There is a quite big stone in the forest clearing. I’m not someone who can get overly excited by stones, but it’s nice enough and the owner clearly thinks a lot of it, it sits illuminated on a raised mound and has a carving on one side. It’s also in a quiet private place, I have driven down the roads a few hundred metres either side of this space many times and had no idea that it existed.
On this particular evening though, there are 130 chairs arranged in neat curved rows in front of the stone, and 130 people who had walked together down a mysterious path to get there, all wondering exactly what they are about to hear..
At about the same time on this mid-August Tuesday, Nick Cave is walking onto a stage in front of about 4,500 people in Vilnius. It’s almost certain that he will be brilliant, he is someone I’m always a bit afraid for, because it feels like every time he opens his mouth so much of his heart pours out that the might not be enough left when he closes it.
This is not a big forested park in Vilnius though, this is not an Australian chap pouring his heart out for two and a half hours. There is no toilet, there are no snacks or merchandise stands, and the lighting is simple. This is one hour of who trusting and seeing what happens, in a small clearing. For all of the differences, both are intimate in their own ways and both contain just as much heart.
It starts with an old fashioned phone ring, and a disembodied voice …
This is a ‘secret’ pop-up event organised by Širdy. The location sent out to people who had registered just two hours before the start time and the list of performers not given at all until they walked out of the forest and picked up an instrument or a microphone.
Širdy, which translates into English as something like ‘In the heart’ is tricky to label, but maybe they could be described as a ‘Creative Collective’ or perhaps ‘Community Instigators’. While they have backing from the Kėdainiai Culture Center they also have the freedom and flexibility to create these kind of pop-up cultural experiences.
The music focused mainly on movie soundtracks, some Lithuanian, some international, and it was good. To be honest I’m not the best person to offer an opinion on all of the music of the evening because a good chunk of it included an accordion. It was beautifully played by Povilas Neliupšis, whose talent and passion are clear and, and I absolutely admire, but I have some kind of irrational personal issue with accordions, and for some reason I just can’t like the sound of them.
There were performances from Danielė Paužaitė, and Vakarė Dimbelė, as well as Jonas Stankevičius on saxophone and keyboard. All four performers are not only talented, but also local artists who made you feel as if being there was as important and special to them as it was to the audience.
I’d like to be able to give a tracklisting, but I simply can’t. There was definitely something from Amélie, as well as Blue Velvet, Shallow, and Raudoni Vakarai. Of course there were more songs, but I wasn’t sitting there making notes. The song titles seemed to drift off through the trees and away together with the voices and notes, but that felt intentional rather than sad.
My squeeze-box issues aside, you could probably very well argue this was never really entirely about the music, however good it might have been. This was grassroots culture at its most pure, with no permanent walls, just a shared connection between local creators and an audience willing to trust them and to be present. It felt liberating, a bit like forest bathing with a musical accompaniment.
After a brief sixty minutes, it’s over. Physically only trees, mosquitoes, and stones are left behind, but everyone walking back up the forest path and making their way home also takes the memory of a feeling, a shared moment in time carried, quite literally, širdy.