Dream Girls

If we can pass others on the street and think to ourselves, “There, but for the grace of G-d, go I,” isn’t it possible that others can pass us and say the same thing?

I spent last evening at a Queen concert. It was balls-out amazing: the talent, the showmanship, the technique and the bravery to stand out there, bounce around a stage and invigorate a crowd of thousands.

I had a moment while watching Adam Lambert, who was filling Freddie Mercury’s shoes pretty darn well, when I realized that only the slightest differences existed between the two of us.

Go with me here. A plane takes off for New York, but the compass is one degree off. You end up at the Nyack mall instead of JFK. One degree. Completely different destination.

If there is just the “grace of god” between me and the person I see huddled under the freeway gathering up their belongings as the cop car pulls two wheels up on the sidewalk to shuffle them along to another temporary spot, isn’t there just the “grace of god” between me and Adam Lambert? Or that woman I saw perform at Yoshi’s a few years ago: She wasn’t perfect. Her pitch wasn’t always on, but she was a performer. She had the crowd completely, she enjoyed herself, she was proud, vivacious, and seen. And she wasn’t perfect.

I don’t even remember who she was, except she was the singer of a bluesy/jazzy band, and she was fierce. She was a large woman with a large smile. And as I watched her, I thought to myself that I wanted to do what she did; get up there and perform, without needing to be perfect – because if that were the case, I don’t think any of us would ever do anything, including Adam Lambert.

Over the last year, I have adjusted my compass to be bringing me closer to that point on the map. I am not so far away in the Canada hinterland, but perhaps flying somewhere over Buffalo by now. (Can you tell I grew up back east?)

Julia Cameron writes in The Artist’s Way that it isn’t talent that creates success; it’s tenacity. It’s being a dog’s fierce jaw chomped around a toy rope, refusing to let go.

The guitar player, Brian May, dazzled the crowd with a 10-minute long epic, cacophonous solo. It was like a safari inside of music itself: strange, elegant, mystic, and ancient. I said to my friend, That’s what happens when you spend 40 years doing only one thing.

That’s what happens when you decide that you love one thing, that you’re good (enough) at one thing, that you want others to know you do this thing: You become great.

Here’s to finding—or claiming, rather—my thing.