lundi 23 Jul 2007, 5h17m
http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/2295/interpolmplslivema0.jpg
We prepared ourselves for action. Carolina was effortlessly beautiful, mind you everytime I've ever used the description "effortlessly beautiful" I probably had Carolina in mind, because, seriously, girl doesn't even have to try, but she does, and man. I wore a Smiths shirt because I have a warped philosophy that band t-shirts are secretly the greatest conversation starters of all time. This philosophy is warped because it has no basis in reality whatsoever.
We were late and we were furious at everyone ahead of us. We planned avenues of escape between vibrating bodies.
There was a DJ who played "This Charming Man" and "House of Jealous Lovers" and "Tear You Apart" (who in their right mind would play a goddamn She Wants Revenge song at an Interpol concert, I'm surprised there wasn't some sort of riot) and I danced and we danced while no one else danced, and let me just say that I never knew there were so many joyless hipsters in Las Vegas. Is this a new development? Are they reformed Mormons?
(Also, on second thought, there wasn't a riot because hipsters are simply too cool to riot. Even as much as it may have been deserved. I don't know. "Tear You Apart" is a bad song, but it's a FUN song. Thus I ambivalently mouthed the lyrics and shook my ass.)
Then we were "those people." We subtly pushed and prodded our way to a suitable vantage point, but by this time, perhaps in response to us secretly slipping through fat folds just to see Paul Banks and Carlos D in their black-suited glory, the crowd had closed in upon us, and our hands were either locked down beside us or forever airborne, which was nice for coinciding a fist-shake with the first drum hit of "Obstacle 1" but became tiring before long, and there were touching hands and legs and accidental grinding into the girl in front of me, blood and skin mixing into sweaty mechanics.
They came on 20 minutes late and took us straight into a song from the new record and while I cannot recall any of it at the moment besides a heavy emphasis on a piano figure, I do remember clearly being fully caught up in the haze of it, where Sam Fogarino's drums were just crashing down upon me the entire time. But suddenly everything let up and it was only Banks singing and I was distinctly moved to a place different from the cavernous growl of Turn on the Bright Lights and most definitely removed from the tight grooves of Antics and it was frightening and exciting and I was still grinding into the girl in front of me and swallowing her hair with each fervent head bang but we seemed to move regardless of this knowledge, as though we were moving forward, evolving in 4/4, and it seemed to be costing us our once desperately sought-for individuality but it was outweighed by the pure joy of melding into someone, of casting out bullshit and just feeling insanely human and flawed and beautiful - losing yourself and in return finding everyone.
The point I'm trying to make here, or at least, the point I think I'm trying to make, as I probably lost it somewhere between writing really long sentences verging on stream of consciousness and making said sentences purple as all hell, is that I am not a live show dude at all as I found Sigur Rós boring and headache-inducing and even Interpol kind of failed to excite me tons because, as reported by countless people before me, it was a lot like listening to their albums with crowd noise chucked in between songs, but in the midst of that crowd, in the midst of that song, uncertain, new, I saw the appeal, white and smoky, our bodies all sweat and tears, open mouths willing, no, begging to take it all in, and the feeling that I was a minor consciousness on a map of human flesh and noise, and as those last notes that I can't even recall faded out into "Obstacle 1" I distinctly remember catching a glimpse of the void, the thing that we are teetering just at the edge of in our day to day and when we get old we finally fall into, resigned. It was there.
And we were screaming at it.