years ago - when i was in university, i went to see a concert at the orpheum. i lived south of omaha at the time, and as i drove downtown - thunder storms had already started to break ground. i could see the whirling of those thick masses of clouds ahead of me, only getting worse as i got closer to the theater. i kept going.
this was sigur ros, after all - and the very idea of thunder and rain only excited me more.
after meeting two of my friends around the corner, we made our way to the orpheum as those clamourous sirens began to wail. dozens of people stood outside, under the drop - against the words of the attendants. no one cared. we all stood around smoking cigarettes, jeering the skies - taunting them; go further, be louder, we can take it.
and they listened. it got worse. people shaking water off themselves like dogs as they shuffled us into the hall and down to the basement. the orpheum, if you've seen it - it's so beautiful. the basement of it, rather much like one would expect, though i had never given it much thought until then.. narrow and straight - a long tapered corridor of dressing rooms and prop closets.
we lined the walls, strangers touching shoulders - there wasn't anywhere else to stand. everything painted the same creamy yellow. i shifted impatiently. craning my neck up to the low ceiling and then back down to face my two friends who stood across from me on the adjacent wall. i was so close to them we could reach out and touch each other from our opposite sides. as you peered down the corridor it seemed to go on without end - two parallel walls lined with wet faces.
it was then that i heard it - a drum kick. and then a horn. shuffling of feet, a hundred heads turning in one direction - down the thing to whatever it was, those sounds, that beating. no one said anything. we all just stared.
and then, like a dream - they were there. as if marching in a parade, instruments in hand, playing loudly - blaring; to keep the thunder down, to turn the worries, to make us forget all the bad things.. as sigur ros passed us, we threw our hands in the air. we laughed and hollered for them, for all of us. bewitched by their sound, always and then in that moment - it was real and in front of me and i loved more in that instant than i ever had in my life.
it feels like how you would imagine a movie to be - thinking back on it. the slowness of how they came and went, of the people bouncing around me, hair moving in waves - and then gone, up and out of sight.
after that, the concert resumed as the storms faded and while it was joyful and everything i had thought it would be, nothing can compare to what happened down there. not to me, not ever.