On being "a soul in transit"
A shot from last night's concert off of Switchfoot's Facebook
page. Pictured are Jon and Tim Foreman, pro surfer and guy
I grew up around, Rob Machado, and my old friend Drew Shirley.
Check out the band at
Last night, I got the chance to see my favorite songwriter, Jon Foreman, play a show with my favorite band Switchfoot. It was amazing.
Jon (I'll call him Jon, because we shook hands at the post-concert meet and greet, so we're friends now) is a great writer, and not merely of the poetry that makes his songs speak. In many ways, he is a thoughtful observer of the way time slips past us when we're waiting for meaning to find us. And in that, he lives in tension.
When he visited the Writer's Symposium by the Sea here at Point Loma in 2008, Jon described writing as the process of returning over and over to an irritant, a thought that even after several attempts to articulate it demands more attention. In essence, it's not repetition but living that drives us back to the topics we can't put down.
And so it is with doubt and belief in his work.
The "opening act" for last night's concert as a screening of the group's new surf and concert documentary, Fading West. I'll be writing more about it later, but there was a comment Jon made in it that matters here.
"I know what I believe, but I have my questions and my doubts. For me, that is the journey. I'm looking for the melody....I'm a soul in transit."
If I think about it, this is where writers live. The world is neither complete certainty or doubt, but the conviction that the space between the two is what matters most. And in that is meaning.
There's a notion in storytelling and poetry that is not linear. Writers don't have a plan so much as an intention. They make maps rather than follow them. Somewhere along the way, they make meaning - for themselves. And then, if the story they're telling makes it beyond the walls of their preferred writing device, others make their own meanings of the story. Those meanings are neither their nor the writer's, but a fault line between the two.
And that's what makes story necessary.
Back in 2008, Jon Foreman visited Point Loma as part of the 2008 Writers Symposium by the Sea. Watch the entire video here.
This is the second of a series of posts with reflections on writing from past participants in the Writer's Symposium by the Sea, an annual event at Point Loma Nazarene University where I work. This year's guests include Siddhartha Mukherjee, Jeanette Walls, and Anne Lamott. For more information, visit here.