To explain the significance and importance of Trans Siberian Orchestra in my life, in this our story is pretty near impossible. But I gotta try.
It was the winter. That winter. A couple of fine folks in Colorado got me tickets to see them since I was there while Murphy was receiving care at CSU. And it was my birthday.
Being the music lover I am, I was sure I heard of them. But even if I did, nothing could’ve prepared me for it…
An Angel Came Down was the first piece they performed and I was blown away. To put it into context, I’ve seen Pavarotti live, the three tenors, and Yo Yo Ma and even Kitaro… There was a hot, hot girl in a red sequined dress playing the electric violin that I still think about from time to time…
Anyway, I was in rapture. Pop culture has ruined the word ‘awesome’ but it was. I was a kid witnessing the spirit of Christmas for the first time.
And yet I hated it. Because somewhere in a distant parking lot, alone and cold was Murphy. He never left my side and the TSO concert was as far as I went from him. We didn’t stay for the second set because I couldn’t. Even though thoroughly bundled up in the SUV.
And then after Murphy died, I was up in Bowling Green KY (heh, that’s my TX roots showing – everything is ‘up’), for two reasons. To meet Indy for the first time and attend a fundraiser for their animal shelter. It was the coolest of its kind – it was in a cave that Jesse James and his gang hung out in if my memory serves me well.
Even amidst all the beauty, glamour, and glitz that I was graciously invited to be a part of, I didn’t stay long, 30 minutes maybe, because I couldn’t. I left there and drove to a church parking lot and put my TSO CD in, listening to it for hours. It must’ve been hours because someone called the police.
The officer politely asked me why I was there. I didn’t know if he meant why I was in The City of White Squirrels, the parking lot of a church in the middle of the night, or asking a more theological question. But I only had one answer.
“I miss my son.”
He nodded and said goodnight. I never asked his name.
This is my Christmas story
