RIP Rodeo Ruby Love

I’ve shared before about how I believe that the act of creation is sacred. I think there’s an intense need to push, to offend, to discuss, and to illuminate our human experience through art. It illuminates life. From the ancients who documented their hunts on cave walls to the prophets wrestling with their gods, art is the living pulse of our culture. Art is the measure of our humanity, and as we share our art with others the whole community becomes more human. 

When I get to share in art with someone that I care about, it amplifies the power of creation through the way it shapes intimate community. If we create in a vacuum we rob the world of the relational truth of our art. We rob the world of conversation, and of the power of story (whether that is visual, lyrical, poetic, or any other iteration of creation). I went to a show Friday night, Rodeo Ruby Love’s final show. I got to share in art, I got to hear songs that were written by friends and for friends, that have honestly explored faith and love for the last decade. I was in a room surrounded by people singing in unison, who were swept up in the story of the night, the story of the songs, and the story of the last decade. We were sweating, we were singing, we were lifting our hands in unity, in defiance, in worship. Not of the band, but of the human story: the art, the narrative of love that flowed from Zack’s mind to become everyone’s. It was unifying, it was liberating, it was holy. 

This space, the holiness of being the self and being part of something bigger at the same time—it is a sacred place. It is a reminder of how honesty can bind us together in love. It is a reminder that art is a collision of creation and response, how it creates a space where we are at once ourselves and yet at the same time we are a part of something else, an entity that is us and not-us. It like the holiness one finds in sex: that moment of being so full of one’s self, and yet so outside of the self; that space of reckless vulnerability that gives way to a becoming-greater. When we can be within our own story while transcending our story to become something more, we are changed by the experience. We come face to face with insecurity, with fear, with our own sweaty barbarism and rise above it to unite in a song, a place of beauty and power. In a story. 

Rodeo Ruby Love has been a part of my life for the last decade. I’ll miss it. I’ll miss those dudes and girls. I’ll miss running into Tony and Sue at shows, and I’ll miss the way I cry every time I see my friends on stage. But I also won’t, because (like all of those I have loved) I wear them in my heart. I wear their songs, their honesty, and the healing that lives within a decade of history and honesty singing a joyous funeral song to itself.