Sunday, August 19, 2007

Words and Guitar--I Get It





This week marked the one-year anniversary of Sleater-Kinney's last-ever concert (well, so far) on August 12th in their adopted hometown of Portland. While I wasn't at that show, I did attend the gig on August 3rd in DC, which turned out to be their final show on the East Coast (well, so far) after the initial try at a show on the 1st was aborted when the 9:30 Club almost went kablooey due to typically face melting DC heat.

I don't think, in retrospect, I fully got what I was seeing. It was my seventh time seeing them live; I fully enjoyed the set list, crowd and band vibe; and that was it. I was grateful to be eye and earwitness to the show.

Listening to a bootleg of the show one year later, it suddenly crashes into me. The joy that suffused me while actually in the venue, experiencing the moments, is still there--albeit inevitably detached somewhat--but now I have the partner feeling of great sadness. That I was watching one segment of the tightest, sweatiest funeral procession in the northern USA and all my senses could take in was "Yeaaaaaahhhh, Ironclad!", etc. Li'l Miss Intellectual missing the bigger picture.

And it only took 380-odd days for this to impact me so immensely. Feeling shame over delayed reaction is almost always silly, and so it is in this case as well, but right now it's how I feel.

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