I bruise you. You bruise me.

On very rare occasions something comes along that adjusts my emotional bar. Once in a blue moon my emotional bar is completely shattered. It was a blue moon tonight.

I don’t like crowds. And maybe I’ve just become jaded, but I don’t go to many concerts anymore. These days, there just aren’t many artists I’d put up with the "experience" to see. I find myself very disappointed to see someone live and discover that they can’t sing like their songs we all know and love. They can’t hit the notes; they can’t stay on key. It does make me wonder if music today is more mirrors and smoke than a guy with a mic.

Tonight was the exception to all of those things. The crowd. The weather. 95 degrees and 80% humidity at 9pm is not my idea of fun outdoor weather. But we get three notes into it and none of that matters. Tears were streaming down my face and onto my neck by the third song. The hair on my arms and neck stood straight up for most of the night.

In conversation and in writing, I start a multitude of sentences with the phrase "I feel..." And many is the time I’ve been mistaken. I haven’t really felt in a long time. But I felt tonight. And amidst the emotion that made its way to the surface, I wondered where these long lost friends – true raw emotion and feeling – had disappeared to.

I sat there, too mesmerized to even make a sound. Singing along in my mind; knowing every word. Feeling every word. I can’t do the description justice with mere words.

As if it were yesterday, I see myself and some friends sitting in a bar. Upstairs. In a different country on a different continent. And here’s what blows me away.... it was 21 years ago. This album is playing. I close my eyes and I am there. The bar is gone and some of the people who were there with me are gone. And I miss her.