Reading Francis

What must it be like to fall apart in front of tens of thousands of people? What must it be like to be a performer, on-stage, unable to sing the song you made, the one that made you famous?

Sometimes people who aren’t religious think that Christians have a delusional sense that, with enough belief, everything in life will work out swimmingly, without pain or defeat. 

It’s been my experience that most Christians know better than that. Faith doesn’t ward off suffering, but it promises a paradoxical hope that on the other side of suffering there is something worthwhile. Hang around a while, and someone will mention the Japanese art of kintsugi, which uses gold to reconnect broken pieces of pottery to make a more beautiful work. It’s a lovely metaphor, but it can come off as a little Pollyanna, because it’s abstracted from human experience (since the only sentient pottery I know are characters in Beauty and the Beast). It’s too easy to forget the part where you feel like the broken shards of a vase and focus on the gold filling.

So how about this, as another parable of what Christian hope might look like?

A 20-something pop star stands on the biggest stage of his life, suffering from a combination of exhaustion, Tourette’s seizures, and a panic attack, unable to sing more than a few bars of a song that set records for the longest run on the UK top 10 list by a British singer in history. He had taken a few weeks off in hopes of being able to meet this moment at Glastonbury, a huge music festival in the UK that normally draws more than 200,000 over a weekend. A few weeks wasn’t enough.

What must it be like to be serenaded by that crowd, not with boos, but with the song you hoped to sing for them? What must it like to, at your lowest moment, be showered by the sung love of thousands of fans?

I had never heard of Lewis Capaldi before this week, when Jim McDermott mentioned this story in his Substack newsletter (subscription well worth it and required), so apologies to those for whom this is old news. Capaldi was scheduled to do a set as part of Glastonbury 2023, and it meant so much to him that, after a couple of significant mental health episodes earlier in the year, he took time off to rest up for the performance. Here’s what happened:

As he left the stage, he said that, if this was the only time he ever got to play Glastonbury, he was glad that he had had the chance. He also said that it was “the lowest moment of my life, and it was horrible.” Even while he was onstage, he knew it would be the last time he would perform for a long time, maybe ever.

The thing is, as painful as it is to watch him, hearing the crowd sing his song is so much more moving and memorable than if he had pulled off the set as planned. I’ve been more or less obsessed with this moment and the empathy that crowd showed ever since. I don’t doubt for a moment that it was Capaldi’s lowest moment, but that paradoxically may be why the crowd’s reaction was so beautiful.

For me, that’s what a human version of kintsugi might look like. And as a Christian, I don’t believe that my faith protects me from a moment that low, just that, when it happens, something beautiful might come of it.

Jim’s newsletter didn’t say what happened after this moment. It turns out that Capaldi did step away for a long time from performing, but with help and treatment, he’s been able to make a bit of a comeback. He has also become a vocal and powerful advocate for mental health treatment, partnering with a virtual care provider to donate more than 700,000 hours of therapy to people who need it.

And, this summer, he went back to Glastonbury for a surprise appearance.