How do I even start to explain the last 36 hours?
Funny, and kind of harsh, that the show/religious experience of the year would be on the day following a good friends death. I was still in shock when I left for L.A. in the morning yesterday. Slowly, it all started to hit me. Slowly, then rapidly.
The slow part was all day, while I zigzagged from downtown L.A. to Beverly Hills, back downtown, then to Westwood. I’d feel it in my stomach, then try to put it away and focus on the road. Finally my sales calls were done and made my way to Hollywood and checked into the Motel 6 off Hollywood Boulevard, where I stay when I can’t justify the Best Western Hollywood Hills, which is pretty much all summer. The Motel 6 off Hollywood Boulevard is like staying in jail, but it is only $59.95 a night. This way I can justify going out to a $40 dinner. See, I have the whole financial thing down. Yeah.
Not wanting to hang out in the room, and needing to eat, I walked up to a French bistro place on the Boulevard. This was a sketchy choice, but it turned out well. I sat outside, drank some Merlot, and watched a pregnant spider weave a web between a lamp post and a tree. That was some seriously trippy shit. I have never seen a spider weave a web before. The spider would lower itself way down, spinning the piece of web, then climb back up and fasten it to the pole and then the tree. My waiter was really cute and when he came out I showed him the spider. He told me some fascinating tidbits about spiders and webs. I ate some roast chicken and pommes frites. It was really good and I will never be skinny because I like French fries too much.
When I got the bill the waiter said, hey, you don’t have to go you know. You can hang out. And I was like, I have to go to a show. And he was like, Oh. Was this really young, cute waiter HITTING on me? Must have been because I noticed the spider.
By the time I got back to my room to change for the show it was already 8:00 and the doors were opening at the Avalon. When I got there, 20 minutes later, I was shocked to see the opening act, Anima, was on and the club was already packed. Normally, I would have barreled right up to the front, but somehow I knew (and I am still functioning on a sort of auto-pilot) that I could not go out into that mass of bodies. I was unsure of myself and what I might do. Auto-Shannon directed me up the stairs to the balcony, and Auto-Shannon made me sit up high, looking down, with a wrought iron railing in front of me. I had a clear view of the stage. I kept my hands on the railing. Hot room, cold iron. Rapid was rapidly coming. Pretty soon, Sigur Ros would come on. Two nerdy guys below me looked up at me from the floor just below. One of them said, “on Labor day weekend, you have to come to the PLAYA.” I was like, what the heck are you talking about? He’s all “go to Burning Man dot com. It’s like a totally interactive FESTIVAL.” I said, well, I already have plans for that weekend… “NEXT year,” both guys say. Already I am getting more attention than is normal for me. Is grief an aphrodisiac?
While all this is going on, I am sedate. Normally I would be peeing my pants in anticipation. There is colored smoke slowly filling the theater.
Sigur Ros began their show behind a white screen. Three orange lights glowed, and the music began. The shadows of the band looked huge on the screen, and 10 seconds into that first song, I totally lost it. All I had held in all day was dust. The floodgates opened, and it was all I could do to keep my shoulders from shaking too much, but probably everyone around me, if they noticed, thought I sure was happy to be seeing Sigur Ros.
The bottom line is, if I wasn’t crying for Nancy, and for myself, I still would have been crying. Because the music of Sigur Ros is so transcendant, so beautiful, so lush, and so magical that it demands emotion. It defies classification. It is, basically, love and the end of the world blown into your brain. I was prepared to be blown away, and I was. Totally. And I was shocked by the total devotion of the entire crowd. I have NEVER seen an L.A. crowd so quiet, so intent and so respectful as at this show.
A few songs into the show, Anima, a quartet of young women, joined Sigur Ros, a quartet of young men, on stage with their violins. The singer of Sigur Ros plays an electric guitar with a violin bow. I can’t even begin to describe this sound. It is an other-worldly Arctic scream. My tears stopped eventually and I began to get itchy to get closer. At one point, the band stopped playing – froze- during a song. They literally froze, holding their instruments in whatever position they’d been in. The entire club was completely silent for at least thirty seconds. A thousand people seemed to be holding their breath. It was remarkable.
Finally some asshole (and there is always at least one in a crowd of a thousand) shouts OW! Five hundred people shush him. The band starts up again. Wow.
Towards the end of the show, I decided I had to get down on the floor. By the time I got down there the set was done, and it was time for the encore. This is when the second trippy thing of the evening happened.
The Avalon bartenders make a very weak drink. A vodka soda there is like an eight dollar cup of water. I don’t even know why I even bother. But I do. So I stopped at the bar for a drink before I headed on to the floor. The guy behind the bar was distracted, and barely even looked at me. But he proceeded to pour me an entire glass of Absolute Mandarin vodka, then sprayed maybe a half ounce of soda in it. It was like, he poured me all the Vodka I’ve paid for at the Avalon but never got, into one eight ounce plastic cup. “Nancy?” I thought, and looked up. It was the weirdest thing.
I took my giant vodka and shimmied my way through the crowd to the second row just in time for the encore. Now I was close, and it was pretty incredible, let me tell you. One thing that struck me was how young they all were, or seemed to be. And how talented and in control they were. It was the most amazing, and beautiful experience. Four violins, a keyboardist, a bassist, a drummer beating the shit out of his drums, slowly, and a Jesus-like singer playing a guitar with a violin bow. Out of control sublime. I know today, and I will know forever, that this night and Nancy’s death were meant to be together, for me. I was passionate about Sigur Ros before. Now the music goes even deeper. Way, way, way down. Up, too.
Sigur Ros and Anima came out and did two curtain calls, bowing like they were in a revival of “Hair.” It was so sweet and they totally glowed. It’s enough to make a girl up and move to Iceland. I was stunned and touched by the whole experience, and shockingly, left a half glass of straight vodka on a table on my way out.
It was on the way out that the final thing of weirdness occured. Leaving the theater, I could have sworn I saw none-other than Britt fucking Daniel. He was like, right NEXT to me. But it couldn’t have been, right? If it was he has a lot of acne scars, and he was with a chick. (Bastard.) But maybe it was really him? If I find out he was at that show, I am going to freak.
Tomorrow I am going to New Mexico for the memorial. Onward.
I can picture myself there. This is the record I listened to, sobbing, as I packed to come home from Spain last year. My mom likes it. My friends like it. When I met my ex-boyfriend Mark, I told him he had to like it, or it wouldn’t work out between us (I think he liked it OK, but it didn’t rivet him. And look what happened….)