Hello for the last time ever. That’s just a sad sentence to type. During our orientation retreat, Ashley mentioned that we were required to write blogs every month. She also said they were to be due by the first of every month. Happy May 5th everyone. My immediate response to the blog requirement was to devise a plan to get out of it. The blogs have since turned into a creative outlet that has brought me a lot of joy, so it feels quite bitter-sweet writing one for the last time. Well, the last time unless I try to log on next year and write one undercover.
May 1st, 2025. I’ll remember this day for a long time. A good day for many reasons, but the finale was its most special trait. As I’ve mentioned before – dangerously close to too many times – my dear friend Barrett is an incredibly talented musician, and he’s been on tour with the equally talented Evan Honer. My biased take is that Mr. Honer is not quite as talented as Barrett, but for literature’s sake and in the spirit of inclusivity, we’ll say they’re equals. They played a show in Raleigh on Thursday night, so I dang near forced as many fellows as I could to join me at the Lincoln Theatre to watch them. Thankfully a few of them agreed to go with me, so after the Neighbor to Neighbor end of year party we made our way to the Barrett concert.
This was enough to make my day. To watch one of my closest friends with a handful of my new really awesome friends was all I could ask for (Evy, Lola, Emma, Celeste, and Jenna being the handful of awesome friends in question). We arrived at the venue to Barrett yelling my name from the side of the building that the line of people couldn’t see. With him were some more of my friends from Boone, Owen and Lee, who support Barrett instrumentally. We exchanged hugs and hellos in aggressively southern accents. To catch up with them was a gift that I felt like I didn’t deserve. To call them my friends is a gift that I feel like I don’t deserve.
Hard transition.
I’m sitting on the floor of “my” bedroom at the Young’s house trying to figure out how to write the next part of this blog in the most artistic way, but I just don’t know how to go about it. It’s 11:39 PM and my brain is fried for a few reasons that I would love to write about if I had another blog post at my disposal. Bottom line, people just kept on showing up. The pastor of the church I attended in Boone, my old boss who doubles as Barrett’s dad, Barrett’s fiancé, my old college life leader, and so many more that I’m not gonna mention because then this blog would just turn into a list. For the ones that I did mention, their names are Vern, Chris, Grace, and Michael. I’ll let you decide what name goes with what title.
We entered Lincoln Theatre which is when I saw my friend Luke running Barrett’s merch stand. Luke’s a Dallas fellow who also helps manage Barrett’s career (at least that’s the way I’m choosing to describe his relationship to Barrett’s music endeavors). I gave him a hug, talked with more people that I didn’t know would be at the concert, and went to join my friend’s who had claimed a spot while I was catching up with Luke. There was a sign that said “don’t stand on the ramp”, so we decided to stand on the ramp. I’m actually not going to talk about the show. Barrett and Co. was electric. He was only the opener but it felt like everyone was there to see him. Evan Honer eventually took the stage and did his thing. Okay I talked about it a little bit but that’s all I’m going to say. Songfully accepting Evan’s invitation, Barrett rejoined the stage, this time alongside Evan Honer, and sang a few lines of “Jersey Giant”, his final verse giving us the signal that it was time to leave.
Honestly, everything up to this point was just context that was hopefully meaningful.
On our way out, I snuck a final hug from my former pastor, whose name is either Vern, Chris, Grace, or Michael, whichever one you chose in the fourth paragraph. My deepest emotions of the night were felt when I left the embrace of this hug. Typically I would say something like “blah blah blah I don’t quite know how to articulate my feelings blah blah blah” and then conclude the blog, but this time I’m actually gonna give it a shot.
Potentially stupid analogy pending.
I think that our lives within relationships are kind of like cargo pants (probably Carhartt pants because they’re pretty cool). Cargo pants have a lot of pockets, and similarly to cargo pants, we accumulate different pockets of friendships throughout our lives. I have my “fellows friends”, my “camp friends”, my “college friends”... so on and so forth. I’m obviously guilty of putting my friends into these categories, and most of the time I walk around in my cargo pants, keeping my hands in whatever pocket is the most accessible to them. The pockets on the pants are sewn together, so they rarely get to intervene with each other, but every now and again we get to empty our pockets, and all of our labeled, pocketed friends are free to be with each other. As I said, stupid analogy. All of that to say, I really love it when I get to empty my pockets. There is no greater joy to experience than when all of my friends are with each other in the same place experiencing the same thing. It really completes an itch for me. So, when I left the hug with my former pastor, what I really left was the feeling of togetherness. I never wanted to leave that hug. Leaving that hug meant that my friends would be separated again, and separation is not in God’s design. Not in the slightest.
All of this friend talk leads me to the most meaningful part of the night. It actually happened before my final hug, while Barrett was on stage performing. I took a look around at my friends, and when I looked at Lola she was crying. I would typically feel bad for bringing attention to another’s tears, but if you read the blogs, you’ll know that Lola keeps statistics, one of them being the amount of times she’s cried over the past month. Anywho, if there’s one thing I know about Lola, it’s that she has an acute sense for things that are special. I don’t know what it was that drove Lola to tears, but to see her react in such a way to Barrett performing ties the perfect bow to my feeling about my friends being with each other. People that I love, who don’t know each other, being in the same room for the first time, enjoying each other’s presence and getting a glimpse of the joy it is to know them. That is in God’s design. More than just slightly.
My song recommendation is “Pick a Place and Read” by Ezra Bell.
Maybe I butchered this post, maybe I didn’t. I typed a lot of words and I hope it all made sense. It’s 12:44 AM. Once again, happy May 5th everyone, and happy final blog post day (four days after actual final blog post day).
Love, Bailey