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Yesterday night, Dee, Devon, and I saw Florence + the Machine.
I saw Florence + the Machine.
I cannot overstate the importance of this music in my life; it is how I became friends with Dee and why I live here now and a vast part of how I aim to live at all; her first album means the world to me, and Dog Days are Over is one of my formative songs. I've written about her too many times (1, 2, 3). I never got to see her first tour (but I have a shirt! Dee got it for me, and it is heather gray and orangey-pink and literally the worst thing for my complexion, and I love it to pieces), but I got to see this one.
I've been doing a fair bit better lately in the realm of depression and back pain, but we've had a few busy days and when Devon is here my defenses all drop and I tend to dredge up lingering ick, hoping, perhaps, that he can cure it. I was tired and couldn't find the shirt I wanted to wear and we got there almost but not quite lateish and had seats in the far back with almost no visibility and they were out of chocolate ice cream and I worried—I worried hard—that this event that I had looked forward to for so long and needed so badly to be Important, as important to me as her music , would be an opportunity lost to my incredible potential for melancholy.
And when she came on stage the whole audience stood and I, at just over 5 feet, could see nothing over the sea of heads; not an inch of the stage.
But Florence is not music for missing out—not just because I love it but because it is about living life with spirit and abandon and foolishness and love and the whole of your heart. I put on my shoes, and Devon and I made a loop out through the back, through the food court, and in towards the heart of the audience. And when the stage came into view and I could actually see Florence, blue and red and glowing against the stage, I burst into tears.
Most of the audience stayed standing through the entire show, and what had been precious space became almost abundant, and we shared breathing room with strangers and found a place at the tail end of the truly enthusiastic, foot-of-the-stage crowd. I haven't actually been hugely fond of Ceremonials so far, but—again, I always do this with F+tM—I heard each song as if for the first time, and all of them said that that was exactly where I needed to be: not feeling despondent in the back, but watching and raising my hands towards hers and singing along to Dog Days in the same full-throated voice she taught me.
F+tM songs are two things: whole-hearted euphoria and fear. They are dedication and failure, they are giving yourself over and being terrified of the thought. In the same way that Stephen Dedalus's epiphanies contradict one another without losing one whit of their individual truth, there's nothing hypocritical in the fact that you can swear to live life fully in one breath and then cry with the next. One is the price we pay for the other; we are our own human sacrifices, raised up, offered to the sky.
I live in the moment, and too easily forget one half for the other. These last few months haven't been difficult so much as they've been a vague and endless Swamps of Sadness, and I can get immured there and forget that I have seen glimpses of the other side. But I was there, yesterday, in the crowd, and I have been reminded.
And I am so, so thankful.
And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off
I saw Florence + the Machine.
I cannot overstate the importance of this music in my life; it is how I became friends with Dee and why I live here now and a vast part of how I aim to live at all; her first album means the world to me, and Dog Days are Over is one of my formative songs. I've written about her too many times (1, 2, 3). I never got to see her first tour (but I have a shirt! Dee got it for me, and it is heather gray and orangey-pink and literally the worst thing for my complexion, and I love it to pieces), but I got to see this one.
I've been doing a fair bit better lately in the realm of depression and back pain, but we've had a few busy days and when Devon is here my defenses all drop and I tend to dredge up lingering ick, hoping, perhaps, that he can cure it. I was tired and couldn't find the shirt I wanted to wear and we got there almost but not quite lateish and had seats in the far back with almost no visibility and they were out of chocolate ice cream and I worried—I worried hard—that this event that I had looked forward to for so long and needed so badly to be Important, as important to me as her music , would be an opportunity lost to my incredible potential for melancholy.
And when she came on stage the whole audience stood and I, at just over 5 feet, could see nothing over the sea of heads; not an inch of the stage.
But Florence is not music for missing out—not just because I love it but because it is about living life with spirit and abandon and foolishness and love and the whole of your heart. I put on my shoes, and Devon and I made a loop out through the back, through the food court, and in towards the heart of the audience. And when the stage came into view and I could actually see Florence, blue and red and glowing against the stage, I burst into tears.
Most of the audience stayed standing through the entire show, and what had been precious space became almost abundant, and we shared breathing room with strangers and found a place at the tail end of the truly enthusiastic, foot-of-the-stage crowd. I haven't actually been hugely fond of Ceremonials so far, but—again, I always do this with F+tM—I heard each song as if for the first time, and all of them said that that was exactly where I needed to be: not feeling despondent in the back, but watching and raising my hands towards hers and singing along to Dog Days in the same full-throated voice she taught me.
F+tM songs are two things: whole-hearted euphoria and fear. They are dedication and failure, they are giving yourself over and being terrified of the thought. In the same way that Stephen Dedalus's epiphanies contradict one another without losing one whit of their individual truth, there's nothing hypocritical in the fact that you can swear to live life fully in one breath and then cry with the next. One is the price we pay for the other; we are our own human sacrifices, raised up, offered to the sky.
I live in the moment, and too easily forget one half for the other. These last few months haven't been difficult so much as they've been a vague and endless Swamps of Sadness, and I can get immured there and forget that I have seen glimpses of the other side. But I was there, yesterday, in the crowd, and I have been reminded.
And I am so, so thankful.
And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off
