It's hard to find what I can't see. Someone needed to show me. Some years ago a friend invited me to an Archie Roach performance. "Why not?" I thought. I'd never seen him before. It might be fun. ~~~ The room was silent, but at the first note we plummeted into a deeper silence. Into another realm. A realm where we could not move. Could not look away. Could barely breathe. Our breathing was being done for us. To us. An ancient, impossibly still, presence planted Archie in that stage like an eternal river gum - roots gently holding us until the stories he came to tell were fully told, and fully heard. Heartrending stories of a love vast beyond our imagining. Like the branch of a river is part of the river, nothing separated him from his guitar. His movements were the simplest unfolding of nature. They just happened. It was a brief performance. Maybe 6 songs. But when he released us and departed, aeons had elapsed. What became of that distant fool that was me when I arrived? The fool filled with opinions about this and that. They were gone. Vaporised. So irrelevant, I wasn't even embarrassed. ~~~ We tenderly stepped out into the sunlight. We didn't speak. We couldn't speak. To attempt a single word would have shattered me like glass - collapsing broken and sobbing in the street. People from that other world - this world - milled around us as if nothing had happened. As if the world had not changed. As if their shopping made sense. As if their chatter mattered. As if all our usual ludicrous concerns were not the epitome of trivia. How utterly tragic, I thought. But, in a little while, my pride flooded back in. Once again I knew this and that. The importance of the unimportant was restored. And my window closed on a profoundly beautiful world, filled with love and suffering. Thankyou, Archie.