When the Stage Starts to Change

I had one of those dreams last night — the kind that feels less like random neural noise and more like a message dressed in strange clothes. In the dream, I was backstage at a performance, guitar in hand, preparing to walk into familiar light. That part felt right: rehearsed ritual, muscle memory, the quiet breath before sound.

Then, out of nowhere, the antagonist from No Country for Old Men stepped onto the stage. Cold, unblinking, uninvited. Musicians flanked behind him like bodyguards. No one spoke, but the air changed. When I told him it was my turn to play, he stared and replied, “Not anymore. I saw that — you’re not doing that anymore.”We exchanged words I don’t normally say. Boundary-setting words. He eventually walked off.

But by the time I realized I’d forgotten my footstool — that simple, grounding tool every classical guitarist relies on — I had to leave the stage to find one. When I returned, everything had shifted. My chair was no longer where I left it. It was set up behind a pulpit, tucked away like a secret. And suddenly, a bride stood crying at the side of the stage with her mother. The venue, apparently, had been double-booked. My performance had been swallowed by a wedding.

Dream logic. Except… it landed like symbolism.

The Stage and the Pulpit

I’ve been approached with opportunities lately — big ones. Ones that ask, implicitly and explicitly:

What if your greatest impact isn’t just on the fingerboard, but in building something new?

A potential role as assistant dean. The first fully realized Leyenda fine arts school for grades 9–12. A vision that expands beyond any individual performance. It’s the kind of offer that doesn’t come often, and when it does, it never arrives quietly.

In the dream, moving my guitar behind the pulpit felt like my subconscious asking:

Can you still be an artist if you’re also leading? Can you still play if you’re also building the stage others will stand on?

The Room Beyond the Chair

In the last few weeks, I’ve been approached about two different dean positions — two paths into institutional leadership. And alongside them, the opportunity to create something Oklahoma has never truly had: a pre-college arts program without artificial limits, without inherited gatekeeping, without the usual compromises. A place where young artists could find not just training, but belonging. A different kind of stage entirely.

That’s the kind of work that echoes beyond personal performance. It’s the kind of work that shapes generations.

The Pulpit

I keep thinking about the pulpit.

My grandfather was a lifetime minister. He preached at a church as small as a church can be — just a handful of families and a room that always smelled faintly of hymnals and old carpet. When I was young, I once had to speak in front of the congregation, and I was nervous in a way only children can be.

He took out his pipe, cherry tobacco hanging in the air like a kind of incense, and said, “I’ve always believed that if a man is about to speak and he isn’t nervous, he should sit with it awhile — until he has something worth saying.”

I’ve never forgotten that.

Even now, as roles shift and responsibilities widen, I can feel that same nervousness. Not the fear of failing, but the weight of saying something real. Something that matters.

But there is a feeling — deep and subtle — that I have sat long enough.

The Bride and the Double-Booking

A wedding is a beginning — a commitment, a binding decision. But it was also emotionally messy. Someone was crying. A life ceremony colliding with my life’s ceremony. Two important things, happening in the same space, at the same time.

That’s how this season feels:

• The artist and the administrator.

• The performer and the builder.

• The guitarist and the architect of institutions.

  
  

Not competing identities — but identities negotiating the same calendar.

The Footstool

Of all the details, the forgotten footstool hit me with surprising force when I woke up. Anyone outside classical guitar might miss how essential it is. It’s posture, equilibrium, alignment. It’s the quiet infrastructure that lets the music flow freely.

To forget it in the dream felt like this question:

If I step into this new role, do I risk losing my grounding?

That’s honest fear. But the dream made something else clear, too: I went back for it. I didn’t give up. I retrieved what centers me.

The Man from the Film

Of all villains, why that one? He represents inevitable change — the unstoppable current of time, tradition, and the end of “the way things used to be.” Facing him and speaking back might mean I’m ready to enter a different kind of arena — one that requires thicker skin, firmer boundaries, and a different posture of courage.

Building Houses for Others

I’ve spent years teaching, performing, writing, producing, advocating — sometimes against currents of apathy or resistance. But now, the stage is shifting, and I’m being asked to imagine a structure where hundreds of young artists can find their footing, not just a single student at a time.

That dream wasn’t about losing the guitar.

It was about the guitar stepping into a larger room.

When Stages Transform

As artists, we cling to the spaces that shaped us: the practice chair, the backstage hallway, the quiet ritual of tuning before a performance. But every once in a while, those spaces transform. They become pulpits. They become schools. They become new beginnings for someone else.

And maybe that’s not a loss.

Maybe that’s a wedding.

Commitment. Promise. New life — and the trembling that proves you care.

Walking Back Onstage

When I woke up, it took a while to realize something significant had happened. I lay there staring at the ceiling, feeling the quiet afterglow of the dream settle into my chest. The meaning came slowly. I didn’t feel fear — just a steady unfolding of clarity.

The stage may look different. The seat may be repositioned. The room may hold more stories than just mine.

But the guitar is still in my hands. At least for now.

And perhaps the next chapter is less about defending stage time, and more about building stages — plural. Stages where students, colleagues, and future artists can create without asking permission from the menacing characters of our industry.

The stage is changing.

And so am I.

—Matt