picture: me with Aaron Weiss - Thanks to Drew Layman for the awesome poloroid.

I spent a good chunk of last Friday and Saturday hanging around Aaron Weiss, frontman for the post-punk band mewithoutYou.  Artistically, he's a hero of mine, and I was curious to see what he was like in person.  I'm still trying to make sense of it all.  He performed a very entertaining solo concert and lead an interesting writing class, but there were a lot of other moments that gave cause for pause as well.  He stopped and said a prayer before he entered my house.  He, though being a rock star, washed the dishes (using very little water), and without making it a big deal.  And he refused most of the money we tried to pay him for coming from Philadelphia to participate in Cultivate Beauty, insisting that we could probably do better things with the money than he could.  He truly marches to the tune of a different drummer.

He talked to throngs of needy teenagers for hours on end.  One at a time they'd come up and tell him all their problems - some crying their eyes out, and some trying to resolve all their mental issues right then and there.  He just patiently listened to each person, giving each person a hug and remembering their name.  He called everyone brother or sister.

I'm still wondering what makes him so approachable.  He's ruthlessly honest and bold, though also with a tinge of insecurity and oddity.  His mannerisms and scattered way of communicating can come across as weird, and I think that's why he's so admired by young, insecure people of artistic temperment like me.  The church is so full of people who only do their best to speak in three point sermons everywhere they go.  Those of us who know we can never speak in three-point sermons just don't have many living examples of Christians letting all their eccentricities out and speaking in simple blessings, strange parables and true paradoxes, but Aaron does just that, and it makes him attractive to those of us who just can't help but let our eccentricities out.  Brother, sister, it's okay.  It's alright.  We inside ourselves are many but God, our God, is one.