I was eighteen when I first attended a very first concert, I felt amazed by the incomparable experience to attend an actual live concert of my favorite band. Holding a ticket felt like clutching a winning lottery slip. For weeks, the date circled on our kitchen calendar, planned my outfit – a band shirt, and practiced the lyrics until I could sing them in my sleep. My first concert didn’t change my life. It started it.
The most recent concert I have attended was a surprise from my nephews and niece as an advance birthday gift. Needless to say I was ecstatic to find out that it was my favorite singer back home and the tickets were front row and in the middle of a lot of people, the pit as it is lovingly referred to, so I had to prepare.
This entire event was a valentine concert called “Champions of the Heart” one of my all-time favorite singer was part of it. I remembered the first chord hitting my chest before my ears caught up. The singer’s hit the first note, I screamed the chorus with a thousand strangers, my voice dissolving into a beautiful noise. As soon as the they sang Barry Manilow medley, the crowd raised phone lights like artificial stars. The songs were about the people who are no longer by our side but they never left our hearts and how they inspired us and how they made our world a little lighter, but we hold to the beautiful promise that someday, somehow, love and faith will bring us together again. The lyrics of the songs speak to my heart.
As the show ended the audience stood and cheered all the singers and shouting for more. Everyone started to leave and I felt as if I was a cow in a heard of cattle moving through. We eventually made it to the car and just sat in awe of the experienced we had. Frankly, even a month later it is still hard to put this concert into words.
Every time I attend a concert, there is always a realization that recorded music is a photograph of a wave. A live concert is the wave itself, crashing over you. You don’t just hear it. You feel it in your bones, your lungs, your racing heart. And once you’ve felt that, you spend the rest of your life chasing it, a moment of my life that is split time into “before” and “after” and this concert is one of them.
