by Open Mic Host Nathan Surles
“There is a crack in everything—that’s how the light gets in.”
Leonard Cohen’s line from Anthem has stayed with me for years. As we approach our final Open Mic of 2025 this Friday, Dec. 12, I keep returning to it—not just as a beautiful lyric, but as a lens for understanding what we’ve built together this year.
I think of the Liberty Bell, its famous crack silencing its ring, yet later becoming a powerful symbol for movements fighting for justice—from women’s suffrage to civil rights. I think of a friend whose parents disowned him when he came out, who now calls his husband’s parents “mom and dad.” Different origins, different kinds of breaking—but each became an opening for something new to enter.
When Music Director David Brown and I started the Open Mic series at MLUC last year, we wanted to create our own kind of crack in the usual way things work—a space without critique or gatekeeping, where artists could simply show up and share. For highly sensitive people like me, that kind of space isn’t just nice to have. It’s essential.
When I started performing music publicly, I nearly convinced myself to stop before I really began. I thought I’d started too late. That I wasn’t talented enough, didn’t practice hard enough, couldn’t hear pitch well enough. Most of all, I believed I wasn’t one of those naturally gifted people who belongs on stage. A supportive community helped me interrupt those thoughts and kept me from abandoning this part of myself. That experience shaped everything about how I wanted this open mic to feel.
Music and art have always been gateways into imagination for me—ways of opening up possibilities and creating new worlds. Sometimes it’s just the physical sensation that matters: the vibration of a guitar against my chest, the blend of my voice with others in a choir. Those moments have gotten me through difficult days, even difficult years. The stories that emerge from creative expression have their own power too, connecting us to ways of thinking that can genuinely change how we see our lives.
My hope is that this open mic series has offered something similar to each of you. A place to feel welcome. A place to experiment without fear of judgment. A place to find or rediscover the part of yourself that creates, that imagines, that hopes.
As we close out this year and look toward the next, I’m grateful for everyone who has shared their voice here. We need those voices—your songs, your poems, your stories, your courage to stand up and offer something of yourself. And more than anything, we need each other.
Thank you for helping build this space. I hope to see you Friday night.
Final Open Mic of 2025
Friday, Dec. 12, 7 p.m.
Main Line Unitarian Church | Devon, PA
All artists, musicians, writers, and performers welcome—no experience necessary.
Performers sign up at 6:30 p.m.
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