I just drove out to Albuquerque to see my friend (and former HM intern) Levi Macallister (aka LeviThePoet) get hitched to his awesome girlfriend, fiance and future wife Brandi this weekend. I left Austin on Friday morning and, thanks be to God, had a nice and safe 12-hour drive Northwest to the city in the desert.
We got here in time to see a concert that was going on at the church they’re getting married in today – Mars Hill Church in downtown Albuquerque. Thanks to the Mountain Time Zone, we pulled up at 6pm instead of the 7pm that our watches indicated. It was great to see a couple of the guys from In The Midst of Lions, the White Collar SideShow people and Levi’s mom and sister.
Levi introduced the evening as the host, explaining that “everyone told me that throwing a concert the night before your wedding was crazy…and they were right!” He had been battling some illnesses, but seemed fine for performance and he took off. He shared his emotional delivery of poems that he’d written that are raw, edgy and uncomfortably real. His voice cracks, his eyes roll back, they dart around and he collects himself by holding his face or capping his head with his hand. You don’t know if he’s going to start balling at some moments or scream your head off in anger. It’s great.
The most poignant moment came in a new poem that I hadn’t heard before. It was about his father, who died suddenly this past January. It narrated some times of a little boy getting his first bicycle rides without training wheels and his father holding the seat. It progressed from those tense, scary moments to the emotions of pride and parental love and shifted into the pain of his dad missing his own wedding to Brandi tomorrow night and the opportunity to walk his daughter down the aisle to give away to a man that he trusted enough to give his daughter away to. Then it went into the heartfelt wrestling with God and the why questions, answering himself with the Job-like responses we see, where God kind of asks us how we suddenly became qualified to question Him.
He threw out eloquent and beautiful lines about coloring the sunrise and sunset. It was deep, visual and beautiful poetry. I was impressed. It’s like this young street/slam poet had graduated from the Harvard School of Poetry since I’d seen him last summer at Cornerstone. Wow. This guy’s really honing in on his craft now. So good to see that.
TD Benton of White Collar Sideshow came out next and, though he usually begins with a brief summary of what they were about to do on stage, instead talked about Levi and Brandi joining their touring group. The night was previously introduced as one big friend and family reunion and Benton took that theme and furthered the concept, explaining to his new future “family” what exactly Brandi and Levi were getting into.
And then the show started and they showed them sonically and visually just what these two were joining. It was the loudest, best mixed and fullest WCS performance I’d seen. The stage was nice and big, the video images seemed updated and it rocked. So glad to be here and glad I got to see that.
Now it’s a lazy waking up late and slowly preparing for the evening wedding and relaxing with my own family members that live here. Good times.
Comments