In New York a couple of weeks ago, our family attended a Tony Award winning play on Broadway called Stereophonic. The show is set entirely in a mid-70’s California recording studio where, over the period of a year, two studio engineers labor with an almost-famous band—lead guitarist, drummer, bass player, keyboardist, and singer—to complete their second, hopefully breakout album. As the four-act play unfolds over three hours, the audience witnesses the band’s sound change and evolve over time. In rehearsal after rehearsal, take after take, they fight over artistic differences small and large while dealing with significant relationship drama as well, all the while pursuing that elusive, ineffable moment when something great and thrilling might emerge from their creative struggle together.
The actors, all making their Broadway debuts, were remarkable. Five of the seven were nominated for Tony Awards, though only one had any sort of musical training before taking on the role. In other words, in addition to learning lines and preparing for the more conventional parts of their performances, they all had to learn to sing and play their instruments well enough live on stage that they’d feel and sound like a successful band. As one of the actors, Will Brill, put it in a recent interview, the challenge was to have “the ability to be your character playing music as opposed to being yourself playing music.”
When the show’s music composer, Will Butler, formerly a member of the real-life band, Arcade Fire, took on the job of creating songs for Stereophonic, he was given a script by the play’s writer, David Adjmi, that simply had blanks on the page where the music was to go. In these places, Adjmi wrote only, Transcendent Song Here.
In some sense, not just this play but every play, every Broadway show, every film, each choreographed ballet, all the books you see in the bookstore, and every truly ambitious piece of art that springs into the human mind then is followed through to completion, requires not only a great deal of perseverance and focus but real audacity—a willingness to boldly take on something challenging. Something big. Fortunately, this quality isn’t something we human beings lack.
The actual purpose of our family’s quick trek to New York wasn’t just to see a play but rather to witness a nephew enter West Point and begin a career in the United States Army. He is joining first for an education and then a career in the now all-volunteer force—Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard—charged not only with defending a nation and upholding our Constitution but serving as guarantor over the many geo-political arrangements, security relationships, and treaties of deterrence we have in place that have prevented any major great power conflicts in our world for over 70 years now. We tend to presume the situation we’re currently in—one of freedom and relative security—is the default, something automatic, when in reality, our way of life exists only under the aegis of our armed forces and those of our closest allies. It’s an enormous responsibility—one that requires boldness, bravery, and a real audacity to carry out all around the globe each and every day.
Returning to Texas from New York, we journeyed along busy highways, through bustling airport terminals, and finally into the bright blue skies over the United States, where our flight was just one of some 30,000 that took off and landed that day. The four of us joined over two million air passengers who flew over the continent in that 24-hour period alone. And of course this is the case every day. It’s happening in fact right now. And will again tomorrow. What an undertaking—one seen through to completion each day by thousands of flight controllers, pilots, airline attendants, engineers, mechanics, baggage handlers, and many others.
Whether it’s the audacity of an artist’s creative impulse, in the boldness and bravery of those who set out each day to protect our country and world, or in the intrepid and unending industry of those who play important roles in safely moving millions of travelers millions of miles each day, we human beings are certainly an audacious lot, aren’t we?
Perhaps take a look at your own life now. It’s likely, if you take the right angle on it, you’ll see that you too are a part of some audacious endeavor, playing a role in a big and important system that helps one of our society’s important institutions stay aloft each day. Or maybe you’ve undertaken something audacious on your own. Keep at it. Maintain your audacity. Remain in pursuit of that elusive, ineffable moment that something great, even thrilling emerges from your struggle.
God—Keep my aims and purposes audacious. Amen.
