my life…in text format

Ok…so in keeping with the Ingenuity & Pandemonium genre, (you can check out where this idea started here) I have a story.

The organization I work for, Safehouse, recently partnered with another youth ministry, Next Valley Youth Movement, in order to more effectively reach this valley in which we are located. We hosted the band Fireflight with two other bands to put on a concert this past Friday.

The show rocked. Almost 300 students jumped, danced, screamed, cheered and laughed their way through 2 hours of rock show mastery. Little did they know what happened behind the scenes before the concert…

Myself and another member of our team were fixing a lighting problem. Two of our scanner fixtures had blown bulbs so we got some new ones and proceeded to change them. Well, the problem wasn’t with the bulbs, it was something with the wiring. So as soon as we turned on the fixtures with the new bulbs, they kicked on and immediately blew out.

So we have four fixtures with only two working bulbs. The problem we faced now, was that the two fixtures that were blown were on the same stand. So, we figured, “Hey, we’ll just take one working fixture from the other stand, put it over here and at least we’ll have two lights, balancing out the stage.”

(Enter Pandemonium)

These fixtures are not very light. They are deceptively heavy, actually. As we (my buddy and I) worked to get the fixture off, straining and holding on, we finally loosened it from the fixture.

All of a sudden, the light still secured to the fixture started to lean…and it kept leaning and kept leaning.

Until gravity did what gravity does best and pulled it towards the ground.

Right on top of Fireflight’s drumset.

While the drummer was doing a sound check.

Yes. You read that right.

We let a light fixture drop onto Fireflight’s drumset while the drummer was doing a sound check.

My day was ruined.

No damage was done, thankfully. He was kind, joking, and understanding. The guitarist then made a reference to the light fixture on the other side of the stage and said, “Could you make sure this one doesn’t fall on my guitars.” Or something along those lines. I think he was joking, but he may have been seriously worried now.

It was an awful moment in creative production, but makes for a great post on Monday afternoon!

Needless to say, Fireflight rocked, and the other bands that played that night were fantastic as well.

The Jesse David Worship Project and Eleventh Hour are awesome. You should check them out.

I’m glad that moment is in the past.

Lesson Learned: Never underestimate the weight of a light fixture. (Here’s a model similar to ours.)