I Did A Thing
It’s been so long since I stood in a crowd of strangers and watched live music. I’ve missed it. I found out the name recently for the emotion I get at gigs. “Collective Effervescence” is the term. I’m one of those people who rarely get very emotional one way or another in every day life, but when I’m surrounded by strangers bonded only by a love of music, I can very easily become an emotional wreck. I have bawled my eyes out when a shaft of sunlight pops out of a cloud onto the backs of a thousand people’s heads while we all throw our hands skyward in collective joy, I have been overwhelmed with utter, lush awe, eye’s closed, as a much loved band rip out a classic solo or chorus, or even an unknown band get it and perform something amazing, together.
Sunday night was like that. David Byrne. Tropical rain. The sort of theatrical, arthouse performance you’d expect with a simple message. Stop being cunts. Appreciate life. Try and look after the planet. As the stage was being set and the water sponged off the stage (the lads to’ing and fro’ing with the mops got cheers and the proverbial cartoon; “wooohhhheeeeehhhhh as they went backwards and forwards) a backing track of a lazy assemblage of birds made it feel like we were somewhere in late summer at 5am, post something, maybe riding a residual chemical trail, it was nice. The birds stopped, the stage backdrop turned black with a horizon of moon surface. A spotlight. David Byrne. We cheered and whooped. He stood graciously as a handful of his band came and stood beside him. Uniforms of royal blue. More cheers. Nothing said, just appreciative head and hand gestures. The music started, the crowd noise stopped and a beautiful space filled “Heaven” began, the earth rising behind the band into the black expanse of space. I filled up. Existential stuff. Here we were, a few thousand humans for a moment being shown the bigger picture that we all KNOW! The beautiful finite ridiculousness of it all! “There she is” David says at the end of the song, the delicate planet, suspended in that moment. Us watching us, watching us. “Our heaven.. the only one we have”… ..
And so the set continued. Biblical amounts of rain fell and bonded the crowd together further, in a sodden, collective mess of David Byrne and his incredible band, fans. The brilliant stage production and the usual Byrne trademark choreography made the whole experience feel like a part submersive theatre piece. The less well known songs off his new album were embraced by the audience because we could sit back and watch the performance. The usual Talking Heads classics of course roused the crowd, I felt old, because two very tall blokes behind me insisted on talking shit all through most of the gig until the big hits were played, where they ROARED out of tune in my fucking ear.. dicks… anyway, they were having fun, who could deny a soul that! I lost my friend to the crowd mid-way through but it didn’t matter, I gig-bonded with a gaggle of blokes beside me and we danced and rejoiced and adored and hugged at the end of the last song, the night was over. The crowd shuffled away buzzing, singing, delighting in being human, forgetting all the quantities of bullshit, just for a few hours. We might all die tomorrow, but for now, we shared a thing.
I waited for my mate under the awning of a near-by food wagon. A woman with a ginormous delicious looking hot-dog stood just to the side of me talking to her friend. Several minutes past when she waved the hot-dog in my face; “have a biite” she insisted, “no, I’m grand” I laughed.. “Go ON!.. I SAW YOU LOOKIN!”…. she pushed it towards my face, I opened wide, took a massive bite, she smiled, delighted.. I grinned a hamster cheeked grin, we hugged in mutual appreciation for being humans on the planet. This is why I love festivals and gigs and music. They never fail to bring out our best natural human state. It is in our nature to be random, sharing, delighted by life, full-up with collective appreciation. For a few hours we become temporary communities. Fuck! If only we could do this shit all the time, perhaps the world would be somewhere fucking normal!
