On Expectations

Last night, and event occurred in my life that I had been waiting for and fantasizing about for over twenty years. I was finally able to see my favorite band play live. Dead Can Dance's last tour was over five years ago, and before that, tours were infrequent and out of my ability to attend as a youth. I couldn't attend the previous tour because of extremely tight finances. If there had been a way, I would have made it happen, but it came down to a choice between the concert and rent. I still deliberated, but, ultimately, reason won out.

Since 1991, at age 11, I had determined that I must see Dead Can Dance play live before I could die. I would go looking stylish in a suit, with a beautiful woman on my arm, and I would watch them play, and joy would overwhelm me, tears spilling down my face.

On August 26, 2012, my wife and I arrived at the Kimmel Center's Verizon Hall. I was looking stylish in my suit, and my wife looked gorgeous. We were sat through a riveting performance by the percussionist touring with DCD, David Kuckhermann. We were skeptical when he said he was going to perform a song on his tambourine, but it was brilliant. He is a true talent.

Then the moment came. The stage lit, and Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard stepped out from behind the curtains and began weaving their magic. It was a two hour and fifteen minute performance that included three encores. The sound was amazing, perfectly balanced to highlight the brilliant array of both the subtle and the dramatic. All of the performers showed intense mastery and genius.

It was a phenomenal concert.

It was not the concert that I wanted to see.

I knew that my expectations would work against me, so I had tried to limit them. However, they did not play a single one of the dozens of their songs that would have reduced me to sobbing. Only two of the songs they played were more than three albums old, and my deepest emotional attachments are to their earlier work. They played material primarily from their new album and their side projects. I have spent too little time with the new album to have it in my heart, and while I enjoy their side projects (Perry's particularly), their song choices were not the ones that would have resonated with me.

I left the theater stunned at my lack of emotion.

For context, I weep easily at concerts. Something about them moves me tremendously, especially when I have loved a band for a long time. It is not sadness, or even joy, but emotional attachment that affects me so deeply. I bawled when I saw The Cure play "Same Deep Water As You," and when Peter Murphy performed "Marlene Dietrich's Favorite Poem." There are even more ridiculous, less manly events that I can remember. However, at this, my most anticipated concert event, I was left feeling, well, very little.

Don't get me wrong, I feel incredibly fortunate to have seen them play, and I will forever be grateful that I had the chance. I suppose it was what I needed, but not what I wanted. I know this is probably whiny, first-world problemy stuff, but I am very sad. I know that, as artists, they want to play the music they are passionate about, which, with any artist, is their most recent material. The music I want to hear is 20+ years old, and is probably worn very thin for them artistically.

I guess what I am most sad about is the fact that I will never see the concert I want to see.

The fact that the girl sitting next to me smelled of Italian dressing and piss didn't help, either.

Pain

Today is one of those mornings that, when I wake up, I immediately have to reach for the pill bottle. I have to force myself to only take one, to wait and see if one pill is good enough. "I'll wait for half an hour before taking the next," I promise myself. My brows furrow slightly as I stare at the ceiling. I check the time every couple of minutes, hoping for the pain to subside.

Waking up is hard enough, but the pain makes it worse. I start surfacing to consciousness, only for my mind to realize the pain I am in. My immediate reaction is to try to retreat back to sleep, so that I can spend another hour with oblivion, rather than the gnawing in my leg. If I'm lucky, I can return to unconsciousness. If I'm not, the pain will take hold and keep me awake, every twist and turn I make to find some comfort only serving to tear ever deeper into my side. I'm sure there is a metaphor in this about the greater experience of life being merely an uncomfortable search for comfort, or being a path of trials to achieve peace.

The half hour passes. I take another pill. I stare out my window, watching the trees sway and people walk down the sidewalk. A fight breaks out. Two men, three women. One of the men and one of the women drove up in a car to confront my neighbors who live across the street. The man from the car is dressed in a nice button up and slacks, everyone else is in pajamas. They all look like fools, wrestling on the ground. Police come after the couple in the car have departed.

The diversion serves as an anesthetic, but only briefly. As the view outside resolves once again into normalcy. My pill bottle catches my eye. It sits on the window sill, about two feet from my head, which rest on my pillow for the vast majority of my day. It's always there. It needs to be.

Paul Ryan explained

Eight years ago, Paul Ryan opened the Lament Configuration and survived. That pallor and pained look on his face is due to the tight weaving of barbed chains crisscrossing his body underneath his ill-fitting suits. He is simultaneously always on the verge of tears or orgasm (or both). His sweatiness and intense, predatory gaze is due to his constant knowledge that he must harvest souls for the Cenobites, lest he himself be taken to Leviathan. 
His every movement, pain.
His every thought, pleasure.
His every desire, oblivion.