We did it tonight. We touched people. This is a story about touching.

These were odd bits of music, easily dismissed by many as nothing important.

But they are. What just happened made them moreso.

Among the chorus were the usual bald heads, bearded faces: confident male singers, the women who studied their sheets, prepared, unsurprised, powerful: make you cry. Everyone was out to do their best.

Like I say, this music, like a lot, is not mainstream and easily dismissed. The choir and tiny orchestra did what they were told … but instruction is where they start. Then they make art go far beyond and over horizons I didn’t know were there. They do the work of muses and gods – and that takes a mere mortal years of daily practice and labour.

It was all film, movie music, or that taken from video games but, separated from the visual and distracting, utterly devastating. There were sobs and moans in the audience. Some of that may have been rediscovering past moments or dreams or – who can tell? The music chosen for this performance was as good as music gets. This was pale faces, red faces, fists clenched, hands-over-weeping-eyes fucking good.

If we’d done this in our usual auditoria we’d have have received polite applause.

In this railway station we had tears and people on their knees pointing, gasping, hugging awestruck children.

©Gary Bonn, 2021