I have had a revelation, and it was brought on by an brief encounter with a young lady. She came to me in a dark cavernous room. I was not expecting her when she approached me from behind, and, before I knew it, she was directly on top of me. I grappled for position, my hands full. I wasn't prepared, and I struggled to place my feet. I felt my spine and neck tighten then crumple, an accordion beneath her weight. I tried to keep it up, grabbing blindly with my hands, but before I knew it she was on the floor and then gone, disappeared, vanished like a specter back into the darkness from whence she came. There were many more to follow her, but she was the one, she was the first. Yes, she was the one who hurt me good. The crowd roared. They sang in unison - though, I think, not for me. And with that, I experienced a moment of clarity.
The dark room was a packed concert hall in Providence, Rhode Island. The young lady was a 16-year-old crowd surfer of considerable heft who was passed to me and those around me from the throngs behind us. I did what I could to avoid injuring myself to enable her surf-ride upon the waves of so many hands below her to continue. But I failed and, with that I had a thought - the seeds of a revelation that I have acknowledged, refuted, and finally acquiesced to over the past few months: "I am too old for this."
Or at least that is what I said as reached around and pawed the streaks of pain that sped up and down my back. "Oy, vey that hurts," I groaned, suddenly reminding myself of my septuagenarian Aunt Shirley. What was I doing there? A good question.
The concert featured Our Lady Peace. I had not heard much of their music, but a friend was going and invited me to join. "They are Canadian," he said of the alternative-rock band that started to earn its name in the mid '90s after most of the similar Seattle outfits of such a bent had come and gone in a noxious cloud, smelling of teen spirit, rife with melancholy and infinite sadness.
The words Canadian and musician remind me of two people: Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. I imagined Our Lady Peace as a waifish yet sexy performer with long blond hair, a prominent chin, sloping forehead and an extremely high voice. "Sure," I said, "I'll join you," not knowing what to expect, but not worrying much either. I've been to gobs of concerts before. Why should this one be any more traumatic than the last?
Of course, when we arrived a bit early to snag our tickets from the will-call window, there sat a bevy of teenage girls, all Gothed-up, sending out glowing rays of their premeditated morose groupie-dom throughout the surrounding hills and into nearby unsuspecting Seekonk, Pawtucket, and Warwick. I felt a bit - dare I say it - "old."
And yet who am I, a mere 21-year-old, only beginning to comprehend the complexities of one's age, to suddenly feel old? Nevertheless, the feeling came back sharply when the crowd surfers started our way. Sometimes they didn't always make it all the way to our spot a few feet from the stage. They often hit the mosh pit, a danger-filled black hole of sorts to be feared by any crowd surfer. As we all know, the hooligans who fill such pits are more concerned with flailing their arms, legs, and other extraneous body parts into one another than in supporting the dead weight of yet another punk rapidly approaching their oblivious heads.
Now, none of this was new to me. I had experienced a number of these physically intense, full-body-participation-necessary kind of concerts in the past, but it had been a while. That, coupled with the fact that I hadn't adequately prepared myself for such an experience, caught me off guard.
"I paid 20 dollars for this?" I asked myself, as the crowd of which I was a part physically hemmed and hawed, swaying in a massive chaotic flow that was both random and sudden, requiring full concentration and complete abandon. The doubt and skepticism in my voice - "I paid 20 dollars for this?" - reminded me of my mother complaining as she failed to understand why on earth I would ever want to go to what she often simply referred to as a "rock and roll performance." Chills ran down my spine. Of course, that could also have been the mint flavored Binaca-enhanced breath of the concert-goer standing approximately three centimeters behind me.
I didn't know exactly what to think. I was drowning in a sea of sweaty, angst-filled teenagers singing in unison with their Canadian demigods, and I was afraid that I had suddenly grown out of something I loved so much: live music.
Is it possible? I swung my head around and stared at the crowd. "Dude, have you seen my seen my shoes?" a young kid questioned me. He was lodged right there by my side in the mass of people. I couldn't tell if he was intoxicated or if, these days, young are significantly more retarded than I remember being myself.
"Forget it buddy, they're gone!" I said. Right then, I looked beyond the young guy and suddenly right there I saw it all so clearly. The truth was there, clear and obvious, as bare as the young guy's feet beside me: I saw a sketchy old guy. He was 40 at least, and seemed to be enjoying himself. Really.
Suddenly it all made sense. This man, a generic sketchy old guy seen at nearly every concert was fully prepared for the events of the evening and, as such, was able to fully enjoy them. He wanted to be there. He could care less that he appeared to be both sketchy and old. His manner shouted to all might notice, "Who cares?!"
We go to concerts for the experience. "It's an atmosphere thing," I'd always say to skeptics. As viewers and attendees, we make up part of that atmosphere. The moshers give way to their desire of complete abandon. The surfers give themselves up entirely to the whim of the hordes below them - even that young, hefty 16-year-old with whose grand buttocks I unexpectedly communed early in the show. And yes, even that sketchy old guy wearing the polo shirt and a pair of bifocals didn't give a damn what those around him thought. He was there for the music, for the atmosphere, to be part of it all. How could you blame him? How could you say he's too old?
So, what the heck! Let me keep going to concerts for years to come, I say. As long as it's music I enjoy and a scene for which I have fully prepared myself, mentally and physically, I shall attend shows next month, next year, next decade. If I become that sketchy old guy, so be it. I promise you, I won't give a damn. And you, my friends, can join me if you like, just as long as you promise to have a good time, give yourself up to the moment, and of course, let me know when a quickly approaching crowd surfer has her large ass aimed at my fragile little neck.
