Mogwai were playing a few feet away. It’s sort of a
bit like the first few seconds of an earthquake, when you realize you’re
actually feeling the thing instead of sleeping through it. The excitement precedes
the possibility of destruction. Or waking up while it’s still dark outside,
getting ready on Fast Forward, and then leaving the city for a short vacation.
Something like the warm, disarming smile of a complete stranger that makes you
feel almost exposed. Or when, say you live in Bombay and take a flight to Delhi
in December or January. You step out of the aircraft into an unfamiliar cold,
one that the body takes a while to absorb into its million pores. In that brief
limbo period, the icy waves on your face are liberating. Watching the band live
in Delhi last week, I remember how I kept checking my watch every couple of
songs, the reasons for which seem no clearer now than at the time. The larger
meaninglessness of such instances only enhances their pure immediacy.
See, I rarely wear a watch. I used to own a nice watch
three years ago. Then, one of the loops into which the strap settles fell off.
Instead of going to a shop five minutes from my house to get it fixed, I abandoned
the idea of wearing one altogether. Until recently. A supplementary/backup
internet connection was purchased at home, along with which we received a
low-quality free watch. It has little threads hanging loose — its innards have
become its outards, you could say (don’t go) — but it does a respectable job of
telling me the time. Plus, I’m trying to recalibrate my system so that I don’t aimlessly
whip out my cell phone to check the time/ponder over some abstract notion of
staring into a digital screen every few minutes. So I wear that watch off and
on, whenever I can remember to. Like I did during Mogwai’s set a week
ago, and kept checking religiously.
Did I want the set to end? No, but in a way I think I
did. I was one of the few people in the area up front not begging for an
encore. It was also the exact opposite, of course. I kept looking at the time
because the more you do that, the more time seems to slow down (as any
obsessive person will testify). Or maybe it was something else entirely. I
remember years ago, during a spell of reading about sleep patterns and all
related material (what?), I read about this trick to help you accomplish the elusive
act of lucid dreaming. You stare at numbers on a watch when you’re awake, and
will them to change, to the point where it becomes habitual — like biting your cuticles.
You concentrate really hard on changing the four into a two or a ‘K’, even
though it never does. Then, during a dream, when you automatically will your
watch numbers to change, and they do, you become aware that it’s a dream, and
you can subsequently control what’s happening. So maybe it had something to do
with the loss of control, but that’s something I ceded quite willingly, so
maybe not.
Then ‘I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead’ began to play. In
my hazy, barely-conscious state, I first thought they’d kicked into ‘Auto Rock’
— I’ve only heard these two songs some tens of thousands of times regularly
over the past 12 years or so, so that’s an understandable mistake I should
think. It’s when the set truly ‘hit’ — the loss of control became a comfortable state of existence. It’s hard to know for sure if I shed a
stray tear or two because a lot of the actions at the time were involuntary.
Like the guy standing next to me, leaning on the
railing and literally not moving the entire time. He presumably hadn’t bathed,
shaved, or cut his hair in years, so not moving seems the next logical step in
the progression — plus why would he? He had the best seat (standing place) in the
house. Or the one on my right, who decided to sing along to the instrumental
music of Mogwai. I wondered briefly if it was a misguided attempt to impress
his ladyfriend (who chose the more conventional method of tapping her foot and
bopping her head to the music) but I think he was just an idiot. I blocked him
out instantly, and he faded in and out of the screen of my consciousness after.
During ‘Hunted by a Freak’, where Barry Burns does sing — heavily processed and
indecipherable as the vocals may be — my Not Friend to the right, let’s call
him John Mayor, decided to not only sing along but also harmonize to the vocal
melody of the song, making up his own lyrics (obviously). It was impressive — I
have also never wanted to punch someone quite as badly. But in a matter of
seconds, I had blocked him out again. It was OK — I wasn’t actually angry.
Then I zoned out again. Then in briefly to look at
the watch. Then out. I was standing right in front, so it was very loud, and
when the introductory guitar riff to ‘Rano Pano’ began, the whole area started
to rumble and shake. (How those guys aren’t deaf yet I’ll never know; maybe
that’s why John Cummings left the band.) It was frightening. The whole thing — just
the one massive guitar part before the other stuff joins in — seemed to have a
space-time fluidity, lasting anywhere between three seconds to eternity. Hard
to say what time it was.
When you hear a song that really moves you, a
profound sense of loss sets in even before the song is over. You start missing
the song before it’s finished. That existential sadness had settled in me by
the time the very first song of the set was not even half done. The fear of the
set finishing was present almost before it even really began. (I should add here
a brief moment of self-reflection — since this is MY blog — on the day of the
gig, there was something personal that I had to deal with. So maybe the set
might have been less meaningful without that, or more fun, or neither — hard to
talk in absolutes here.)
The last song, the really long last song, was, I think, ‘Mogwai Fear Satan’. The moment I’d been
dreading for the past 80 minutes was pretty much here. But not quite. In a way,
I also wanted the set to end, so that I could fully process it. There’s sadness
at the end of a song, but there’s also the space to breathe, reflect, and find
meaning. As the circular waves of the song started to dissipate, though, I
figured I was wrong. I didn’t want the set to end. It did — it seemed
appropriate, and one that didn’t demand calls for another song, so I refrained.
The drummer came forward and tossed one of his drum
sticks in my general direction. I instinctively jumped to try and catch it. But
it sailed past my outstretched arms to a few rows behind me, giving a tangible
shape to my disappointment that it was over. I like the idea of souvenir-collection,
but I’m not really committed enough to follow through on it. So I don’t know
what I would have done with that drum stick even if I’d managed to catch it. It
doesn’t make sense to make sense of an experience that may or may not have been
life-changing.
