two days later and still on cloud nine.

Words are failing me as I try to describe the pure and easy joy that curled itself around us on Saturday night, filling the space between strangers and binding us together in... in rapture. Elation, bliss, rapture--one or all of those things. I've never even used the word rapture, but I know that's what it was.

Since seeing Amy Grant--in, yes, 1997--I've been to something like a hundred concerts. More, probably. And never have I ever been part of something so celebratory and spirited as the Bridge School Benefit Concert, where it seemed almost as if the artists were paying tribute to music itself.

Dave Matthews, Mumford & Sons, Arcade Fire, Neil Young, Eddie Vedder, Carlos Santana, Beck, Norah Jones. It was the lineup of a lifetime and I had high hopes: I expected something miraculous.

And that's exactly, incredibly, what we experienced. A musical miracle, of sorts.

(Oh, and I planned to share one of the fifteen videos I took throughout the night, but 1. Radley is embarrassed because you can hear him singing in the background of every single one and 2. You'd also hear me squeal and whisper Ohmygod! in amazed joy a time or eight. For videos of the shows, check out this YouTube page.)