the night beckons just beyond the door, sending in tendrils of crisp air every time another reveler joins the masses packed into the club, but those by the door barely notice. our collective body heat keeps us warm, and the group i’m with is convinced it’s summer. up north it’s below zero; here we wear shorts and tank tops while the natives, sweatered, stare.
the evening is just starting. though it’s a thursday, barely-adults teem in the streets outside, perfumed in alcohol and smoke, faces adorned with masks of neon light. the streetlights add to the scene, bathing the night in bright colors, bringing out the inner children they’ve barely abandoned as they whoop a drunken war cry. the spirit of celebration is strong, and though there’s nothing specifically worthwhile to cheer about, their enthusiasm is contagious. right now i’m beginning the most influential journey of my young life, surrounded by my friends; and we care naught about what’s waiting for us at home, care about naught but the music pulsing around us.
i’m running on sensory overload, surrounded by sweat and salt and something else, something unnameable. it smells like… teen spirit, i whisper to myself, and immediately bite back my tongue for laughing at the reference. five days, i had promised. five days to simply live through and not bother to think of anything else, and here i am on the first of them, laughing at a joke that belonged two decades back, back with grunge- reality, and actual emotion instead of synthesizers for hearts, instead of metallic replies and lovers who taste like circuit boards, who run on batteries and die when their cell phones do.
this isn’t what we’re used to, tinny and filtered through cheap speakers, butchered by electronics until the soul is gone. this is beale street, this is jazz. the man on the stage has a heart, and you can hear it spilling through into his words, raw yet sonorous. it’s the perfect mix of strain and skill, of capacity and of yearning. it reaches deep into me until it finds that small, scared muscle fluttering in my ribcage and squeezes until i cry out- perfectly in tune with the music, because first and foremost i am an artist; even instinctually i prefer aesthetics to ease, and my body will wrench itself to hit the right note instead of simply letting go. distraught, i clench my teeth. i taste pain, and my vision blurs, turning the club into swirls of eclectic greens and blues.
the boy next to me is a smudge of red, an impressionist’s last-minute decision to add to the canvas. he’s holding a video camera as a favor to a friend who wanted equally to film and to participate- she’s dancing below as the two of us sit, detached, in the balcony. i said i was here to keep him company as he distanced himself through the screen, but we both know that i said it as an excuse to keep from dancing. i wipe my ego clean with a finger under my eyes and try to blink the rest of it away. he sits oblivious next to me.
when we were told memphis, we imagined something more. we didn’t think we’d be going to a club you could find in minneapolis, we said. the back of my throat is bitter with regret, sour and metallic like a bit tongue- i know now how wrong we were. i wish i could take the words back from where they hung in the air, a plaque displaying my accomplishments in regret. i immediately hate myself for thinking it, because it’s so clichéd, but if i knew then what i knew now-
the north had never seemed so cold to me, not when i knew nothing else. the cities were ripe with young artists, children who had never learned to fear, and their joyous cries lit up the weekend streets, but never had i heard anything this heartrending. never had i felt so much emotion. up north, we didn’t share ourselves like this. we bluffed our way out of showing our souls. we were sheep in wolves’ clothing, pretending to be better than we were, pretending we weren’t human.
there are no cold shoulders here. there is no steel besides that which is being played on, and we are not wintry. we’re as honest as we will ever be, sitting lonely, lotuslike, bobbing on the tide of sound as it washes over us.
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written f17feb2012.
for creative writing- we had to write a descriptive vignette about somewhere we’d been, or somewhere we found interesting- so, of course, i wrote about the best night of my then-recent life: a night at a jazz club during my school orchestra’s trip to memphis and new orleans.
i still consider live music one of the best experiences i can find.
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idiography 