MinneapolitanMusic

These days...

More often than not, it seems, these days people are starting their sentences with these two words. These days are strange. These days are filled with doubt. These days it's hard to tell up from down. These days it's getting harder to be a writer or a publisher or a dreamer.

But there's a different aspect of these days that is fresh and full of life. Can you feel it? Especially in Minneapolis, where dreamers and writers and doers seem to outnumber those who would rather sit still, there is a sort of electric spark hanging in the air that gets a little more audible every day. Go to the hootenanny, go to any show in a small club on a weeknight, go sit at one of the parks around one of the lakes, and tell me you can't smell it, feel it. It's there. A feeling of community brewing, people gathering together, preparing for something. What? I don't know exactly. Something good.

Everytime something dies, it gives way for new life. As each newspaper cuts down, lays off or calls it quits all together, it gives a little more space for the birth of something fresh. Instead of being sad, let's get excited. Let's band together in these weird days, these days of uncertainty and find a place where we can start talking about music again, instead of where and how and why and if it will happen.

All it takes is a spark to start a fire. And I've got a whole book of matches just waiting to be lit.

These days I'm feeling more and more alive. Can you feel it?