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Out of context: Reply #6351
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- kingjulien0
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As a birthday present to myself, I attended The Walkmen concert last night. Since it was a Monday none of my friends could make it out, but that didn't stop me from having one of the most spectacular evenings in quite some time. Got there early to ensure that tickets were available, then spent the next three hours drinking in various watering holes in the Tenderloin, which is always an eye opener for craziness, especially the fusion of junkies, dealers, trannies, Indie rock kids with wavy Garfunkels, and of course Kathy, the beautiful Korean bartender, who after questioning whether I was even 21, dropped my license in a pitcher of water and spent the next 2 hours giving me free Ketel Ones straight up and telling me how she wanted to have a white baby with my blue eyes, then she explained who I should contact in Chinatown if I wanted to bet on tonight's game 3 (ask for Woo Woo in the Buddha Bar - you tell him his niece sent you).
To make a long story short, the concert was exhilarating - in fact nothing short of magical, especially when they played The Rat and the whole Music Hall was singing along to the hook:
When I used to go out, I would know everyone that I saw
Now I go out alone if I go out at allAnd of course the surprise of knowing all these people felt the same way I did, how these words were addressed to me in this moment - as I didn't know a soul there, but as the girl next to me kept crashing into my shoulder while dancing, I didn't mind at all, because she had reached that point where she let everything go, she gave in to the tribal pulsations of the drums and wanted to be snatched up to a higher state, and for an hour and a half, we both transcended that level of euphoria.
I hate forgetting key moments of my life, when the memories are there but too faint to still flash before your eyes (of course certain chemicals tend to do this), but this morning, at 3:00 am, as I stumbled along the forty five minute walk from the Tenderloin, as the trannies were calling from across the street, as this crackhead named A-train was mumbling as I passed, as the fog horns echoed from the ships in the great Pacific, and as the pastries were being prepared in small little Chinatown bakeries - so fresh I had to duck in to one for a quick blueberry muffin, I glowed with every step, I heard the words to every song in my head, and as I nestled into bed a few minutes later, I knew this was why I came to the city, to experience catharsis like this one night at a time, and as my eyes became heavy, and the visions still danced in my mind, I looked up to the sky and whispered to myself, take me all the way.