We went to see @lpgiobbi at the @showbox last night and ended up standing right behind her parents for the first half of her set. The whole place seemed full of friends and family, greeting and hugging each other around the stage, purposefully designed to be “in the round” to add to that feeling of intimacy. In fact, Leah’s whole tour was designed to align with Thanksgiving, ending with a show in her hometown of Eugene. It’s the “Way Back Home” tour.
There was something absolutely infectious about this sweet familial atmosphere; kisses were blown from across the decks, signs from fans saying “I brought my dad with me” were lovingly displayed for us to see, and a feeling of something like “compersion” took hold—a feeling that I didn’t even have a word for until a friend told me about it a few weeks ago. Joy in the joy of others; live music at its best.
In the last two weeks since my father’s passing, my mother has been freshening up the home they shared with new linens and other bric-a-brac that have a sunflower motif; she told me this when I’d randomly put a sunflower emoji in the status bubble—she wanted to know why, and I didn’t have a good reason. In truth, we were watching Netflix and someone was wearing a dress with a sunflower pattern. That’s all. We both found that spooky. Since then, I’ve also been given a condolence bouquet with sunflowers in it. And yesterday, @lpgiobbi handed these out to a couple of people as the track honoring her piano teacher who’d also passed away played at the end of her show; I asked one of them if I could take this photo when the lights came up.
I bought these tickets months ago; I’m a fan and we’d seen LP Giobbi play in SODO a while back, so I snatched them up as soon as I could. I hadn’t even listened to her new album at that point and didn’t know about the sweetly mournful homecoming themes. And in the back of my head, tucked away in the various compartments I keep such feelings, I worried about my father’s worsening state—how could I possibly go dancing?
But we did go dancing, and by the end of the night, tears were streaming down my face. It turns out the whole artwork was about dealing with grief; choosing joy; cherishing kin. “I made this album to help you remember the loved ones you’ve lost who shaped you and made you who you are,” she told us at the end of the night. It turns out that dancing was exactly what I was supposed to do.