She walked to the awards podium, gamely lifting the sixty-pound platinum trophy above her head as if it were mere grams. The audience cheered and roared, some spontaneously combusting with untempered joy. She gave a barely audible “hush, hush,” and the tens of thousands who had yet to explode grew silent within a second. “I must stress, today and every day, that no artist succeeds alone. I would not be here were it not for the commitment of each and every one of you. Truly we are united–a community of sound and song.” The crowd roared for eight minutes straight on live TV until she waived her finger half an inch for another bout of quiet. “And most of all, what is community without a shared fight?” Behind her my picture flashed on the Jumbotron screen, and the cheers grew into a collective yowl that could be heard three states away. The feed cut to live footage of me watching the ceremony in my windowless studio. “Tonight we must fight together,” she said in a cool even tone as my address flashed on the screen, the eager marching of a hundred thousand feet beginning before the commercial break.
Keegan Shepherd 