"Do you feel that? That is musical tension and the madness of crowds."
We laugh, we cheer, we revel in the showmanship and bravado of this Evanston-bred musician whose talent for lyricism is surpassed only by his raw and sometimes terrifying vulnerability on stage. I've never seen him so confident, though he's always been the most courageous performer I've ever been privileged to watch. There is something contagiously joyful in his stage banter, which isn't so much banter as it is an insistence on connecting, on drawing us in to what he himself experiences and desires from music. He's sincere, and he's playful, and most of all, he's a goddamn rock and roll star who's doing exactly what he's meant to be doing.
And it brings me happiness to the point of embarrassment. But it also makes me ache. I cannot watch good art without feeling this longing, which verges on pain even while it contains profound ecstasy. It's the realization that this - good art - is the most important thing. Because when you find yourself in the presence of true beauty, which is also called love, and also called god, nothing else matters. Walls crumble and inhibitions melt, the world becomes clear and sharp, and we understand that life is our shared struggle, that none of us is an island, and that the best we can do to help ourselves is to help one another see our truth, the way we perceive it.
I don't know if any of that is true. But I'm starting to believe their is no such thing as objective truth. And if there is, I'm not interested in it. I'm not interested in the facts, so much as the feelings. And the feelings at an Ezra Furman show are always intense. If you don't have an Ezra, I urge you to find one. Someone who's art makes you feel alive, expands your perspective, inspires you to embrace those "alogical feelings" and abandon reason for just a little while, in order to experience the divine inebriation of a soul set free and moved to dance. It's the most important thing.
