Dawn Xiana Moon: Melodic folk pop infused with passion and honesty. From Chicago.

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Monday, January 31, 2005

Welcome to Audience Participation Week!

That's right kids, Randomness needs your help to become the potentate of them all, the King of the Blogs. What is this all about, you ask? Three aspiring monarchs are judged on creativity, site design, and writing ability, with bonus points for (and this is where you come in):

1. trackbacks to the tournament beginning entry, voicing your support for Randomness to win the title and

2. voting in the poll on the left sidebar by the tournament beginning entry (apparently this monarchy is somewhat democratic).

Writing ability is judged from two primary posts: one submitted at the start of the tournament and one in response to the Challenge Question. This week's challenge is, "You have just been chosen as the King of the Blogs. Write a speech beginning you [sic] reign of terror."

So gain my eternal gratitude and vote/trackback to your heart's delight while I come up with something suitably clever in reponse to the challenge. Thanks!

^ Top | 8:04 PM | | |

Sunday, January 30, 2005

Sometimes I think the universe is conspiring against me.

Scene 1: Dawn attaches all the various cables to her keyboard and flips the "on" switch. As expected, the digital piano turns itself on. Dawn takes a minute to find her notebook so she can work on some song ideas and goes back to the instrument, finding that it has done the unexpected and turned itself off. Twenty minutes later, all possibilities that it's functional are exhausted, barring the hope that perhaps the problem is with the power supply. Luckily, Tracy has the same keyboard and Dawn heads over to try the AC adapter on her friend's. It works, which means that Dawn's keyboard has 1) committed suicide 2) suffered congestive heart failure or 3) gone into a coma. The issue is still unresolved, and Dawn played the next morning's gig sans piano. The real irony is that this singer-songwriter doesn't hasn't owned a functional guitar (read: beg, borrow, steal) for a year and a half, and with the keyboard out of commission (hopefully for only a few days) that brings her down to no gig instruments.

Scene 2: After a fun, although rather early, as in 9:00am, gig at Foggy Bottom Coffee and spending some time with a friend who'd come to the show afterward, Dawn had exactly three minutes to make it inside the bank before it closed. She parked the (borrowed) car in a spot that's ticketable and ran inside. Exactly four minutes later, she ran back to the car, mission accomplished, to find a $25 parking ticket on the windshield. Dang they were fast. That works out to the outrageous rate of $6.25 a minute.

And yes, Dawn has been writing this entire entry in third person. Does that make Dawn temporarily insane? Buy a CD and contribute toward fixing the keyboard and buying a guitar. Or just leave a funny comment.

^ Top | 12:28 AM | | |

Saturday, January 22, 2005

Treading Water

I’d been treading water. I’d been treading water, unable to muster up the strength to swim to into the horizon of ocean spread before me, a horizon that lost its intrigue in all but memory; yet all of this floundering still required energy, a slow drain rather than the burst of a kick, the momentum in the following stroke. I was tired of going nowhere. For a Type A personality, feeling out of control and disorganized is disheartening.

After a series of conversations and self-reflection, I realized that my sense of disconnectedness started in the summer. My boyfriend had broken up with me, but it was less the breakup than the ensuing loss of a friend, my best friend, that was such a blow. And simultaneously my support system disappeared, leaving our college town for grad school, city lights, and jobs elsewhere. I’m an extrovert; I make friends easily. But there’s a depth of friendship that comes from having entwined your life with another’s for years that you can’t just build in a few months. We need others we can trust, others who are willing to call us out in love when we’re wrong, others who will pour their lives into us and to whom we can return the favor.

I’d stayed in Ann Arbor convicted that I should work for my church for the next year or two, but my enthusiasm for that—and the difficult work of raising funds so I could have a salary—waned. I forgot my purpose, at least in any meaningful way. And while on the outside I could make my life and activities sound good if I tried, I’d lost my passion for God. We still talked, but it’s hard to relax with someone when you’re half-afraid of his judgment, convinced that he’s disappointed in you, disappointed by your failures. Even reassurances that his grace could overcome my mistakes couldn’t break the static inertia.

Then I went to the Onething conference in Kansas City, Mo. and spent a week with God. I spent a week in worship and prayer and was reminded that God doesn’t just love us because he’s supposed to, he loves us the way a new groom is awe-struck by his bride. And this was tangible. I hate crying; in fact, I flat-out refuse to if I’m around anyone—it’s both a fear of vulnerability and distrust of emotion. But during that week I spent more time in tears than I have in a long while, hidden in a mass of 10,000 people and trying desperately to hide my face. God spoke so clearly to my disappointment in myself, to my struggles, and overwhelmed me with the knowledge that he thinks I’m beautiful, that he rejoices over me even in my frailties: “You have ravished my heart, my treasure, my bride. I am overcome by one glance of your eyes” (Song of Songs). He’s exceedingly happy when I talk to him, not saddened by my weakness. This is unconditional love. This is a love I cannot earn by charm or accomplishment or my own virtue—and this is a love more real than the computer I’m typing on now.

For the first time in months, I’ve regained my sense of direction. I’m no longer just treading water, I’m swimming. And approaching the horizon has regained its feeling of adventure.

^ Top | 12:01 AM | | |

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

KC MO Part III: Trust

(Continued. Read Part I and then Part II.)

And that’s just the thing, the guys from the International House of Prayer (IHOP) understand God’s love in a way that I don’t. A way that I long to. Take Allen Hood, the head of their Bible school, for example—he started talking about this love and started weeping. And continued weeping as he continued speaking for an audience of 10,000. Apparently this is not unusual; one gathers that when he lectures in class he does the same thing. This wholehearted understanding only comes from one thing: spending time with the ultimate lover, praying, worshipping, and fasting. Yes, fasting, this concept that finds basis in the Bible but that we in the Western world forget, even hate. I don’t like fasting; I love food, which is probably the reason that I’m a good cook (and to further prove this theory, I only know how to cook food that I really like and specialize in chocolate). But if that’s what it takes to grasp perfect love, then by all means sign me up.

And if perfect love drives out all fear, IHOP fears less than I do: case in point, they deliberately don’t maintain a savings account. While this seems crazy to me, they’ve been led to do so and God has provided; every month their accounts balance out, never owing, never gaining. It’s a trust that I want with everything in me. IHOP wanted to host the conference (Onething) but not charge admission—a 10,000-person conference for free. Difficult when you don’t have a savings account. So they got all kinds of deals and needed $300,000 to cover all the expenses; they sent a letter out to a couple hundred supporters nationwide and got $100,000. One night at the conference they took an offering and received $80,000. And then they prayed: God, if we’re headed in the right direction, if you want us to keep hosting these conferences for free then bring $120,000 on the last night, no more, no less. They took an offering on the last night and guess what they got? Yup, exactly enough to cover the cost of the conference, no more, no less.

^ Top | 12:27 AM | | |

Sunday, January 09, 2005

KC MO Part II: Flawless Beauty

(Read Part I here.)

I didn’t tell anyone, but for a couple of weeks before leaving for Kansas City I’d lost any real interest in going to Onething and was more excited about dancing with the lindy hoppers there and playing my first out of state show. I’m not an enthusiastic fan of large worship conferences; I’m wary of people being moved but not changed. But I signed up, curious about the International House of Prayer (IHOP) and Mike Bickle, having read some of his work, partially because my friend Tracy really wanted to go—plus the conference was free. Though my cynicism never entirely dissipated, God had a few surprises in store.

It’s rare for me to go to a Christian conference or retreat and end up spending hours in the Bible on my own; usually with everything happening I feel like I’ve already had a fair amount of time with God and when free time is scarce, I’ll spend it on people, music, or reading/writing instead. But during the week at Onething, I read four Old Testament books and countless passages. Granted, some of the readings were research, checking various speakers’ claims and ideas against the Word, but the majority was just for the love of it.

One of the founding principles of IHOP is embracing a metaphor scattered throughout the Bible, what they call the bridal paradigm: Christ as the groom and the church as his bride. And for the first time in my life, I resonated with Song of Songs as God’s words to us, to me: “You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you.... You have ravished my heart, my treasure, my bride. I am overcome by one glance of your eyes.” The Creator of the Universe is overwhelmed by me, calls me beautiful, finds me flawless even in the midst of my numerous failures. He’s not looking down from heaven mostly angry or disappointed or saddened by the many ways I screw up—no, he’s entranced, fascinated, ravished. He doesn’t just love us because he’s supposed to, because he’s a God of love—he actually likes us, wants to spend every moment with us. If we could only grasp this, what would our lives look like? How many of my insecurities would fall away? There’s a verse in 1 John that says, “Perfect love drives out fear.” Read that again: Perfect love drives out fear. If I could only understand this love, how could I possibly be afraid of rejection, of vulnerability, of failure?

^ Top | 4:18 PM | | |

Saturday, January 08, 2005

KC MO Part I: Wait, we haven't even left the state!

The night before we left I didn’t get any sleep. I had a slew of things to take care of before I could leave for a week, even over the holidays, and a few hours before we were supposed to quit town I got an email with colossal last minute changes to a graphic design project. And then world came crashing down: I’d forgotten that the venue had no sound equipment and thus hadn’t borrowed any from the usual sources. Call it a blonde moment (if Asians can have blonde moments). Or a blonde week. Stress. I frantically called around to those sources but couldn’t get in touch with people who had mics and PA systems; Tracy picked me up, and then Cat, and we were in Kroger grabbing some snacks for the road when Cat made a comment about dancers in KC (none of whom had I met at that point) maybe having sound equipment and a light bulb blinked on in my head. Maybe… I called Jamie and asked if I might be able to steal Swing Ann Arbor’s PA for a week. Half an hour later, I was sitting in Tracy’s car squished between a Fender Passport system, my keyboard, and the door. But still no mics (admittedly less of a headache than a PA to find). In a moment of inspiration I called my manager and asked if J2 might be willing to reimburse me for a mic since they were thinking about buying a small sound system soon anyway. Halleluiah! By the time the call was over, I had license to buy equipment with some else’s money. After all the craziness, I shocked my friends by falling asleep and sleeping most of the twelve-hour ride to Kansas City. And then the intensity began.

^ Top | 10:43 PM | | |