In 1993, the hip hop group, Black Moon, released their debut album with the same title of this article. A black moon is a rare occurrence.
I guess that’s how you could categorize the appearance above. It was my debut at Impact Church. Plus, it had been a rare occurrence for me to perform. Nearly 13 years, actually. I can’t tell you why besides…life. I kept writing, but never made it back to the stage.
So how this all came about, the Praise and Worship team were rehearsing this song called Jesus. I couldn’t get the song outta my head for days. I figured that it must’ve been a sign, because words just started coming to me. I pieced the poem together in my head over the course of a couple of weeks, practicing whenever I could get a break.
I pitched the idea of joining the show to perform on Easter Sunday. I received a yes, albeit greeted with a bit of skepticism, I think. Not that I couldn’t write something, but they weren’t sure that I could deliver something performance-worthy because no one at my church had ever seen me in my element.
I knew I could.
I took a few days to write and piece together the remainder of the poem and doing everything I could to commit it to memory. In typical Tarian fashion, no one heard any part of the poem until rehearsal. I wanted to surprise and delight. Even in rehearsal, I held back and didn’t perform exactly as I had intended to deliver it at showtime. Yeah I know, practice how you intend to play. Alone, I did practice it the way I intended on delivering it. I just wasn’t ready for the masses to get what I was gonna lay down. I wanted it to be a rush of feeling. An experience that would overtake every listener and want them to run straight to the Lord.
Now, I can’t say that that happened, but individually, I felt the connection.
Behind the stage, I jumped and got myself hyped to deliver. I mumbled my words to myself as if I’d gone mad. Given the magnitude and importance of the event, this was my biggest performance to date. Bigger than the first time I’d ever hit the stage in ’97. Bigger than my proposal in 2010. I was connecting and praising with my Lord and Savior. I was presenting him to many who knew him, but many who didn’t. Many who would be experiencing him for the first time. There was no way I could get this wrong.
From the side, I entered the stage. Those performance nerves spiked, then slowly dissipated as I looked out into the abyss of a crowd that was created by the spotlight that faced me head on.
Watch the video to see how the moment hits you.