imagination is silly

I am sitting. on my own bed with the windows open... for the first time in over a week... I feel like I am still moving... not just because the drive home started at 2pm today... or because I haven't stopped to catch my breath in forever.... but because there is so much swimming around in my head that I can't even begin to properly explain it tonight... but i do think i figured out what ties it all together.... 

IMAGINATION

the thing is... i was privy to it in many forms... most of them quite developed and or calculated... i have heard and seen more music and showmanship this week than i have in the past year... but this morning i had breakfast with imagination in it's most pure form. his name is phillip... and he is 11 years old... he wore a camera on his hip that he bought with his own money.... he didn't brag or joke or assume... but he proudly shared a stack of 100 photographs he has taken over the last two monthts with me... it didn't take long to notice a few themes in the pictures.... after about 30 i asked him about them.... i wondered if he had a million more that were similar but different... there were many sunsets.... his sister proclaimed ... "mom always says... phillip never misses a sunset" .... i smiled... thinking about how my own mother has said the same of my dad.... and guess what... of me too. 

just to be clear... all of the pictures in this post are phillip's... i thought about cropping them down so you could see them as I did... but I thought that wouldn't really express the way they made me feel... over coffee and eggs with an 11 year old. so here they are ketchup and creamer and all...

so... here's the thing i really want to convey.... i just spent a week with the most talented and worldly trumpet performers on the planet... and the thing that moved me the most was the a series of 5 photos by an 11 year old boy... none of which are in this post... they were of a robin's nest.... the first was just boldly blue and beautiful... 4 perfect eggs in golden hour sunlight... and then... a partially hatched egg... then one with a beak sticking out... one with a baby bird and then the last with just 3 eggs in the nest... i turned to phillip and asked him if he waited for the birds to hatch... and he said "no i just went back every day for a month to check on them".... ok... lets just think about that for a second... ok.... thank you.... he went back every day for a month... oh, and did i mention he told me he had to climb a tree to see them? anyway... if there is one thing i have learned about life.... not just this week... but definitely over the last 34 years... it's that the people that go back every day for a month to check on a birds nest... witness something amazing. and one day this 11 year old boy.... will be 40... or 80... and he will have done the same.... as often as he could... and what a gorgeous thing that is... curiosity.... strung out over a lifetime .... yields greatness... and a vast experience that we all can only hope for.

all the adult musical superstars i have encountered in this last week... have one thing in common... they have all been phillip.

i can't imagine what it would be like to be a parent... but i do know it feels like to be a child. so i guess now is when i mention how phillip reminds me of so many things... but today... maybe he reminds me of my dad... an 11 year old that loves sunsets.... i love the thread that connects us all... what a gift it is to be human.... and to love sunsets.....