October 11, 2005

Concerts, Events, my father's Godmother

I didn't do any single standout event that I could write about this week, so I'll attempt to cull all the little mini-new experiences I had and mash them together into something that counts as my new experience for the week.

Starting on Saturday night, I saw the band Graham Smith at Tonic, a bar just south of Houston on the east side. It poured on Saturday night so there weren't that many people in the bar and there was also a large puddle in the middle of the room, right in front of the stage. Going to a concert in New York is not new for me. In fact, I wrote about seeing the Spinto Band for my new experience in week two.

I also saw Graham Smith again last night (Monday night), when his band played at Mo Pitkin's. Going to see a band twice in a row is, perhaps surprisingly, also not a new experience for me—I saw the Spinto Band two weeks in a row, too. My new experience was the dawning, while watching Graham Smith play last night, that I have come to appreciate music in a completely different way than I used to.

I was a late bloomer, musically. I bought my first CD, Smashing Pumpkins' double Melon-collie and the Infinite Sadness, my junior year of high school. I made up for the lost time with the intensity of my devotion, however. From that point on I was hooked, always searching for something new and obscure to listen to. At that time, music was an enveloping thing for me. I gave a lot to it, and took a lot out of it as well. I derived vitality, self-confidence and meaning from those songs that I would listen to for hours, probing the lyrics.

As much as I was into music then, though, I wasn't really a concert-goer. This is partly due to circumstance: the nearest city that could draw any band I ever wanted to see was 85 miles away. Despite this, I never really enjoyed the music as much as I did when I could hear it on my own terms. I wasn't a spontaneous enjoyer of music. This is not to say that I didn't have fun at the shows I went to. I did, and when I would get back to my bed late at night it wouldn't be just my ears that were buzzing. My whole body was alive, having sponged up the energy of the event. Looking back on those concerts, they were great.

At the time, though, they only ever really affected me when I heard songs I already knew by heart. In the distortion and confusion of your typical punk-rock show, the subtleties of the melody get lost unless you already have them running in your head. I used to be fond of saying that I had to like a band before I saw them, that I never really fell in love with any band the first time I heard them.

Lately, though, for really the first time that I have ever noticed it, I've been drawn into a songs hooks from the first chords of its bridge. Last night I saw a band for the first time, and though I didn't like all their songs, there were a couple that immediately struck me, and I didn't feel like a poser anymore bobbing my head to their beat. The reason I came back on Monday to see Graham Smith again, in fact, was because I was instantly in tune with his songs, and had to hear them again. The setlist was little changed from the previous show, and I found that after just one listen, I already recognized lyrics, hooks, bridges, etc. It was great.

My father's godmother, an amazing 91-year-old woman, lives on the upper east side and I try to make a point to visit her every time she's in town. I used to live in Boston and I would visit her every few months when I would take the Chinatown bus down to New York. Her name is Margie McBain.

Margie had a stroke about a year ago so she has lost some control of her faculties, and sometimes has trouble remembering who people are. My dad warned me that I might be surprised if I was expecting her to look like she had when I last visited her a couple years ago (he had seen her earlier in the summer, so he knew firsthand how she was doing). Margie was bedridden and the stroke had made it so that she couldn't really use much of the left side of her body.

I had to sit on the right side of her bed and lean in close to hear what she had to say, but we were able to carry on a pleasant conversation. I mostly regaled her with stories of what I, my sister, my parents, my relatives had been up to lately.

Posted October 11, 2005 01:49 PM. Categories: New Experiences , Week 5 | Permalink