It’s 2022. Am I weird that I don’t actively think about manifesting? Manifesting is all about goal-setting, right? We talk a lot about goal-setting on our blogs and podcast and it’s a subject that’s near and dear to me. This year one of my goals is to manifest great moments in my life.
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| Dave Elkins from MAE |
Recently, one of my coworkers and I went to a concert of my favorite band, MAE (Multisensory Aesthetic Experience), at the Granada Theater in Dallas and it was a perfect night to manifest great moments. Normally, I would leave with the crowd afterward but she convinced me to stay behind and see if we could catch the band. I’m glad I listened to her because I actually got to meet my favorite singer, Dave Elkins. This moment was special to me for two reasons: The first was that I was at their initial Granada concert when they came to Dallas seventeen years earlier and the second is that MAE was actually one of the things that got me through quarantine two years ago.
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| Dave Elkins and I |
Aside from being incredibly nervous talking to my favorite singer, I told him that his music literally saved my life. He asked me to elaborate. Quarantine was a dark time for me. Not only was I isolated from my friends and my family, but I was also stuck 24 hours a day with my then-husband. Being stuck with someone that you don’t normally spend much time with (because I work a lot) can go one of two ways: endless gratefulness for the time spent together, or realization that maybe there was a reason I subconsciously elected to stay at work long hours at a time.
When the pandemic started, Dave started giving acoustic concerts every Saturday on the band’s Facebook page. You can watch those videos here. I lived for those Saturday concerts. I eagerly waited for the setlists to come out every Wednesday in anticipation of his upcoming acoustic shows. I watched and commented and sang along to the music. That was one of the only things keeping me going during the pandemic other than work. When MAE announced they were touring again, I was ecstatic. I constantly checked their website for tour updates in the hope they would come to Texas. Finally, they announced a fifteen-year anniversary tour of their second album, The Everglow, and they had planned dates in Texas. I knew I had to attend the concert. Surprisingly enough, my work friend got us tickets and gave them to me as a secret Santa gift.
I don’t often claim favorites in my life unless I like everything about that particular thing, and this includes everything from bands to authors. If I claim something as my favorite, I’m going in full force. I ran across the band MAE in 2003 after they released their first single “Embers and Envelopes” from their debut album Destination: Beautiful, and quickly bought their CD. I loved every single one of their songs because I thought their laid-back music embodied my personality. I always described my love for the band as if my soul could represent a form of music, it would be their music. Over the years, MAE has been the one band that I consistently followed despite only attending one of their concerts before.
After the concert, Dave and I talked for a while. We talked about quarantine and the last time the band played at the Granada. He ended up giving me a copy of the setlist, and the band members signed it for me. Not often do I get to experience moments that I describe as perfect. To me, perfection rarely exists, and the beauty of life is in its flaws. But, that night, the stars seemed to align at that moment at that concert, and it took me back to all the moments I spent in 2020 listening to Facebook live. In those quarantine moments, the world was uncertain. We didn’t know when or if life would go back to normal. Slowly but surely, two years later, I am doing things again like going to concerts or the movies that I hadn’t done since the fall of 2019. When it comes to healing, all it takes is time.
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