Love Front and Center

Valentine’s Day tends to amp up all things love and hearts. I don’t love it—Valentine’s Day—to be honest. It feels like a lot of pressure to perform a particular kind of love on a particular day in a particular set of ways. This feels weirdly antithetical to the ways of love that are most affecting for me, which bubble up unexpectedly without a lot of conscious thought. That said, Valentine’s Day does put love front and center, which is a good thing, generally speaking. 

A few days before Valentine’s Day, I was awash in two of my absolute favorite love experiences at the same time: 1. being in the presence of someone 100% immersed and embodied and 2. doing what they love. Maggie Rogers is a musical artist whose Feral Joy tour kicked off in Boston. I was there, on a Friday night, with a whole bunch of in-love-with-Maggie fans, mostly though not exclusively, women in their 20s. Maggie burst on the scene, discovered by Pharrell Williams when at NYU, as a long-haired singer-songwriter with a keen ability to viscerally affect. This is true of her recorded music and even more of her live performances. Being up close and personal with human beings, vibrations, and seriously loud speakers will bring music into your body in an almost unavoidable way. However, what does it for me with Maggie is when she kicks into the gear that is full-on, unselfconsciously embodying the love of what she is doing—her body moves without choreography or with a choreography that is the outward expression of internal resonance. Her voice gets guttural, raw, bursting, and in tune with something more than notes. And she beams, a whirling dervish of the light that comes from doing what you simply and purely love. 

Gift yourself a watch of the video linked above. Watch Maggie and Pharrell move from someplace other than mind. Witness not just being drawn into beat, but love. And then go turn yourself over to the thing you love. It’s the whole point, after all.

❤️ Jill