Everyone should make it their personal mission to find their soul artiste.

Imogen Heap is mine.

Her concert was...spectacular. No; even "spectacular"'s too jarring a word, too overwritten, because it wasn't that- not at all.

She skipped onto stage, hair caught up in a messy forest-type bouffant, gangly limbs lithe in black harem pants; and something about the way she moved was very birdlike- little tilt of the head here, odd jaunty click of the elbows there.

I loved the way she hummed little random "la la laa's" under her breath as she fiddled around with her keyboard; the quiet tutting noises that the audience absolutely hung onto; every breath quick and quiet and deliberate.

Even her SILENCES were magical. You could feel people almost leaning in, as if craning to hear some strange unspoken secret.

And then the stage exploded in a phantasmagoria of white tree psychedelic body midsummer madness angel of WOW

and there was Imi's voice rising in half ocean, half howl,

and it was beautiful.

She fell into her seat and let her fingers trail over the keys that one time, and what ensued was a song that I'd never heard before

but it caught me by the throat on the very first line

then

"and lacklustre in dust we lay
around old magazines
fluorescent lighting sets the scene
for all we could and should be being
in the one life that we've got..."

and I just sat there, arms hugging boot-encased knees to chest, and thinking, "...Imi, how did you know??"

She came back onstage near the end, in rockstar sunglasses and with a electric keyboard slung around her shoulders; and then - h o l y s i l e n c e:

...before the first strains of "Hide And Seek".

The crowd roared.

and in those notes, played so softly, so reverently:

warm arms, bare skin, soft chill of morning air, a deep and sleepy darkness, hours ahead of us and time to spare.