In Which I Fail to Slay (But Do Get Home)

I don't know where else to put this.

Last night I went to see Beyoncé at Dodger Stadium. The night divides into two parts: the actual concert, and the complete disaster I encountered in trying to get home.

Concert:

From where I sat, Beyoncé was about three inches tall, but even at that distance, I could feel the force of her charisma. She is a queen. We all knew that, but it was still remarkable to feel her power unroll toward me. The concert was this odd, careful mix of giving herself to fun and strength and artistry on stage + a stage show crafted and calculated to give you goosebumps, predictably, every 90 seconds or so.

She used her hair like an aspect of her costume. She sang as beautifully as anyone ever has. She has the best smile since Marilyn Monroe.

But MAN. There were 50,000 people in that stadium, and almost all of them sang along with every word for two full hours. It couldn't drown her out, nothing could, but the audience was 80% of what I heard. The acoustics sucked, because it's a ballpark and not the Hollywood Bowl. And all the surrounding business of going to a show of this magnitude turned me off so badly that I don't think I'll ever go to another one.

She only sang about half the words of a given song, letting the audience sing the rest. Instead of feeling like a cheat, this felt to me like it was tied up with her performance persona: the whole show seemed like a continuous give and take of energy. She was giving us all she had, but she was getting all that back from us at the same time. We were each doing our half to make the show be spectacular. It was like kung fu: the transfer of energy to your opponent with least trouble and injury to yourself.

The materialism was outrageous. T-shirts were $45 apiece. I didn't plan (in terms of outfit) for the stadium to be as cold as it was, so I ended up buying a sweatshirt...for $85. Outrageous.

She also sang weirdly abbreviated versions of all the songs. I don't think she sang a single song all the way through; instead it was like verse-chorus-chorus-next song. Like a medley that moved through most of her A catalog. Breaks in between medleys for costume changes, like six or ten of them, an unnecessary number of costume changes.

Can you see actual-size Beyoncé? Her hair is a white blob, and she's kind of to the right of what look like three stairs.

Some of the numbers were stunning. She used a shallow stage full of water for "Freedom", and it was way beyond any concert I've ever seen in terms of innovation and impact. But on balance, going to a concert like this showed me that I don't really need to go to concerts like this, that I'll do better listening to records and watching official footage on YouTube.

Disaster:

A Peek Back Through the Salt Water

I just got home from a session in a sensory deprivation tank. For those of you who've never seen that one episode of The Simpsons, it's a tank filled with salt water in which you lie there and float in total darkness and silence until someone comes and gets you out.

I got home and I immediately wanted to come here and write a post. And it's not just because I seem to have taken August off from this blog, totally without intending to, and I miss writing here. It's also because, although this sensory deprivation session did not do the things I expected it to (give me cool hallucinations, allow me to drift into a semiconscious state, open up my chakras, make my brain shut up for 60 short minutes), something it did do was help me to look back. I've spent most of this summer looking forward, particularly as it's been closing up in spectacular fashion, like a fireworks show after a mediocre baseball game. I've needed to focus energy on planning and looking forward and have not spent a lot of time examining what's passed through my mind and body of late.

As soon as I started looking back, I felt the need to record the ride I've been on in the last three months. So here we go.

June:

--The Little Mermaid live at the Hollywood Bowl. Jodi Benson singing "A Part of Your World". Rebel Wilson being amazing. Susan Egan live. Etc.

--Friend home from a year of graduate school in England.

--First session for Tom Servo tattoo. Three hours.

--The Amazing Kathleen in town and on my couch. Meals at Ink and Yamashiro and In-n-Out. Visits to LACMA and the Museum of Jurassic Technology. It was so fucking hot that weekend that we couldn't hike or go to the Huntington, but I made her promise to come back so we could do outside things.

--Aimee Bender and Brian Evenson reading at Book Soup in downtown.

--Dental appointments: 2

July:

--First writing workshop led by me.

--Lidia Yuknavitch and Cynthia Bond reading at Chevalier's in Hollywood.

--Co-worker's sort-of baby shower, which I sort-of helped plan.

--The Killing Joke in the theater.

--Second Tom Servo session. I think another 2.5 hours.

--Weird Al live at the Hollywood Bowl. Matt's birthday.

--Dental appointments: 4

August:

--Sufjan Stevens live at the Hollywood Bowl.

--Star Wars Marathon at the Ace Hotel.

--Laid-back live music party in Santa Clarita.

--Sign lease for new apartment.

--Buy new car.

--Try sensory deprivation tank.

--Start second year of graduate school.

--Dental appointments: 4

Also this summer:

--Got multiple responses on the secret project, leading to all the feels

--Got news about a writing fellowship I didn't get, but I did get put on the alternate list for, which I choose to see as good news (more on this in another post, possibly)

--Got a book review published, first time ever

--Got an acceptance for a fall issue of a litmag, more news on that soon, I hope

--Got two? three? rejections, still patiently waiting for responses on a few others that matter a lot to me and the wait's driving me crazy on the days I allow myself to remember it

--Got raise, plethora of new responsibilities at work

--Hired three new people at work (one of them not my responsibility at all, the other two hired personally)

--Coped with Matt working 80+ hours/week for most of the summer; have not yet been buried alive under books and undone dishes

--Read 23 books, give or take a few

--Two doctor's appointments

--And a partridge in a pear tree

SHARE IF YOU GET IT!!!!!!

None of this is intended to show off, because Lord knows I don't understand how I went to the Hollywood Bowl three times this summer if I did not somehow trade lives with someone richer. Some of the perks (car, deposit for bigger apartment, new teeth) derive from Matt's insane work schedule, and what we materially gain from it, but honestly I'd rather have my husband around than have him make more money.

Also, I know people who would look at this list and go yaaaaawn, because they are busy like this all the time, seeing concerts and traveling and Doing Things on the regular. That is not me. The list above represents 200% more concerts than I generally go to in a season, and a great deal more time in the dentist's chair than I like to spend in a given decade.

In looking back, I see a worthwhile, busy, challenging, fascinating, transitional summer. And I see I ought to be proud that my health has not declined while doing so much. Other things have slid (mostly housekeeping), but I am still getting almost enough sleep and I haven't been sick, mentally or physically.

I have a post on brew, but not on tap yet, and I hope I get to it before the end of next week. I'm going off-grid for Labor Day, on the same writing/yoga retreat I did last year. It's going to be pretty splendid if my teeth don't get messed up again. I just hope nothing else happens between now and then. Enough has happened to me recently, I think. Enough.

Revisitation, with Special Guests the Postal Service

You seem so out of context
In this gaudy apartment complex
A stranger with your door key
Explaining that I'm just visiting
And I am finally seeing
Why I was the one worth leaving

I was the one worth leaving 

If you aren't already singing along, get yourself hence.

Last night I went to see the Postal Service live at the Greek Theater. When I read on Wikipedia, of all places, that the Postal Service had mounted a tour for 2013, I bought a ticket almost immediately. I won't set forth the whole history of the band (a fairly interesting one) here, but I will say that virtually everyone I know who likes the Postal Service loves the Postal Service, me included. I actually wore out my original CD of Give Up, played it and played it and played it until it was too scratched to play anymore. When I told people this, they offered sympathetic moans that indicated not only that they could see how this would happen, but that it's quite a shame.

Every time I see live music, I'm faintly amazed that the people on stage are doing their jobs. That the job of musician and performer is one that you accomplish by standing on stage and doing what the Postal Service did last night. It's a weird job, and very difficult to get and keep, but performance is a career field like any other: there are people who are naturally good at it, and there are ways to get even better at it, skills you can learn to improve. Nevertheless, it's creation - a mysterious act - of music - a mysterious creature - before my very eyes. I get a real kick out of that.

And I wanted to see this show because it seemed possible that the opportunity would never come again. The Postal Service is a monolith of one-offing, collaboration that happens once and never again, and this tour seemed no exception. Like seeing Jimi Hendrix live, or Nirvana.

The thing is, I didn't really love the show. Ben Gibbard, fabulous talent that he is, is kind of a spaz. And there was very little in that performance that I haven't enjoyed just as much at home with headphones. Laura Burhenn of the Mynabirds, who released a miraculous first album and a thoroughly mediocre second one, was one-fourth of the performers, and Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley, who's been part of the band since Give Up and whom I know best as someone quite different

!!!!!!!!!!!!

, was also there on stage. That was cool, and seeing these four people make something special happen before my eyes was cool. But I've been to live concerts that seared my skin off and seeped into my bones, and this just wasn't one of them.

Gibbard said one thing that interested me. More than halfway through, he said he was grateful to us for coming, for loving this music from so many years ago. He said that "means so much to us."

Not my picture; came from here, which opens with a nice sum of my feelings
about Give Up, albeit from someone a good deal younger than I

I really have no idea how I'd react if a project I did as a fluke with some of my friends and colleagues, meant to be a side effort away from my main career, turned out to be this thing that everyone adored. That was one of Sub Pop's biggest sellers ever. That journalists were always asking about. That influenced a gigantic swath of indie artists and assembled a subgenre out of almost nothing. That people pleaded with me for more of. I think after a while I might be tired of the whole thing, especially if people were still clamoring about it an entire decade later. It amazes me that the band decided to reunite for a tour at all, and the last thing I expected was that they would be grateful that people were still all into Give Up.

Matt pointed out that for them it ain't nuthin but a thang, since they made it and own it. I think his phrase was "eh, let's set up a tour, make some money, go home." I guess, but these songs are ten years old. I often wonder how the Rolling Stones can play "Satisfaction" ONE. MORE. TIME. without losing their damn minds, and surely this isn't that different. It's music that they made in 2003, that was finished then, from which they've since moved up and away.

No? I really don't know. Maybe Gibbard was lying for our sake. Maybe the band thinks of Give Up as a sweet pet that keeps on giving them treats rather than a random flare of genius that has become a stone around their necks.

I always love seeing evidence of artists who seem to be just as into their art as their most slavering fans are. But I thoroughly sympathize with artists who feel that once a piece of work is done, it's done, and they want to work on new challenges rather than revisiting old stuff (coughBillWattersoncough). I guess it just depends on your personality, and on the art.

Stars in My Eyes

I saw this, in different form, shared on Facebook a couple of weeks ago and haven't been able to get it out of my mind. In a panicky way. I don't understand how it follows, exactly, and the idea that life is THAT short just freaks me out. Maybe next year it'll seem like wisdom.

--

Over the weekend I went to see Florence + the Machine at the Hollywood Bowl. The Bowl itself was not what I expected and was extremely cool. I look forward to going there again with a picnic basket now that I know the rules. If I can find one. There were people walking around with traditional woven baskets with flap lids, like you see in period movies, and when I said to Matt "I don't know where you even get a picnic basket like that," he replied, "Bears. Well, one bear in particular."

This is why I married him. For wit like this.

In any case, Sunday was probably the second time in my life I've been to a big stadium concert. When I was a kid, my parents wouldn't let me go to such things, and when I was in my 20s I couldn't afford it. I've only been to a handful of concerts in my life at all - probably more operas and symphony performances than popular concerts, if I think about it (unless you count shows at the VFW when I was in high school, which isn't quite the same thing). There are lots of surrounding aspects I don't like about concerts - the noise, the people, the trouble, the expense - and it just doesn't often occur to me to seek them out.

I generally go when the artist is something special to me, or when I'm curious about what the live experience will entail. I really want to see Sigur Rós, for instance. What the heck do people at their shows do? Stand and sway? Check their watches? And I want to see Beck one day; he's special. I was so, so glad to see Joanna Newsom last year - both reasons coincided with her. She's one I'd like to see again, but she does her last tour date for a while in San Fran in a few weeks. Next album, I'll definitely catch her. Florence was special, and I'm glad I got to see her, although I wished I'd been a bit closer to the stage.

When I look back, I actually feel grateful that I didn't get to go to many concerts, because now I like for it to be special, a once-in-a-great-while kind of treat. If it's an artist I just like, I would generally rather not go, because the experience of having stars in my eyes when watching someone bring their art to moving breathing life is what I prefer to just having a good time with some live music. This is probably stupid. But it's how I feel.

I set out to write this post with a plan to tie Florence and Joanna to insecurities in my writing, but the connection isn't really forming on the page, so that might be all I have to say. Oh, except: I got a baffling rejection last week. The story was something I scalpeled out of the [non-]horror novel, something that I thought stood on its own pretty well.* The stand-on-its-own thing didn't enter into the rejection, to my surprise. The editor seemed to expect an arc for the main character that I had no intention of resolving, that wasn't really the way I'd built the story. Like expecting Humbert to straighten up and stop lusting after Lolita. But now I know that the story doesn't really work as a story, which is useful information. I'd sent it out as something of an experiment rather than an expectation, anyway.

And one other thing: I signed up for a five-day writing course at the Esalen Institute next summer. It's taught by Cheryl Strayed and Steve Almond, and I am pretty sure I signed up for it the very moment it was available. I'd been watching the website like a hawk for the sign-up link to appear. I can't wait.

*For those of you who've read the book, it was that little diary piece about the arrogant jerk Caretaker who doesn't clean the storm and who meets the Authority in the shape of his father.