this was originally posted to my livejournal on september 22, 2008. i’m amazed at how much my attitude towards music has changed throughout the months leading up to today. it’s safe to say i’m living in a different world now, but why don’t we check in with the shaky 20-year-old syracuse liberal arts senior version of yours truly?
note: i’m not editing any of the text in this just to keep it true to life. i’m sure there’s a typo or two in there, or some missing words, or way too many adverbs, but it is what it is. here goes.
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I know I’m pretty much the least consistent updater in the history of this website, but I have something that I feel I should (or maybe even need to) post about: On Friday night, my brother and I drove out to Worcester to see Opeth.
It shouldn’t have been all that humongous of a deal, really. This was the third time I’ve seen them, after all; I was blessed enough to see them in 2003 with Porcupine Tree at the Trocadero (this still virtually stands as the best show I’ve ever been to although both of these bands have come an immeasurably long way as performers since those days) and at the Progressive Nation Tour this past May. Plus, there’s always the fact that some of the worst experiences in my entire life went down in Worcester. But fuck all of that shit right in the ass. The show was fucking amazing. It was beautiful, it was brutal. I had the wind knocked out of me, literally, because I was pressed up against the front barrier for the duration of the concert. I didn’t mind this. I had staring contests with Martin. But anyway, I digress. That wind was knocked out figuratively, too, because I never expected it to be as good as it was.
Don’t get me wrong. I know how talented this band is. I generally consider them to be the most technically adept modern musicians I’ve ever listened to, and their live performances are renowned for doing more-than-justice to their studio albums. But this doubt of mine stemmed from something else entirely, and that is the fact that as hard as this is for me to say – me, the girl who smothered herself in music for a good five years of her life because she didn’t know what else to do, and because it was the only thing that made her feel human -
- I don’t really care about music as much as I used to. Not by a long shot; not even remotely. When I was at home last, I paged through some of the old notebooks as per usual. Every one of them was filled with lists like “16 Favorite Bands” and “15 Favorite Songs” and so on. Every one of them was stuffed with obsessive declarations and heartbroken whinings about how I’d never get to meet my idols, how they’d always just be that to me: idols, not friends, not boyfriends, not lovers, just faraway statue-people. That was what I cared about. That was my life, like I said, for years upon years. And since my senior year of high school, it just hasn’t been anymore.
Blame that on having actual relationships, I guess. But some switch got flipped and that was the end of the obsession. Last year, my Porcupine Tree madness was briefly rekindled before and around the time of the Cleveland show, due to all the new music they’d put out that year and my rediscovery of their deep-past-back-catalog. But that’s the closest I’ve come in a great long while. And yeah, I don’t get so excited about concerts anymore. I was fairly excited for Opeth, but not like I was for the Tree last year, and certainly not like I was back in tenth grade when I was about to see my two favorite bands of all time together at one show.
Again, I digress. The point I’m obviously trying to make here is that the show made me reconsider this whole snowballing loss of interest. It made me remember just what it was that made me fall so deeply in love with music as a prematurely mature middle schooler and what took me in when I first burned my “Opeth I” compilation in the fall of 2001. Seven fucking years ago…yeah, let’s not go down that road.
Anyway, they played a number of the songs I put on that tired old CD, which my brother still has for some reason even though we have all the studio albums. They played “Demon of the Fall,” which, as seriously beautiful and perfect as that song is, will always make me think of the morning I was listening to it before my 8th grade social studies class and it got to like, its last minute right before Nick Vavalle turned around in his seat in front of me and switched off my ancient red Walkman. They played “Serenity Painted Death,” which made me think of how that song stayed in David’s AIM profile for weeks and how I gave him that humongous Opeth shirt that didn’t fit me (or him either for that matter), and I had to wonder about what the hell happened to that thing after he was killed. And of course, they just had to go and play “Bleak,” the song that first wheedled its way into my 13-year-old metal-virgin heart, the one that I just had to memorize and understand and feel completely because – WHAT THE HELL? – it was so fucking unlike anything I’d ever known before, and I had to let it burn itself onto my very self as if it were some kind of sonic tattoo.
That wasn’t all of what made it so great, so unspeakable and sublime, so hard for me to now struggle to quantify with my weak words. They played “Deliverance,” the title track of the album I’m now coming to understand is probably their best even though I know I’ve listened to it the least (it’s a hard listen, what can I say? Every time I hear Mikael and Steven Wilson singing at the bridge of “Master’s Apprentices,” I have to steel myself to not burst into tears…figure that one out). “Deliverance” is one of their many songs that seem more like tangible rooms, actual places to sit and hide, than musical arrangements – this is how I’ve frequently described Blackwater Park to people who haven’t heard it. I always want to burrow into “wherever” that song is when I hear it and never leave.
And they also played the Siamese configuration of “Heir Apparent” and “The Lotus Eater” from Watershed, the new CD that I have been struggling to fully comprehend ever since I bought it from Gatwick’s HMV store. I feel like my life has reached this same sort of watershed, this coming-together of everything that needs to be together, and maybe that’s why I was so stricken by the record when I first heard it (and I continue to be).
I know none of this says much about the actual “concertness,” or about the perfection of the performance. But although the performance itself was amazing, flawless, and brutally too short, the strange emotional connections and memories I have tied to the songs of the band were what made it such a charged night for me. In a lot of ways, the show was a teleportation to the last time I felt as good/human/connected/postiive as I’ve been feeling lately: early high school, before I chased everyone out of my life for whatever stupid half-justified reason.
There was also this bizarre tension that I picked up on, being a student of poetry and such, every time Mikael decided to speak with the audience. He vexes me, honestly, and I come away feeling like this every time I see them in concert. He just acts like such a…I don’t know, a guy. Like a just-plain-guy. Like the guy you used to hang around with in high school that was kind of sweet and dorky and for some reason could always hook you up with the illegal substances. He’s pretty much the most unassuming person in the world. When he spoke to the audience, he just completely eviscerated any trace of the heavy bleakness that so permeates all of his lyrics. He joked around, he talked about some ugly old sweater he used to wear, and repeatedly informed us of who was “there” – “Martin fucking Mendes!” It was brain-paining. I’d really like to meet him someday as I figure he’s not much more intimidating than the guys of 3, not like his good buddy Mr. Wilson who I never, ever should’ve attempted to speak to. But yeah. Mikael is a complex fucking dude. I wonder about what triggered Watershed for him.
Anyway, yeah, it was great. That’s the long and the short of it. I feel like I’m doing injustice by attempting to write anything else about it. I’ve been longing to see them again, and they sort of hinted that they might be coming back around (to Albany, I fucking hope; who the fuck goes to Buffaki over the goddamn ENY?). And fuck, I’d kill if I could see them and PT together again, but [obviously] in their present incarnations. But that’s got to be too much to ask for.
So, music is so irrational. It stepped out of my life for months, but I think it’s wheedling its way back in, thanks to my first and favorite melodic death-metallers.
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little did i know that music was still a long way from “wheedling its way back in” to my life. little did i know how much it would have wheedled in by now. also, what the hell was i doing in worcester in 2008?
