John Fulbright plays Spaceship Earth

Sometimes it all comes together

The slow lessening of light walked down Choctaw Avenue, stopping to look in each window as it passed. Not a whisper of a wind blew from the notoriously turbulent plains, the landscape was all ears. The sound of the guitars, one acoustic and the other more lightning than electric wound together and bounded out the open garage door, bounced off the brick buildings across the street and washed in warm waves over the crowd. The outside air was other-side-of-the-pillow cool and steady, even as the stars started to turn their gaze down on the dimly lit street. The light, the sound, the air - all content to let the show have the stage. 

You can’t buy a night like this. No bargaining or threats or formula can guarantee it. It’s a rare and unqualified treasure. A night like this on its own is a gift enough. When it converges with a set of pristine Oklahoma red dirt music in a visionary little oasis carved out from boom-town bones, a place serving local craft with love and sacrifice, well, this enters the territory of the legendary. 

But not just legendary as one more thing to long for from the past, but legendary as in the way of a promise of what might yet still come, a reawakening of our imagination of what’s possible when all the elements, like John Fulbright’s songs played on a perfect Spring night at Spaceship Earth in McAlester, Oklahoma come together. A night like this is strong medicine that keeps us from giving up and giving in, that keeps us from mistaking the cheap, corporate substitutes for the real thing. It’s nights like this that remind us there may be a heaven after all and maybe we’ll make it in.