‘we are because you are, and since you are, definitely I am.’
I love this band, I saw them last month at the place where that one band set their cymbals on fire that one time. I saw them two months ago at the place a block away from my apartment that always gets shut down by the cops when everyone goes outside to smoke. The same place where I got punched in the face in the mosh-pit at halloween and I couldn’t bite down for a few days, and then my homemade costume got stained with someone else’s fake blood. I saw them at the same place a month before, the one that’s an old church, before I died my hair blonde, and now I can barely recognize myself in the pictures. I’m pretty sure that girl with the dark hair that likes to elbow you when she dances took a few film pictures of me that I haven’t seen since, but might as well be someone else.
I saw the same band 4 months ago, at the beginning of the year, and it was my first time seeing them. I think it was one of the first times, if not the first time, I saw local music in Madison. Subsequently, it was my first five dollar cover, which then got bumped to ten, and now some places feel the need to charge fifteen at the door. It was the first time I felt the swell of heat of bodies, all dancing and pushing and sweating, before I could even see the crowd. The first time I hid my purse under the couch so I could dance without it. The first time I really danced. The first time I fell over in a mosh-pit, not from being drunk, but because the guy that slammed into me was triple my size and the dude behind me stuck his foot out underneath me. The first time I went outside between sets, drenched in someone else’s sweat, and watched the flicker of fireflies upon june-bugs. The smell of salt and tobacco, of youth and naivety, of hard-times and bad decisions.
I saw this band when I had long brown hair and un-pierced eyebrows and shaved legs and a lot more shame. Before I had my friends that love music, and host radio shows, and keep secrets, and are knowledgeable about things I never knew I wanted to know. It was before the heartbreaks and headaches, potlucks and book-clubs, and sophomore year turbulence. Maybe it’s cliche, but I saw this band before I found myself in Madison, in the music and the mosh-pits of it all.
‘a person is a person through people‘
Feral in the barrel 