For Wilshire Baptist Church
I’ve recently reconnected with an old friend. Not one I’ve ever met in person, but one I’ve known and appreciated just the same. And the reunion has been a refresher course on the meaning of life.
He’s Texas singer-songwriter Darden Smith, and in 1988 he was part of a wave of artists who turned me on to Texas music. I loved the stories he told in song about life and love; I bought a couple of his albums and paid to see him live at a small club in Deep Ellum. But then life got busy and complicated, and I lost track of Smith until his name popped up in a “coming soon” email from the Kessler Theater in Oak Cliff.
I couldn’t go to the show, but I dove into him again via the Internet and found that, like me, he’s been busy for 30 years—singing and recording and practicing his art and craft. I searched him on YouTube and found a TedX talk he did a few years ago titled, “Fearing Your Gift.” In his allotted 18 minutes, he shares a song and how it came to be and the remarkable transformation that grew from it.
Smith explains that back around the time I saw him in 1988, he dreamed of being a “rock star” and seemed well on his way with a record contract, some regional hits and national appearances on “The Tonight Show.” But that career track didn’t continue and he found himself in a dark place. He still wanted to write songs and perform, so he started a program called “Be An Artist” that works with children to nurture their creative expressions. The philosophy is that “artistic thinking comes from attention, intention and doing what you love.”
And that was fine for Smith until one day when the philosophy he was sharing with children circled back around to himself and he began questioning what he was doing. He loved working with children but he still had that “rock star” desire. The sense of loss was deepened when people in the music business asked what he was doing and his answer brought a tone of pity from them—that he hadn’t made it in music.
“I was scared. Everybody’s scared. What we’re scared of is ourselves,” he says.
But then through a series of events and connections and a song that he co-wrote that became a big hit for another artist, he found himself working with veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. That led to a new program called Songwriting with Soldiers that provides therapy of sorts for veterans coping with a variety of issues.
“It’s the most amazing, incredible, bizarre, deep work I’ve ever done,” he says. It’s changing lives and has changed his along with it. “As soon as I stopped limiting (my gift), then it got interesting. Then I found that I could use this gift, this present that I was unwrapping, for something bigger than myself.”
I’m three years older than Smith but I’ve learned so much from him in those few minutes of music and conversation. I’ve learned—or have been reminded, at least—that in being less than what we hoped to be or thought we wanted to be, we can be more than we ever imagined we could be.
As Smith says, “Open up, unwrap the present, give of all of yourself, and when you do that you can change the world.”