As a couple, my wife and I don’t spend a lot of time in front of the TV, but each year my wife insists I spend some time watching the singing talents of youngsters as they compete on American Idol. I temporarily put aside my purest artistic thoughts and settle in to watch contestants stand on their mark and give the judges their best vocal shot.
This year, on one of the first nights of the show, a Hawaiian eighteen-year-old named Iam Tongi delivered an emotional version of a song called “Monsters,” written by James Blunt. When Iam finished his song, we put our TV on pause and looked out into space until we could pull our emotionally wrecked selves back together. He had delivered, and as all of America knows by now, Iam’s went on to sing his way to a breath-taking thirteen million views, and this year’s winner of the show. His other performances were breath-taking as well.
As a lifelong artist myself, one of the things that struck me was the courage Iam had to take on a subject as personal and intimate as the recent loss of his father. That’s not easy on a national platform. Vulnerable and tender, his audition let some monsters out from our cages and freed some dreadful emotions from their chains as well. At our home, Iam’s ability to take us with him in his grief softened our world here for a moment, and probably lightened the big world Iam had on his shoulders too. For those of you who haven’t heard the song, it carries a universal message to anyone who has ever lost someone, a message that encourages us to weep when we need to, but also to tackle our own difficult moments with poise when the lights go dark.
One of the things you gotta love, even if you aren’t a fan of Idol, is the simple character Iam shows us while on stage singing and playing his guitar. When he performs, he has no fancy dance moves, no glitz or glimmer, and rarely an accompaniment. He is just a man, one person standing in sandals and a t-shirt, sharing his buttery voice and handing you a cupful of grace as if you are the only person in the room. He invites us to walk with him through the loss of his father, his idol, and by doing so a chance to chase the monsters away.
After performing one evening for the judges, Katy Perry complimented Iamon his ability to tell a story. I had to pause there and think about what she meant and remember that not all stories have a beginning, a middle and an end. Some hold us in the middle and let us work it out.
In fact, isn’t it true that the stories we love the most are the ones that leave us wondering what the next chapter will bring?
Like Iam’s songs, our stories are layered, with some of those layers rising while others are sinking, with some so deep we may not feel them until…well…until a piece of art or a song comes along that reminds us of how truly vulnerable and human we are. Many times, they are the ones we learn the most from, the ones that become our salve for a loss we have no words for. These are the ones that make us hold our breaths and let us exhale it slowly while all that we have built up wash away in a song.
The thing about Iam Tongi, the songwriter, the Hawaiian, the human, is that the monsters he let you see in himself may be the ones you are fighting on days when it appears the rats are winning the race.
Some of you may know that my father is now one hundred years old. As one might imagine, he has seen a lot of history, and has a lot of layers floating around in his elderly frame. My father’s voice is still in my head, even when I’m not there listening to him at the nursing home.
When I am sitting with him and it’s just us men, I hear the strain of a man whose fatherly muscles are wearing out, whose voice is not as insistent or demanding. Those muscles are getting too tired for monsters, so we skip over the lessons on manners or why I should give more to the church or which insects to watch out for in the yard. We become just “two men saying goodbye.” The monsters are almost gone for my father now, and we talk as two people, two human beings with foibles and flaws, who are old friends that share some family history. I can tell you it is a sweet place to be, because Dad can finally quit worrying about whether he’s covered everything or whether he is still responsible for chasing anything away.
If that were the end of our story, it would be a very poor story indeed. If we all slayed our monsters, handled everything ourselves, then there wouldn’t be a need for anything or anyone else. The ending to all our stories, mine, Iam’s, my dad’s, is that there is no ending when you love someone. The stories we have, the monsters in our room, transfer to the next person who carries them for a little while until becoming too weary ourselves, close the door and go home. We should be so lucky that we have an idol, our precious Maker who will take us there with a song. It may sound a lot like Iam Tongi’s when we hear it again, but by then all our monsters will be nevermore.