AliceFraser

Death and impact

Added 2017-06-03 04:20:52 +0000 UTC

Some thoughts...

Few things match the feeling of immortality you get when you have a crowd that is with you on stage. When people have decided they trust you enough to go beyond listening and into absorption. The crowd becomes an entity and you can feel yourself moving its mood with your lips and tongue; in that moment you are shaping the thoughts in the minds of people in front of you.

That's not an abstract claim. It is as concrete as the action of thought. The control you have is an illusion of course; though a powerful one.

Communication in words is always gestural; words can never be entirely accurate. They provide a layer of distance between reality and understanding. That has its own benefits, because you can work with the broad brushstrokes of feeling, rather than the bloodless precision of accuracy; getting people closer to your meaning than correctness can allow. There's a reason we use metaphor when we describe strong feelings, rather than just definition or medical classification.

I don't believe in life after death, or even in a moment that lasts beyond itself. What I do believe in is momentum - that one thought leads to another; that people leave shapes in other people, and those shapes carry forward.

Which is maybe why dying on stage feels so bad - your audience is unmoved, unshaped by you. An angry crowd is almost better than a passive one; at least you're making an impression...