The Venue



The concert hall is a vessel for imagination. She takes the shape of the beholder, and in this case, the concert hall is gushing with vibrant greens and indigos. The columns that line the sides of it dance up into the ceiling, wiggling and squirming for air, twisting and writhing all the way to the top and out of sight from the crowd. Even down to the very floor on which we so obliviously and ungratefully dance on is seething with energy, the light reflecting off of the smooth glass like surface. This venue is alive! She seems to be moving by itself, breathing and even singing great songs of past performers. Greeting us with a great smile, we feel welcome in this house, as if we have lived here our whole lives.

Once inside the walls of the concert hall, the laws that inhibit us from physically expressing ourselves come tumbling down, crushed by the human spirit. All logic is broken and left behind in the outside world, where it sits in ruins, under the black shadow of night, awaiting our inevitable return. We shatter and break through the logic, tearing it from its deep seated place in society- a wall destroyed by its creators.
All manners, reason, and inhibition are left behind, and in their stead the sublime swoops in; the euphoric and glorious vibrations echo through the very essence of each and every one of us. As if the very air in these halls has been substituted with some sort of dense aqueous material, we find it harder and harder to breath. The pools of blue, purple, and pink light drip onto the crowd, flooding it with a vibrant mist. As this sea of hands sways back and forth, we find ourselves drifting deeper into some sort of trance, the waves of the translucent guitar riffs drowning out all of our worries. The slow and pleasant currents carry us toward the front of the ever flowing crowd, pushing us this way and that, until finally we reach the delta, where people, sound, and sight flow together as one. With the smoke from the machines swimming around us, and the buoyant bodies caressing one another, we glide along the surface.
Like some animalistic feeding ritual, we are all entranced by the lights and sounds, taking in every note, every sound, and every spec of light. While the stage gives off aqueous transmissions, we are reflecting the radiation, our voices trailing up and through the roof of the cathedral. Drinking in the colors that are being poured for us, we are quite thankful, and send our praises to the masters of the band that have created these works of art.


Microscopic beings in this vast organism of activity, we move about the place and act as a catalyst to the crowd. We are each individuals in this phantasmagoria of people, yet, we are all the same in some way. We move uniquely, yet we move as one. While each of us is enjoying this phenomenon we all, at the same time, have so much in common. All of us carrying out specific things, creating a vast plethora of diversity, we move in consequence to each other, shaping the game, each second an unpredictable result from the preceding one. After all- we may be different, but we are all still drops of the same ocean.
Every moment, it seems, is more than unscripted; it’s unthinkable, surreal, even. Almost as if this is a child’s dream world, every occurrence is completely random and spontaneous. People dancing, singing, and jumping up and down would be an understatement in describing the scene. The way that we see each other is unprecedented, as if we are looking into a mirror. Even though we see ourselves, we don’t know what we are going to do next. Like some sort of twisted Quentin Terentino movie, it unraveled in front of us, the story that was presented by dancing and jubilation.


The fluid composure of music seemed perpetual, the crowd’s movement, the music, and the lights seemed distant, and pleasantly sluggish. As if rotating around one catalyst that was the stage, we moved about, almost on an axis. The stage radiated light onto us; we reacted to what it did. The louder the vibrations became, the faster we rotated, and the slower the song, the slower we would be pushed, into a never ending black hole of movement that was the people dancing.

We were the only entity in this entire universe that could support such jubilation! As if we were completely alone out there in the cold, unforgiving real world. Because of this, we made more noise, and more ruckuses. We didn’t care who could hear it, because we were living in the moment. This whole time, we knew, would only be a small blip on the universal time clock, just a tiny dot on the radar- Not making a difference whatsoever.


We weren’t ready for the end, and we weren’t welcoming it in any way. When we realized that the end was soon upon us, we stomped and screamed and bellowed in protest, but the attempts were futile. The only thing we could possibly conjure up now would be an encore, and by the sound of the crowd, we were going to get what we asked for. Thousands of voices united as one, and we raged in a fit of noise so loud that we would be feeling it for weeks to come or- should I say- not feeling it for weeks to come.
The walls of the venue shook as we roared and smashed our hands together, thousands of hands making the same noise all at once. And with our great appreciation, the band back out came out once again, and even louder still did the venue become. We felt that if it were any louder our heads would explode from the pressure! Tired yet eager, the band played a few more songs for the encore, and then it was time to go. Like a group of prisoners crawling into their jail cells, we filed out of the cathedral, where logic and reason and all inhibition returned to us, like an aging lover. This aging lover Embraced us and loved us and engulfed us all over again, and maybe some day, possibly in the near future, when were to return to the cathedral, to celebrate the joys of life once again.