Nonchalant
adjective – (of a person or manner) feeling or appearing casually calm and relaxed; not displaying anxiety, interest, or enthusiasm

A few months ago I moved from my hometown, Lisbon, to San Francisco, California. It was a long-waited life change, that took long planning and years of wishing over it. The past two years of my life were mainly focused on making this dream come true – I worked my butt off, all my energy went into it. It also helped me push aside my constantly messy love life and quietly let it fall away into an extended intermission – much like what happened to this blog.

The tale I would like to tell you about had its apotheosis during a concert I attended about a month ago, here in San Francisco, of the singer/songwriter and brilliant story-teller Matt Alber.

Don’t you wanna fall, don’t you wanna fly
Don’t you wanna be dangled over the edge of this aching romance
If it’s gonna end, I don’t wanna know
That we squeezed out every moment
If it there’s nothing left can you tell me why
That it is your holding on to me
Like it’s the end of the world

I discovered Matt Alber through a friend of mine here in San Francisco while I built a website for his music label: Swishcraft. Matt had a single being released soon through them, and my friend passed me along his first album – Hide Nothing (where “The End of the World” single above in the video is from). In a matter of a few hours listening to it on repeat, I went to iTunes and bought his latest album, Constant Crows, and was, again, showered with amazing melodies and incredibly insightful lyrics.

I also discovered he would be playing a concert here in town soon, for which I bought tickets immediately. The day of the concert came and I had memorized every song, every lyric.

But I was awarded so much more than songs and lyrics in that concert.

To start things off, the first half of the concert was a beautiful surprise, performed by another incredibly talented guy, Jeb Havens (I posted about him yesterday). The rest of the concert was amazing. Matt is a talented story-teller (you can see that on the video below), who shared bits of his life and gave context to some of the songs in a beautiful way. It was such a memorable concert – I was so immersed that I even forgot to take out my phone and shoot some videos…

How does this relate to how I forgot about love, you ask…

Matt’s lyrics often talk about Love. The beginning of relationships, its end and everything in between. Listening to his albums and going to that concert that night, I realized I had forgotten how important Love is to me. I pushed it away, out of mind, to focus my life in other things.

Very recently I had a glimpse of that – a glimpse of what it is to connect with someone, and of the unknown that comes with it – and it is freaking the hell out of me! I wear my heart on my sleeve, and I can’t remember how to play the love games anymore. I want to put myself out there, but am terrified of that unknown. Worse, I’m terrified of falling in love and getting my heart broken like I had in the past. But I am putting myself out there. And I’m an optimist!

Either way, thank you Matt Alber for making me remember what Love ‘sounds’ like and binging me back from the emotional sleep I was in with your lyrics and stories.

Peace and much love 😉