I have been listening to the Bengsons, Sean and Abigail — their songs and interviews — almost nonstop for the past several months. I didn’t know why. I felt almost as if I had a crush on them. As a young person, even in the age of Elvis Presley and the Beattles, I never fell hard for an artist or a band. (I used to listen to Johnny Mathis when I needed to cry — does that count?) And here I was listening day after day to this couple play songs in their pandemic bedroom and roar on stage with Abigail pounding a drum and screaming, “I want 100 days.” I’m watching their son sled down a hill in silent snow and Sean dance with a man to music they’ve written for a play performed, once, in a theater in Louisville at the beginning moment of the pandemic.
I’ve come to realize that I am mothered by this couple who are young parents. They live in authenticity and create the environment I wish I’d grown up in. Their work reflects what they are wrestling with now. Tenderness, strength, tears, joy and sorrow are greeted and balanced and worked through. Listening, again and again, to their stories restores my equilibrium in the challenges I face now. And I listen yet again.
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Shaping Reality 