On and On To the Beat of Our Noisy Hearts

Newburyport, MA Music Festival

While working in the garage and working on Billy with Jeff from The Unschool Bus, Michael heard about a free concert in Newburyport.  It wasn't super far away from our parking spot.  And it was free.  And the headliner was Matt Nathanson - one of our family's favorite artists.

You've probably heard this one:

It's the one that's had the most radio play and Michael covers it at gigs from time to time.

We decided that we had to go to the concert.  No matter what it took.  And so we made plans to do it.

We packed food and drinks.  We parked over a mile away.  We hauled our lawn chairs and coolers and backpacks and a Maeryn that desperately had to pee all the way to the park which was already packed with people.  We set up right in front of the videographer and next to the sound board and squeezed ourselves onto the lawn.  Nathanson was scheduled to play in just a couple of hours.  Maeryn, Jonah, and I all stood in a long line for the port-a-potties.  Michael bought the kids some extra food.  We made sandwiches on our laps.  We chugged our water (it was a hot day).  And we heard an amazing new band:

If you have never heard them you really should listen ^^^.

And then it was time.

Maeryn was a little tired, but we were all excited.  Jonah asked if we could move to the front, where the crowd was standing close to the stage.  We did.

And it was so worth it:

It was this day I felt like our trip had really begun.

We found something and we dropped everything and did it.  We didn't really plan ahead.  We found a cool free things and we all got on board and we made it work.  It was like... we'd arrived.

On the way home as we were driving along the rocky seashore we saw something glowing and floating outside of the car window.  It was a lantern... and then we realize that there were more lanterns, hundreds of lanterns, floating up over the ocean.  I wanted to capture the beauty of the moment on film:

Of course I couldn't do it.  Of course I didn't even come close... but you can imagine them - flickering flames - looked closer - close enough to touch - moving silently, serenely into the black and star sprinkled sky.