The secret to life is knowing exactly what it is you want, and going through anything to get it. Certain limits are to be followed, obviously, but for the most part, suffering makes a goal all the sweeter. We would’ve sat through the voluntary flagellation of a religious messiah for three hours, with a pair of kicks to our shins and knees as cherries on top, and it still would’ve all been worth it. Matisyahu was entertaining enough, an interesting mental challenge, to be sure. But in order for front view of who followed him, I would’ve sat through anything. Any prologue was inconsequential.
In the order of your life and death, you realize that some things become inextricably linked to your very self-survival. Perhaps not at a time when you would admit it, but at a moments notice you might find yourself seized with the sudden urge to promise your life to something that, in a more sober state, would be insanity. Communicating this to weaker members of the human race is near impossible. You either know what I’m talking about or you don’t. You wait for a thing to fill you with the idea that you might be a part of the end-all of everything you’ve ever understood, simply because you can’t imagine anything better. You know its coming. It makes no difference to you.
Why would this feeling rise from something as mundane as Lollapalooza? Because it doesn’t matter the venue. It doesn’t matter the when or where of how you found it. You’re attaching to something greater than yourself. If you know something is going to last forever, then the more you’ve contributed to it, the farther YOU have lasted forever. It’s the infinite flow of solid time, and you mount it to your greatest ability.
Queens of the Stone Age has become the one thing I was afraid I’d never have the impossible luck to be apart of in my whole short life: Some band of noise that would reverb through the dark echoes of time that came from MY time. I didn’t think anything I had ever heard before I first found them would or could ascend to the heights they have. I heard something, created by people who represent me, that will never be replaced or improved on. Better musicians may come again. Better lyrics. Better singer. Better anything. But this fingerprint has stained. Nothing will remove it. A new peak that will never quite be climbed again has been tread, and I was there for it.
I care little whether you agree. You scream “Shit!” and call me foul for ignoring who or whatever band it is that gives you that feeling. The point is that you KNOW the feeling. If God-Jesus-Lord himself appeared to me in The Spacesuit of Time-Travel and told me no one would remember Queens of the Stone Age a day after I died, I would call him a liar to his face and fart down-wind towards him. The power to change the very facts of history, THAT is the feeling I’m talking about. We’ll worry later about whatever that reveals about me: A psychosis break from reality due to improper potty training? You get to work on that. I’ll check in and find out The Why after my legs are broken from exhaustion, thank you.
For an hour they played. I can’t remember what songs they played, but that always happens anyway with everyone. We were a queasing sea, probably looking like it was trying to collapse in on itself from their viewpoint. Leans and bodies and no one with a weak constitution would survive. Trampling was a constant threat, as was raining bodies of crowd surfing from above. My spine was collapsed about 3 times from big fuckers who thought 220 pounds was light enough to try and ass-bump across a field of roving skulls. We were constantly moving wounded and fainted out, since they could no longer defend themselves after the heat stroke got to them. Private space is an impossible concept, unless you want to try to push elbows out for more breathing room, in which case retribution will be swift and from all directions, and in a thousand pounds of pressure that no one could stop. You’ll immediately become the enemy of every person there, as causal effect makes them feel ANY incorrect variation of space, and the strange inverted ripple from 30,000 people that comes back to you will most likely crush your arms to pieces against themselves.
No place for children, which is exactly what no less than 50% of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ fans consisted of. Not my problem, unless said band was following QOTSA. Using the rule of patience through whoever precedes the band you’re waiting for, what happens when you’re 14 years old and the band prior has a penchant for attracting much, much larger men? You’re left with nothing to do but stand ground the best you can. I saw this, multiple times. Even big brothers trying to cover their youngers. You try to help, but you know it’s beyond a lost cause. You know these kids had been waiting all weekend and probably longer just to see their favorite White-Boy funk-rock quartet, only to collapse from heat stroke a mere hour short of everything, without bruises if they were lucky. It’s wrong, and the equivalent of shitting in someone’s ears in the middle of the night while they’re fantasizing about all their dreams appearing before their eyes. A little forethought on the part of the organizers would have been prudent, but I doubt they’ll be losing much sleep on the nightmares that their beyond-fucked schedule will be leaving hundreds of minors with in the ensuing years.
Now at 3/4th of the way through the Red Hot Chili Peppers show. I’m still front row. I realize something, very important. In highly stressful situations, certain bodily functions are temporarily ceased. In laymen’s terms, pure excitement keeps your mind off your natural voiding process, until you receive clear signal that no more time can be spared. I needed facilities immediately. I entreated one of my fellow concertgoers to put me on the Upper-Flight Pass Express, where I swam on heads until I could fall out past the steel pens. A bouncer pointed me out. It was a clear swath back from the stage until I reached the soundboard, where I was instructed that I’ll have to march in the opposite direction of 70,000 people all wanting to be at the front as bad as I once had.
Imagine being covered in 5 ½ hours of warm bottled water, your sweat, and the sweat of a thousand strangers (just sweat if you’re lucky), soaking every stuck-close hair on your body, contracting sphincter muscles against action that is delivering solids kept strongly out of whack for over the past 80 hours, all while you’re marching in quick step against an angrier 6 dozen thousand people pushing in the direction you’re not going. Making it just in time, I let everything fly before concerning myself with the fact that there’s no toilet paper. One thing at a time, lord.
Emerging with the ability to speak in complete sentences again, I doubted these stalls had anything resembling bathroom tissue since 4 p.m. Friday afternoon. I didn’t bother myself asking around.
A short while later, it was all over. I found Bishara and he told me how he most likely threw about 2 dozen children to their vertical doom at the hands of strangers. Good for him. I regaled my scatological near-death. We made it back to the car in relative silence. On our way out of the garage we noticed how disgusting low on fuel we were. I was struck by visions of running empty alone in deep Chicago with shit-sweat smelling pants and no one who’d miss us soon enough to find our bodies before they bled to death. Nothing was left us, except just enough to get back and tell the tale, if we were lucky.
I don’t know if it was the feeling I originally set out looking for, but I know I’d found something. I was left with the distinct impression that I had performed something perfectly. Some tight rope had been crossed that I didn’t even know I was on until I’d found wide ground again to contrast it all with. Short of actual war combat, there’s not often in normal life that one feels like a wrong turn would’ve ended in death or, worse, some sort of jabbering paralysis. There are only two places I can think of getting the feeling: Vicariously, through a Hunter S. Thompson book, or with a straight blast into the pupil and a hypodermic through the eardrum like a rock concert can be. At least as long as you do it right.
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