00:00I
00:03Say a few words about the crazy situation the world is in right now
00:10A lot of people tell me that they come to these concerts they want escapism somebody wrote me this day
00:16I can't wait to see your show and this and that I need these two hours of escapism and I said no
00:24That's not what we're doing here
00:27We're doing what I feel is the exact opposite of escapism
00:32We are using music as an excavation tool a
00:38Shovel into the soul
00:41We are peeling our skin and cutting our flesh and
00:49Sewing our bones
00:51To discover what is inside through the power of the tool that is music
00:59That is art
01:01And there's this thing I love about it you see what happens is that we are a collective of people but
01:12We are all subjects, so this is a subjective
01:17collective endeavor
01:18Meaning that the objective the art the song that I sing is never the same song
01:25For any single one of you unique and beautiful and
01:30dirty souls
01:32Because what I sing is not the song that you hear you hear
01:39Whatever rain trickles down into your own personal topography your own personal landscape it finds its root into your
01:48Valleys your canals until it finds the cracks
01:51Of your crusted earth and it drips and it drops and it drips again into your beautiful
02:04Caverns your own unique personal caverns of your own soul and it
02:09Resonates and reverberates differently for each one of us there, you know
02:13These caverns are sculpted by our fears our dreams our memories our experiences our hopes our failures our losses
02:23They are prisms
02:27Through which we look at the world
02:31And so that's the beautiful thing about art is that it's never
02:36Binary it's never this or that it's always the gray area between black and white
02:42It is never one or zero it is never us and them it is never good or bad
02:48It is everything it needs to be it crosses borders
02:53and it penetrates
02:55the shields
02:57our defenses
03:00And so instead of using it as an escapistic entertainment
03:03We can use it as a tool into our own selves and look at our own fragility
03:09At our own fear of meaninglessness at our own fear of invisibility at our own fear of finitude
03:17Because we are all mortal and that is the thing that unites us all
03:23And in that shadow of the knowledge of our mortality
03:29Lies the experience of the human life
03:34And if we look at that and we don't shy away from it if we give it beauty
03:43And if we give it dignity through the power of song
03:46Then we have a chance to look at that fragility not as something we need to hide away because there's no hiding it
03:52The subconscious rules us like a marionette whether we like it or not
03:56So if we look at it straight in the eye and we say okay
04:03I'm small
04:05Okay, I'm afraid okay. I'm broken. Okay. I will end one day and everything that I ever build and everything that I ever love will end
04:16And it is okay
04:21Because here and now
04:25I am
04:28And in that knowledge and that fragile knowledge comes an empathy to the self
04:35And my hope my dearest hope in these troubled times where people succumb to the simplicity
04:45of the binary of the us and them and the good and the bad and the black and the white my hope my last remaining hope is that
04:53That small empathy that we can find for ourselves
04:56We can extend maybe towards others
05:02Create understanding
05:04And through that understanding
05:06Maybe we can create
05:08Dialogue
05:10And through that dialogue
05:12Perhaps we can create co-existence
05:20A life
05:22Full of dignity and beauty
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