly circle pits, though I was warned it was not for the faint of heart. I hovered on the edge for a while, watching a couple hundred people mosh-sprint their way around the oval. Then I took a deep breath, put up my fists as if about to punch someone, and dove into the stampede.

Exhilaration! I hurtled forward, slamming my forearms into the people in front of me as people shoved me from behind. Every time we bottlenecked between a support pole and the group near the stage, we became a kicking, wriggling mass of sweaty bodies. I grunted and yelled as I fought through the runners, wild with adrenaline, grinning and whooping as I battled hundreds of other dancing fans.

Once I fell, but seized a guy’s tank top, yanked myself up and kept running. I paused only a couple times. For most of the concert I ran around the pit, nostrils burning with the acrid smell of sweat and the particularly stinky mud that Cornerstone offers, arms throbbing from ramming into people, my skin slick with sweat— both mine and other people’s. A couple kids with mind-control powers kept on reversing the multiple-hundreds-person flow of the pit, which meant that I was hit by a freight train of bodies several times. Between songs, everyone slowed down for a few seconds, heaving breaths, panting for water, almost blacking out in the soggy heat. Then the drums started up again, the exhaustion fell away like shackles, and we were off: athletes in a chaotic flailing race to happiness.

For their final song, Flatfoot had us all link arms and sway as we sang Amazing Grace together. I pulled out my earplugs and was overcome by the noise— not from onstage, but from the people around me, God’s children, belting out the words with more passion (and volume!) than I have ever heard in my life. The beauty of it all made me weep, and I sang all the louder.

As soon as the first verse hit its final chord, the music went double-time and the linked-arm lines exploded into a multi-tiered circle pit. As I bashed my way through the mass of adrenaline-hyped sweat-soaked bodies, I laughed at the thought of John Newton watching, with a dropped jaw, a couple hundred young people pummeling the crap out of each other in time to the song he wrote over two hundred years ago.

On the encore song, I sprinted with all my energy, threw back my head, and screamed. I screamed louder and longer than I have in years, screamed on this rollercoaster of God’s children, screamed because I’m young, and life at this moment was utterly and unfairly beautiful, and God is the author of Love so deep that I could never comprehend it. That night, God showed me His Joy, in blazing multisensory color.

What an evening.

 *  *

~Lisa Shafter