2008 tour. finally.

before i start writing too much about the thom yorke show's i am going to see april 5th and 6th in new york city, i want to take a moment to finally Finally FINALLY air out a piece i wrote in september of 2008. i brushed off the dust and polished it a bit tonight since it's been sitting in blog purgatory for over a year as a draft. and despite being written over a year ago and a half ago, it still holds very relevant in light of all the personal history and mythology i'll be staring down when i go to see him perform again in a little over a week.

so, without further ado, here it is.

...................................

this is a story of resonance and convergence.
and this is the biggest story i have in me right now.
it's a story i have spent the last month in a state of constant battle to avoid going through it all. i've resisted re-finding the selves that lived the story while also fighting being weighed down by the burden of what i want to say--it's so much and so steeped and i'm not sure i can do it justice.

at the end of august this year {2008} i had the privilege of seeing radiohead play three times in a week and a half stretch. but it wasn't the experience i would have thought it to be. the time was marked by loss. adventure. boldness. hiding. and grief. but somehow, inspite of all disappointments, it was still absolutely amazing.

but to give it context, let's start at the beginning:
i began listening to radiohead roughly ten years ago and their music has been a constant presence in my collection since. their music tapps into a very raw and alive part of myself and it has always managed to create movement in still places.

but i think the first time i fully understood them was on june 23rd, 2001. the gorge amphitheater. that was the day i first saw them play live and over seven years later, it's still one of the epic moments of my life.

the person i went with flatly declared he wouldn't enter the pit of people standing in front of the stage, so i ventured in alone to try and find some friends from high school. i never did connect with them, and that didn't even matter as soon as the band took the stage just as the sun was setting. it was a rowdy crowd that calmed down after the third song, exit song (for a film), and as the waves of people pushed back and forth i was able to inch forward step by step until i ended up about seven people from the stage.

and i don't think my eyes left thom yorke almost the entire time.

there was something so massive working through him that i couldn't even begin to articulate what was happening beyond the electrified feeling coursing through me. watching him. his movements. gestures. dancing. i was taken away on the journey he was living both in himself and through the music and i was filled up beyond my ability to comprehend. and i know i was experiencing one of the greatest gifts in that i was able to reach out beyond what i thought was my capacity in response. the people around me were alive to each other and even the awkward self i lived out in those days shone out to the beautiful boy who danced my way. i was radiant in my presence, mirroring thom in how pure and condensed i was able to live myself simply through the act of receiving what he gave.

the night could not have possibly lasted long enough to satisfy me, and after the end of the encore, when the last chord of motion picture soundtrack was held out indefinitely signifying the end, i was still disappointed despite the generous line-up of songs. the natural high lingered and the drive home was almost surreal. i was alone in a car driving through the mountain roads while my friend slept though kid a was blasting on the stereo. i was bouncing in my seats i couldn't contain. i felt so awake. so alive.

later i wrote: his presence on the stage extended beyond comprehension--beyond life almost. seeing the energy pour out from him and emanating from every word, syllable, movement made me realize he is a conduit for the world that extends beyond the five senses...he sings of a world that surpasses even his own conscious understanding in order to give us the gift of a fleeting glance...i couldn't stop moving to his music.

and there. that one word: conduit. thom yorke is a conduit of the divine passions of humanity. lowercase d divine. a divine that is inclusive, not exclusive, and it reaches out and sweeps you in to the most beautiful highs and heartbreaking lows before you even know it. radiohead's music opens spaces in me. stimulates movement. and above all, it creates resonance.

in acting we call the one thing you want most in this world your super objective. in my life this is resonance. the first thing i did when i was born was to find everyone's eyes in the room and hold them. the doctor's. the nurse's. my grandmother. both my parents, including my mother. for her i needed the assistance of the doctor to tilt me back so that i wouldn't slip out of his hands while i arched my back and stared at my mother upside-down. the doctor was astounded. newborns shouldn't be able to see that far. shouldn't be able to find, register and connect to people beyond their scope of vision. but i did. i was already searching.

so, starting from birth, literally, i have been looking out at the world and asking it to reflect back the truth of its self, share in the joy of the discoveries, and surprise me with different names for familiar colors. forever a tuning fork searching out for things to strike against me so i can sit alive in the vibrations.

and radiohead is by far the most constant and significant of all forms of resonance i have in my life. the depth this resonance creates guarantees that i will never tire of their music allowing me to listen to one of their songs on repeat for days and for entire albums to carry me through years. and each time i come back to and revisit a song or album, i only add new layers of resonance. a slowly forming patina cradling each song.

i can recall where i was when each of their albums were released and many of their songs are an earmark for specific moments or time periods in my life. in light of the fact that both my memory and the things i tether it to are prominent themes in my art work, it's also significant that their music functions much like a scrap book of such a large portion of my past.

pablo honey--sorry, love. you don't really have a spot
beyond what creep carries on its own. never really liked you.

the bends & ok computer--high school. enough said.
kid a--freshman year of college. birthday gift from kate & lissa.
amnesiac--sophmore year. australia. pyramid song.
hail to the thief--at the tail end of my year off between sophmore & junior year of college.
purchased it while traveling through scotland at the time. inverness. traveling.
in rainbows--2008. the year of the finding and the losing. what a beautiful heart-aching year.
{listing individual songs would take too long.}

and yet, the above is just one layer of how i experience the music of both radiohead and thom yorke. so much of how the resonance is created relates to this rich and colorful emotional landscape that their music creates--the focal point being thom yorke and his voice. it simultaneously expands my heart beyond the boundaries of my ribcage and shatters it into a million little pieces. he channels so much into the soaring and raw life of his voice and its presence is the centerpiece of each song. he commits so fully of himself that listening to him feels like an intimate experience. but not of him, though i guess in some ways it's inseparable from the artist, but really an intimate experience of the universal self. this mirror he holds back to the world so that we can look into hard to see places and in the end know ourselves better.

any time i am caught unawares by their songs being played outside the safety of my car or my home, i feel raw and exposed. the communion that happens naturally when i hear their music is not something casual, not something public, but rather a private and vulnerable experience of thesw parts of myself that come alive through their music.

a couple of months ago i had my ipod on shuffle at work and i {still, in 2010} so clearly remember the moment of transition between one song {of insignificant title and artist} to a thom yorke song. i actually experienced a visceral reaction through my whole body like i had stuck my finger in a socket and the jolt when right to my heart.

i put it into words right away in this instant message conversation i had been having with eden {my best friend} right after it happened:

‎‎nathania:

thom yorke. thom. thom. thom. i can't describe it, but that man has a special place for me. i have always known it, but something just happened and i'm not sure how to describe it.

i have my music on shuffle.

and one of his songs came up in the queue.

from his solo album, the eraser.

and the transition from a non-thom yorke song to his song was tangible.
it was like coming home.

but coming home in a sense of returning home to a place that is no longer your home but was your home for so
long it has the history/memories/steeped quality, but you are still a stranger there. a bittersweet quality of aching and
longing felt in the body.

so now, fast forward to 2008. {i saw them once more in saint louis in the 2003 tour and vowed never to see them from the lawn again. i couldn't see thom's movements, see his eyes, see him as a vehicle for this life beyond life that is the most beautiful thing any performer, artist, or piece of artwork has given me}. i got to see them in vancouver in august of 2008, but somehow the magic isn't there. i figure it's because i was still too far away and/or i was with someone who i squelch myself around {when will i ever get to be myself around attractive men?}.

but i have these doubts. it shouldn't have been the external circumstances. i still should have found a familiar rush and excitement no matter how far away they were.

and when i crashed at john's place that night, the first words i said when i walked into his room at 3 am were: am i broken?

i wondered for so long and hard that night: what's different? is it my tuning fork that's no longer working? why can't i just get carried away with open heart and oscillating spirit? and i couldn't come up with an answer.

so i see them again the next night, but this time i'm four people from the front and i'm with eden and i have no excuses for not being myself. and still, the magic isn't there. i can't find the place where my heart is racing the whole time and i'm alive in a whole new way and place and space. and i don't get it. i did have an amazing time. i know this. and the concert was brilliant. thom messed up twice on faust arp and the banter on stage as he and jonny unsuccessfully play a neil young song while phil (the drummer) runs out to applaud them and give them a dollar as though they were street performers was brilliant. and colin comes out for the next song and immediately hugs thom. smiles all around. vibrant. intimate as they welcomed us in to their family on stage. and it was a great crowd. the opposite of last night's mosh pitting, crowd surfing drunkards {fact: the canadians aren't always polite}.

somehow i couldn't resonate. my heart was still despite all my efforts of trying to force the high. but it

just

wasn't

there.


and i know it wasn't a failure of the band's or thom's part. i watched his movements and my mind could get excited because i could see the pieces playing out in front of me, but somehow they couldn't make their way into my heart.

a few days later i related the experience with a mentor of mine. he's a musician. he gets the resonance factor. and we talked through this curious absence of resonance for these shows and suddenly i am in tears because of the loss and the fact that i am broken.
i am broken.
i realized in talking through it that i had put a glass ceiling to keep myself from going to the highest highs while i've been in recovery mode all spring and summer. the loss of a relationship. then the loss of my grandfather. all these moments of severance both tearing/ugly and clear/clean and i've reined myself in and put a seal over what i am willing to let myself feel. and somehow, the highest highs are as dangerous as the lowest lows. they ask too much of me and in some ways i didn't want thom, such a precious idol on my artistic alter, to even have the chance to disappoint me so i just kept it from even being a possibility. rather than risking finding him faulty, i made it so that i would be the faulty one.

coming away from this conversation i realized i needed to see them once more. give myself one more chance to see them live this tour. the only option left and one i didn't even know existed until the fan standing next to me the night before at the auburn show mentioned he was seeing them in santa barbara next week.
so here we go.
and my little brother gave me my early birthday present {of a highly scalped pit ticket} and i bought the plane ticket that night. i was going and it was going to be an adventure.

and adventure it was.

i carpooled with two people {men} i met on a message board online. one from the seattle area, the other hailing from dallas. i woke up at 4:30am and was in los angeles by 10am and in line by 12:30. i was the first up the hill to the santa barbara bowl (they don't let you run up the hill and i've got the longest stride on a normal day and longer when i want something bad). and i went immediately to just a hair right of center stage. the mic stood right in front. i was going to let myself live into this show. finally.

but it still wasn't there.

i had traveled all this way and it was still.
not.
there.

but even so, even in the face of that loss, it still was an adventure. one of stepping into my power a little here and there. of being bold enough to look a tall, beautiful man in the eye and call him on his attraction. of being at the after party where the band made their appearances. of watching thom. thom. five foot and not much thom walk right by me and me being completely, frustratingly speechless.

so, i got my adventure, one that is {still, in 2010} precious in my own personal mythology and personal history, but it was not the experience of unleashing myself and running free in the music that i had hoped. so while i will never call the trip a failure, the victory was in a realm i didn't quite expect and certainly not the one i went south looking for.

so i continued on and i couldn't listen to their music at all for a few days. and even after i could put on some songs here or there, i couldn't play something like videotape or the reckoner, something that was too potent. even now i have a hard time watching footage of their live performances. it makes my heart hurt. and the ache comes from the fact that in safety, in my aloneness, i am able to let myself resonate in their music where i wouldn't let myself resonate faced with them in person.

in the end, it comes down to three things: 1. the parts of me that are alive in their music are the things that i cling to as indicators of my most passionate, unique, alive, saturated self; and 2. i tether a whole heap of hopes to these vibrant pieces of me and 3. i see these parts of me as indicators that i will move forward in the direction i want. and by forward, i mean forward in a big way. and if i had actually given permission to this part of me to be alive to the music, and then somehow discovered it didn't work, it would be the loss of the only thing remaining after this year of loss: hope and the truest, purest part of myself. and i don't know how i would survive the loss of those two cornerstones of myself. now or any time.