Dancing Like No One's Watching

"I've got nothing left to prove, and I've got nothing left to hide / I threw those heavy expectations off the mountainside." — "Crone Era" by Psychwitch

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I caught Mumford & Sons at CU Boulder's Folsom Field over the weekend—the fourth Mumford concert my neighborhood friend group had attended together. We drove up and tailgated, then danced in the upper bleachers with a view of the packed stadium stretching below us, light displays blooming across the darkness, sound system vibrating through our chests. As we moved—some of us dancing, some swaying, all of us singing along—I thought about how many blog entries these lyrics have anchored over the years. "Hopeless Wanderer." "Awake, My Soul." "Roll Away Your Stone." Words that helped me survive my autoimmune crash and emerge on the other side, reminding me that I wasn't alone in my darkness.

The joy of watching live music outdoors, singing with thousands of strangers, watching the sky transform from clear to sunset-mottled to opaque, pushed me to buy tickets for another show—close to home at Fiddler's Green, where Aden and I will see Lord Huron tomorrow night. Then Noah Kahan at Mile High Stadium a month later. The summer stretches ahead, energizing and creatively freeing, my personal playlist.

Spotify identifies my musical taste differently, though. While my listening generates youthful feelings inside, the algorithm has identified a women's anthem mentality and started feeding me song titles like "Crone Era (Psychwitch)," "Cinderella Snapped (Jax)," and "I'm that Witch (Esme Rose)." Surprised at first, I found myself liking the lyrics and added them to my 2026 playlist.

Last weekend, driving my kids and a friend home, "Crone Era" came on. I laughed and asked them whether Spotify had it right. Our friend turned serious: "You've got at least twenty years before your crone era, and you'd need a hefty dose of magic to qualify." So, not quite a crone then.

That same day I saw a meme with women my age dancing at a formal event. The caption read: "If you see women in their 50s dancing, let them. They've spent thirty years taking care of everyone and now it's time to let loose."

This felt true. My children have become capable adults—usually more capable than I. Rob and I often find the house to ourselves. The years of constant vigilance and scheduling and worry have finally exhaled. And somewhere in that exhale, I discovered I could sing in the car without self-consciousness, dance in the stadium without checking who was watching, twirl in the bleachers like I'm not being observed—because I'm not. Or more accurately, because I've stopped performing for an audience that no longer exists.

The freedom feels earned. Not reckless, just honest. The voice I'm using now—singing Mumford & Sons lyrics at full volume, swaying without apology—this is the voice that survived thirty years of holding it in. This is what it sounds like when you finally decide you're done asking permission to take up space.

Maybe the crone era joke lands differently when you understand it's not about age but about power—the power that comes from having nothing left to lose, from knowing exactly who you are. From dancing like no one's watching because, in the way that actually matters, no one is. Just thousands of strangers at a concert, all of us singing the same song, and that's enough. 

In Grief We Are Not Alone

My siblings and I inherited our parents' love of music—not just listening but the proclivity for curating it, building playlists that become the backdrop of our lives. We were discouraged from singing along, though. My brother John would catch us joining the radio in the car and ask pointedly, "Who sings this song?" The answer was always the artist, to which he'd reply, "Let's keep it that way." His veto became a running joke, a family truth.

My sister, a teacher, plays creative and soothing music for her students during off moments before class or at breaks. Students return years later—a decade, sometimes more—and tell her they still remember songs from her classroom, how those melodies became woven into their memories. 

Aden and I work on joint Spotify playlists together. While hiking in Banff, she introduced me to Alex Warren's song "Carry You Home," and that song became a bridge between us—a shared conversation without words. Last night Aden and Daniel accompanied me to see Alex Warren at Red Rocks, the greatest natural amphitheater in the world.

Warren became truly famous last year when his song "Ordinary" exploded on BookTok and then the radio. At Red Rocks, his voice was superb, clear and raw—the kind of voice that makes you believe every word. The sold-out auditorium sang along with every lyric, from upbeat and inspiring to melancholy, haunting lyrics of loss. Parents sat with their children, teenagers with friends. No pot in the air—a first for me at Red Rocks—just wholesome music with an edge. Concert tee shirts read "Need money for ~~therapy~~ Alex Warren tix," a joke the singer tells on himself.

The night's most poignant moment came when Warren left the main stage for a B stage near our seats. He described his father's death when Warren was nine, how his mother and siblings were left bereft, how he carried that grief alone for a long time. Then he asked the crowd a simple question: "Raise a hand if you've ever lost someone."

Thousands of hands rose into the darkness—a stunning yet unsurprising array. "We are not alone," he said. "And as long as we talk about them and keep their memory alive, they will not die a second time."

He then sang "Eternity," and the words echoed into the canyon as his voice was joined by 9,000 others:

But it feels like an eternity / Since I had you here with me / Since I had to learn to be / Someone you don't know

To be with you in paradise / What I wouldn't sacrifice / Why'd you have to chase the light / Somewhere I can't go?

Tears blurred our view of the stage and the Denver skyline beyond it. I was thinking of Dad—his love of music, his ear for a false note, his presence in these moments when his physical form couldn't be there. I found myself hoping that some part of his spirit was listening, that he could hear this crowd of strangers singing about loss and longing and the stubbornness of love that refuses to disappear. There were no false notes. He would have loved it.

Myriad cellphone lights bloomed across the amphitheater like earthbound stars, each one a person holding their own grief while singing someone else's. The music and emotion wove through the crowd, threading us together—strangers made kin by the simple fact of loss, by the courage it takes to sit in a stone bowl under the stars and say yes, I remember, I miss them, I'm still here.

This is what music does. It resurrects the dead in our hearts. It tells us we're not alone. It gives voice to what we cannot say ourselves—and in hearing it, we find we're surrounded by thousands of others saying the same thing.

I'll add another Alex Warren song to my 2026 playlist. Not to commemorate the evening, though it will do that, reinforcing a bond with my kids. But because music is how we keep people alive. It's how we keep talking about them. It's how we refuse to let them die a second time.