Day 129 and 130: Elton John

 I went to an Elton John concert last night.

My relationship with concerts is a love-hate relationship. Every time I go to a concert, I am enthralled for the first ten minutes or so. After that, my mind starts to wander and I can't multi-task on anything because I'm sitting in an audience watching a concert. So I can't exactly whip out my phone and start checking Facebook.

Elton John was different. I listened to him for three hours, and I could have gone another six. At one point, he just improvised on the piano for twenty minutes straight, and I sat there in my seat, slack-jawed, never wanting him to stop. At one point, it looked like he might not.

The thing that makes Elton John different is simple: he enjoys himself. It comes from a place of heart, not from a place of wanting fame or wanting people to look at him. It comes from his love of the piano. He had the time of his life up there last night, and that spirit caused me to care.

I know all of this is fundamental artist stuff, but just roll with me.

As we walked out into the cold air after the concert, my dad announced that Elton was a weirdo. We passed a sculpted statue of a circus performer. There's a bunch of them outside the art center. I wondered if there was any creative person who wasn't a weirdo. And then I wondered what that meant about me if I didn't think Elton John was a weirdo. He seemed perfectly normal.

Today while scribbling down notes from the IWW MOOC lectures, I drew a little girl on a spaceship, looking down at the earth. I don't know who she is, but I intend to find out.