Whisper War

"Now take my hand, and we will run away..."

A young man's face is shrouded in the curtain of his dark brown curly hair. He grips his microphone and sings, "Calm your nerves now, don't worry, just breathe..." He's in a world away from me. He's in a place where jackets from American Apparel and toned muscles don't matter. I wonder where he is and why he sings like that--with his eyes sealed shut, one hand on the mic, the other raised in the air with three fingers extended as he sings the line, "You're three times the lady, I'll ever have..." He can't see how deeply I smile when I watch him sing, or when I hear his voice singing my favorite melody. I laugh as I watch him quickly drink from his Starbucks mocha during an instrumental break. His guitarist friend to his right strums and bobs his head full of afro in time to the rhythm of the music. Their fellow piano-playing chum pounds his keyboard and shakes the hair from the front of his face. His head, covered in the gray hood of his jacket, bobs up and down with his fingers on the keys of the instrument he loves. Enraptured in the movement, I turn the volume up a notch and close my eyes.

I think I understand why they move their heads like that. I think I know why they close their eyes.

Because they're home.

There's something that lives and loves in their music. The thing that comes alive is more comforting than a best friend. It's felt and heard, but softly spoken: hope.

Home is questioned by many about its meaning and its authenticity. I believe that home is where there is hope. Where someone can turn to when their best friend's phone line is busy or when everything feels forged. Home is where someone can be safe, vulnerable, yet unafraid. Home is where nothing and everything is said in the form of a cup of hot coffee, a warm smile, or a beautiful song. It's not so much of a physical place as much as it is a real place. It's devoid of hypocrisy or feigned sincerity; it's where honesty and love find each other.

I can tell from their movements that performing the songs they wrote in some cramped, little coffee shop is where they most want to be. They're not in this for money or the glory seat on the Billboard Top 100; they're in this for the crestfallen and doubt-laden. The defeated and the broken. The people who are just like me. They want to present themselves to their audience in a way that seems to communicate, "We know that place where you've come to know. The one with the broken streetlight and the army of skeptics. We know it well--it was our best friend during the days in which we were riddled with pain, hurt, and longing. But that's why we make music. Because we've found a way to escape from that miserable existence, and we want to show you what freedom looks like. You don't have to keep searching; we want to show you where home is."

They wrote these songs when they were in love and in sorrow. They were written by and addressed to themselves as a form of encouragement, a letter of love. Home is writing these things down, sending them out, and sharing them with everyone and anyone who has ever felt the same things.

From the way they close their eyes, bob their heads, and move to their music, I finally understand.