Misty Lyn & The Big Beautiful (Friday at Chelsea Alehouse)

Misty Lyn & the Big Beautiful
Oct 14 (Fri)
Chelsea Alehouse (420 N. Main St., Chelsea)
INFO

Every Misty Lyn performance is memorable, for me. I can only catch 3-4 out of a year, but they're always cherished occurrences.

And I wish that word, "memorable," had more impact, in a world of Hallmark cards and critics concocting blurbs, raves and praises. I wish, traversing the synthetic terrain of the Internet, that I could cultivate even half as much of the sweet sincerity that I typically try to keep for myself, that I consistently find in Misty's music.



I wish, or at least I'll hope, that when I tell you these moments of Misty Lyn concerts are memorable, that it is an ineffable evocation of calmness: a reassurance, I'd say, that you are finally certain, in a world of merry-go-round status-shuffles and f.o.m.o.-induced neuogenic atrophy, certain that there is no other room you have to be in..., no other appointment to rush to..., no other song you should be thinking about... Friends, I have never checked my phone during a Misty Lyn & The Big Beautiful set. I appreciate how disconcerting that accomplishment is in a 2016 world...and even then, I'm guilty of recently instagramming one of her songs... But still.



I met her seven years ago, but had been listening to her music as long as eight years prior and I found my younger self using the word "autumnal" when I described her music. We later had a, yes, memorable interview, where she gracefully shifted my perspective on what the hell I would have even been vaguely implying by that.

But I was pretty sure I figured it out... There is no other time of year, Autumn, where I feel I am more present... The perfect days between October 7th and, let's say October 21st, when the weather isn't cold yet, when all the color is in, when woodsmoke and cinnamon is in the air and the suburban squirrels are still bustling, when a tinge of pale sets in but there is still vibrancy... It is, and I will debate you on this till the cows come home, it IS THE perfect time of year. The moment I want frozen and framed.

That's what I thought, anyhow. I don't need to stay stuck in one moment, I don't need it captured in amber and worshiped as fleeting perfection. When I listen to a Misty Lyn song, every noise in my head, the worries, the self-doubts, the anxious gazes toward the future, is extinguished. My sense of autumn was always a nervous one: I have to enjoy it because it'll be gone in a week. And so you start moving and busying and fidgeting and it all blows by you.

When I listen to a Misty song, it's a tremendous and delicate shove into sharpened relief: how much I've been missing. It's a deep sigh. It's the goosebumps and it's the refocusing of the soul's lens. This is where I should be and this is exactly the song I want to be hearing right now.

This is a blog, so I will be as candid as I damn well please. A friend of mine asked me, morbid as it sounds, to pick a selection of songs I'd want played at my own funeral. These wouldn't be dirges or hymns, they wouldn't have to be tearjerkers. They'd have to be songs that you felt were utter celebrations of life, as it is; songs that you would want your friends to commiserate to, sing along to, together...

Well, should I go out anytime soon, make sure this is on the playlist...