268. Silence - Kimbra
via Getty/Dan Arnold
Music was my great joy, my portal into the sacred. I could not let the demands of the music industry rob me of my gift and my service or let burnout rob me of my greatest joy.
The shows were going great but some nights I felt empty. I was in total control yet I still felt like a monkey, stepping on stage and doing the same tricks I knew so well. The fans were amazing, the shows were selling successfully, but I knew what would happen when I stopped singing. The audience would clap. I would smile. The next song would start. I would move. They would look. We would do what we’ve always done. Audience and Performer. Bow and stand. I was tired.
My show at the Sydney Opera House was fast approaching, and people kept asking me if I was excited. I would, of course, smile and say, “Yes.” But deep down, in that inner place of knowing, there was a resounding “no.” It was at this exact moment I knew something had to change. Music was my great joy, my portal into the sacred. I could not let the demands of the music industry rob me of my gift and my service or let burnout rob me of my greatest joy. I lifted my eyes and asked the skies, What would make me excited to play this show? An interesting word emerged: silence.
I imagined the Sydney Opera House humming with the final vibrations of a song, the bass melting into the distance and the harrowing, serious arrival of silence. That certainty and firm, loving absence that silence holds you in. I imagined listening to the builders who had laid every brick. That thick hum of human presence. That rich waiting. I called my band and told them of my plan. We created drones and sine waves to trigger in between songs and sketched out a new lighting concept that would help create an atmosphere of “holding.”
The new show came together just in time. The night arrived, the lights went down. I walked onto the stage brave but prepared to flop. I issued an invitation to the audience: not only to withdraw their phones but also their applause between songs. We played our first, and as we finished, the sounds morphed into a long drone, like a meditation gong resonating through the house. Slowly the sounds disappeared. It was eerie. Now and then, a clap would dribble through the blanket of silence. Awkward and clumsy, people would giggle, then settle into the stillness once more.
We pushed through the initial discomfort of such raw togetherness, until that awkwardness subsided, and the room became caring. Our curiosities swayed to one another. The artist was not creating the show; she was facilitating its arrival. We settled into our new role as one living organism. We felt held. We were resting together. All sound fell away, and together a sea of 2,000 people bathed in an iridescent blue light came to complete stillness for six whole breaths after every song.
The applause at the end of the show was rapturous and glorious and so meaningful. It was cathartic for the audience, and it also fed me in new ways. I felt seen and known. I had shared my inner chaos and longing with these strangers. They had trusted me. We had held hands through the strange terrain, and now the rain was falling in the desert, and we were dancing under it together, celebrating the quenching of our thirst for deeper presence with one another.
- Kimbra
