At Least They're Committed

The bands were tight, the venue open and intimate and the rock was, well, classic. Yup, last night’s Under the Sun concert was pretty freakin’ awesome and as I stood six people deep, wedged among throngs of younger fans and groupies while the bands bared their souls on stage, I thought back to what we talked about, you know, what would be worse, not being able to see or not being able to hear? And I recalled your point after I said I’d rather be deaf on how desperately isolating it would be and . . . (pregnant pause for emphasis) . . . there would be no music. A sucker-punch of a realization; the thought of life without music, even for a second, was unbearable.

It made sense that it would cross my mind as Fastball led to Vertical Horizon which led to Gin Blossoms, and one fun or favorite song passed to the next, and you’d have thought I’d be pensively pondering, thinking, yes, yes, I could not live without being able to hear this.

But I wasn’t. I was looking around at the dude to my left, one of the few near my own age, whose head was bobbing up and down and wagging back and forth to Fastball’s “The Way,” and the buff, burly CSU studs in front of me, arms in the air gently swaying back and forth to the Gin Blossoms’ “As Long as it Matters,” and the painted 20somethings wagging their tits at Mark McGrath (to no avail, I might add. That only worked on Robin Wilson of the GB — quite the entertainer, but man … ). I thought, no. Right then, anyway, sight and sound were the same. One undiscernible from the other. A package. A moment. A single sense. I couldn’t live without one or the other.

This was all the more perplexing because what would the alternative be? It would be death, I suppose, and even though I was for a moment thinking that would be cool because then I could float right up on stage, it’s probably not a reasonable solution. Realizing at that point I was thinking waaaaay too much, I opted instead for another option. Smell, I could do without my sense of smell. That’d work. And I mindlessly jumped back into the show.