AudioFeed Music Fest

Advent (from the Oxford Dictionary): The arrival of a notable person, thing, or event. The first season of the Christian church year, leading up to Christmas and including the four preceding Sundays. Christian theology: the coming or second coming of Christ.

For me, the advent candle is a perfect symbol for the season.  Light in the darkness, quiet, hopeful... the flame is small and fragile.  Yet beautiful, inspiring, and a source of light in spite of its apparent weakness.  We can choose to quench that light, or we can choose to draw strength and hope from it.

I choose hope.  I choose joy.  I've struggled with the whole joy thing over the course of my life.  A family background and wiring toward depression, and an awareness of the brokenness of the world have been my constant companions for most of my life.  Though I am now free from depression, the haunting awareness of pain and suffering has not left me.  But that has only brought me to an intense, poignant love for this season.  A season where I remember my only hope - both my only hope personally, and our only hope for redemption of this beautiful, broken world.

A hope fulfilled in Christ.  A time to remember and re-experience the mystery, wonder, and blessing of His coming.  God among us.  Advent - a time of expectant waiting and longing.  I can't get away from the wonder, mystery, and immense love represented by the Advent season... nor do I want to.

Yet we are still in a time of longing and waiting.  Marc Byrd of Common Children and Hammock was at Audiofeed last year.  He wrote "The In Between Time", a song that I've always loved.  It expresses the tension between fulfilled and unfulfilled hope that we live in every day.  We are free, and can live lives of hope, love, and grace.  Yet we carry His cross - God has given us the incredible gift of sharing in His love for humanity.  A beautiful and powerful gift indeed.  A gift that requires that we share in His pain while we share His love.  Leaving us sometimes with only this cry:  "Lord Jesus, come soon!"

Until He does come, we must gather.  We must be One Body.  We must love.  We are committed to continuing Audiofeed for that reason.  Despite being a music festival, the music is secondary to the family gathering.  But we're only together for a few days each year.  Throughout the year, especially now, we must come together in love. - they will know us by our love.  We need each other - now more than ever.

I first heard the spoken Word piece I Was Recently Told I Am Too Creative by Propaganda at Audiofeed 2014, and it's stuck with me ever since.  One of the struggles we have with Audiofeed is how to describe it.  If you have 15 minutes, I can describe it pretty well.  But it's really hard to have a quick explanation for the guy in the check-out line who asks about my corncob microphone tattoo - when I have 30 seconds.  We find that almost every identifier/label/explanation emphasizes one aspect of what we are over another, or excludes some of our family.  This poem has given Luke, Jay, and I - and all of our core group of volunteers - a center for a quick explanation that finally rings true. 

"...Like Christ wasn’t afraid to mix spit with mud as if he couldn’t fix vision with one word

I’m sorry, I get my creativity from my Father..."

That's what we want for Audiofeed, and for our community.  We want to reflect Christ.  We want people to see the way all of you gather, love each other, share freely, help with any needs, look out for those who are weak... and we want them to be confused.  Confused and drawn in by the beauty , grace, and love that they see.  Just like they were when they saw Christ.  His way was too creative.  We want to reflect that.  If we do, people will be confused by it.  Some might be turned off, but many will be confused but attracted... wanting to know why this gathering looks so different than everything else they know.  It's Christ, not us.  His creativity and love. 

So that's become our quick explanation (not a formal mission statement, just my paraphrase that we all express in our own way):   Audiofeed is a music festival that reflects the creativity of our God who breathed this amazing universe into existence.  We hope we are too creative.

Here's Propaganda performing the complete version of the poem... check it out - well worth your time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW7Chs7K0Ac&feature=youtu.be

"...I was recently told I was too creative and that shook me to the core 'Cause I have no excuse for fear I should be roller skating around Saturn, looking down at satellites Flying

And if you mustered up the bravery you would get this one day

See, I fooled you

This isn't a poem

This right here is a runway Why aren't you flying?

It's an over-used word.  I think it's often used to connote all the warm fuzzy feelings associated with it, and not with the honesty that recognizes that family is often difficult and messy, that it requires hard work and commitment through the dry seasons.  Without that, it's a pretty shallow term.  With that, it is deep and beautiful.

So many deserve a thank you for 2015.  These are really meaningful to me.  Because when people take on the hard work and messy situations that family requires, I hear them saying "I love you - I care - you matter to me."  I hope to scatter many thank yous into this blog over the year, and to do our part in showing commitment and support to those that have done the same for us.  If there's someone I should know about, a story I should share - email me at [email protected]

I'll share one story here, and give one thank you... Nate and Tessa Allen (Destroy Nate Allen).  Nate and Tessa have been with us from the beginning.  In 2015, they took on multiple appearances every day of the festival.  Performances at the Radon Lounge, Asylum, and sharing deeply personal experiences and teaching from their lives and experiences in the Anchor Ministry tent.  But what I remember most was when the generator quit right before the Flatfoot show.  All our core group was scrambling to try to get it running and to implement a back up plan.  A significant delay was clearly in the cards, and I did not know how to announce the delay, or what timeline to give the (large) crowd eagerly awaiting one of our headline shows.  Honestly... making some type of announcement was the last thing I wanted to do.

I remember seeing Nate on the fringes of our frantic effort, and then the next thing I knew I heard cheering and other indications of fun and entertainment coming from the crowd. Nate and Tessa saw the need and jumped in and kept the crowd engaged and excited throughout the delay... after working the festival perhaps harder than any of our other artists.

Thanks, Nate and Tessa.  You helped bail us out when times were rough, and that means a lot to me.  That's what family does.

Nate has a new project out - Take Out The Trash by Nate Allen & The Pac-Away Dots.  Check it out and support Nate, the Pac-Away Dots, and Destroy Nate Allen.  They reflect the creativity that we think is so important in art.  And they are family.

John 14-15 is probably my favorite section of scripture.  As I read it I can sense Jesus' deep, intense, love for His disciples, and I feel really connected to Him in these chapters.  It feels like the way I'd talk to my family if I knew I was leaving this world in a matter of hours.  I'd need to know that I'd done all I could to express my love for them, and to give them whatever wisdom I could. 

And Jesus knows He has the wisdom they (and we) need.  Which all seems to boil down to: believe in Me, follow Me, and love each other.  Why?  He answers that too - "that your joy may be full".

That's why Audiofeed is so important to me.  I see so much joy there, and I believe that comes from our family following Jesus' final, urgent instructions to His disciples.  Believe.  Follow.  Love. 

Actually, I often find myself asking "how in the world did we get here?... and where is "here", anyway?"  Oh, yeah... this is a little different, so as an explanation - we're going to start blogging as regularly as time allows.  This is the first.  I'll write existential musings about life and Audiofeed, along with reviews of music and whatever strikes me as interesting.  Others in our group will write differently.  I'd love to get comments and input as this evolves.

Everything about Audiofeed has been a blur for me, even after three years.  For those of us organizing the festival, we're fitting it in around full time jobs, family life, hobbies... and somehow Audiofeed has become so deeply a part of who I am that it seems to be entwined in everything I do every day.  I miss it.  I love it and I dread it at the same time, and know that I need it deeply. 

I guess it's kind of like life, faith, and real relationships.  It's not neat, clean, and simple.  But it's good.  And I know it's where I want to be.  A place where real, honest, loving relationships are formed among a group that may only see each other once a year.  Where the creativity and raw honesty of great music and art is shared.  Where it's ok to not be ok.  Where we know that love is what we are called to above all else - and where that love is expressed.

The question is - how do we get there?  What are the tangibles that build on the incredible beginnings that all of you have created with what you bring to Audiofeed?  Sometimes I'm really afraid of messing it up.  There's a fine line between avoiding disorder and quenching the organic expression of love and community that has grown up without much structure.  Disorder is bad.  But freedom and openness is really good.  We're trying to figure it out.  We are grateful for your support and prayers. 

In the interim, I'll write, we'll post updates about dates and the 2016 lineup, we'll promote the artists that have become family, and hopefully, we'll build a little corner of Audiofeed here on the web.

Peace and Grace,