I Will Lie Awake
The first time? What was it like the first time I saw you?
Magical? No. That's too unreal. This was as real as it gets. Transcendent? No. I could feel my feet rooted into the ground, so that wasn't it. Prodigious. Shocking. Colossal. Marvelous. And beyond comprehension. The saddest part was the realization that I couldn't live in that moment for eternity. A hug, wrapped over my cold corpse, and fed me oxygen again. I felt alive, like a curled up pre-teen sobbing so hard that it feels like relief. It was destiny and dumb luck that I was even present, it was the most meaningful performances I've ever been privy to witness.
I've never met him, but I assume the sensation that washed over me is akin to that of gazing upon the all-mighty with virgin eyes, and a clean soul. It was like church, for the first time. For the last time. As if I'd never heard your voice before you burst forth beyond the dark stage and relit that fire in a deep-seated place. I've seen the flash of a muzzle, the spark of the moon curling off the edge of unsheathed metal barreling towards me. A shot at some beer cans, and glass bottles, shattering on impact, and exploding into indistinguishable piles of material unrecognizable as to what they were formed as moments before. Some of the things I've seen I was able to swallow. But only with the help of you.
The four of you, split from the curtain and entered a dark room, on a black stage, in front of fifteen year old me. Still hurting from the vines and thorns I crawled through to get from one end of the day to the other. Directly to my north stood the one woman who I knew, without hesitation felt all of the same things I did in that moment. You began in the shadows, only a flicker of light. Then on the first hit of chorus you exploded the scene with a bloody raw very of a melody that once helped my heart feel not so broken. From then on, I stood in shock.
Somewhere in the deep I'll find you sober and wet
I can still taste the blood on the back of my throat. The sweet sin of G & T's bubbling behind my lips. Spewed out waste covering the sleek shine of the Converse logo on those minted all black high-tops. The smell of wet cement, post-food, booze, and long-since-stained puddles of urine. I sat in the divot of a storefront, long past the night's expiration date. Woozy and cold. Alone and yet more comfortable than I think I've ever been. It was the numbing of all elements that made it that way. I pulled the ear buds from my breast pocket and stuck them in my anti-sobriety reddened ears. Stuck them in my off-brand mp3 player. And fell into sleep somewhere during the second chorus of Guernica. When I woke, mere blocks from the perils of putrid parkdale, I sparked my soggy cigarette, and limped forward. That music still looping. At the crossroad of Beneath the Spin Light, and Okay I Believe You I fell in love.
At a time when I felt no powers with words. Lost my long battle with making art. Yet to see the obvious ticket to life that weaving my logophiliac heart would turn, and the light it would bring. Still wet, never sober. I found that you Mr. Lacey said all of the things my soul sang, but lacked the song. As a stranger, so intimate with my mind, it was revolutionary. It wasn't until Devil and God in '05 that I knew we were soul mates. Audible ones anyway. I look down and get Deja something when I see the spaceman on my arm. Permanently etched into the surface of a man whom had a survivalist romp through teenaged dreams in a demonic place that I shouldn't have survived. You're not my friend, not my lover, not my family. But I will always love you just the same. I went to the Vogue expecting to reminisce in one of my all-time favorite floods of noise, but when the first note flew off the stage ... I don't even know what happened.
I couldn't believe my eyes. I couldn't understand what I was hearing. I didn't want it to end. I hope I never lose that memory. As an audiophile, and mistress of music, you collapsed my list of greatest experiences from a lifetime of concert attendances. There was a jumble of bodies and fans between you and me, but it felt like we were the only people in that room. Words I've listened to a million times, memorized, immortalized, sounded like a tale I'd never been told before. I couldn't even sing along. My throat was icey with the lavishness of Medusa's sight, where your sound locked eyes with my being. I was trapped in a place I could have happily been buried.
