21 for a night

Before this past Monday night, it had been several years since I had seen a show in a venue as large as the Comcast Center (formerly Tweeter Center, formerly Great Woods) in Mansfield, MA. And the last time I had seen Pearl Jam there was in, I think, '91, during the Lollapalooza tour, when they played with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and several grunge-era bands (Soundgarden? Alice in Chains? Who can remember?). So I experienced quite a bit of culture shock as I entered the grounds of the outdoor stadium on a sweltering June evening, surrounded by an eclectic mix of fans: middle-aged couples of respectable income; bandana-sporting transients from Seattle and Vancouver; testosterone-laden twentysomethings from the 128 belt, and the four of us: Bryan, my sister Kaytie, her friend Jess, and me.

I confess that I was almost giddy with anticipation. Pearl Jam tends to sell out shows in about 10 minutes, so in all honesty, I'm so out of the loop these days that I don't usually even hear about a show until it's too late. And I generally try to avoid large concert crowds, which means that when we see shows, we tend to go to quaint little music spaces such as the Calvin Theatre in Northampton and the Somerville Theatre outside of Boston.

I'll spare you the details of the parking lot (not much has changed, except that there is now a "premium parking" lot where you can pay $40 and be in and out, as opposed to waiting in a long line of cars. Extortion!).

As we filed slowly up to our seats, sweat and beer and cigarette breath surrounding us on all sides, I wondered, "Was it always like this? And what exactly am I doing here?" But once I was able to breathe again, and once the band took the stage, there was no question. I didn't stop to think "am I too old for this" as I whooped and danced and sang along to old classics like "Elderly Woman behind a Counter in Small Town" and new protest songs like "No More War". And as Eddie Vedder belted out, in his hypnotic baritone, the opening lyrics to "animal," and I leaned over to Kaytie and yelled, "How does he do that?" she responded, "I don't know, but it's funny how easily I can be reduced to a lovestruck adolescent."

And as corny as it is, I had to agree. "I know!" I squawked. "I want to marry Eddie Vedder right now!" And we both swooned over his long, sweat-soaked locks and scruffy beard. The man is sexy, there's no question.

And now it's too days later and I can recollect my emotions with tranquility, as Wordsworth would say, and reflect with amusement on my silly girlish declaration. But it's fun to be 21 every now and then, and what better outlet for that energy than a Pearl Jam show? A little bouncing and howling every now and then keeps it fresh, no?

And in keeping with the decadent spirit, Kaytie and I, staunch advocates of the "whole foods diet," punctuated the show with a mustard-covered hot dog. Guess that's what passes for radical in our world these days :]/

riding in cars with noise

Something happens to me when I get into the car without my kids. When I put the key in the ignition and back out of the driveway, away from the endless loop of "Mom?" and the cute but sometimes tiresome questions about who makes the road and why the sky is blue and when can I go to the bathroom, I am suddenly overcome with a craving, a need for really loud music. And generally really raucous music. Yes, my musical tastes have mellowed and matured as I've gotten older, but when I'm alone in the driver's seat, I am suddenly nineteen again, at a Lollapalooza concert with my long crimson hair and nose ring, rocking out to the Smashing Pumpkins or the Beastie Boys or Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (who I still love, by the way). Alone in the driver's seat, I summon my old pals Pearl Jam or the Red Hot Chili Peppers and press the "+" on the volume button until electric guitar is streaming wildly from the speakers. On the road, especially the highway, where I'm less likely to be spotted by a parent of one of my kids' friends, or a student, I can bellow along to Eddie Vedder with feverish abandon, until my throat is scratchy (this used to happen often when I was commuting back and forth from Burlington, VT every other weekend to visit Bryan here in CT) and my ears are ringing and I'm out of breath.

And there is another kind of freedom that comes with these solo car rides: the freedom to swear, to --dare I say it?--yell the "f" word as the lyrics require. Now, I'm not given to dropping expletives in my every day speech, but there's something liberating about being able to belt them out without fear of having them repeated back to me in toddler-ese. In the car alone, my inner twentysomething is released, and it feels soooo good. Each tune is like one of Proust's petite madeleines: my whole body shudders with the memory of a city where I once lived, a mountain I once hiked, a friend I once had. The other morning, on my way to physical therapy, Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road" dropped me into 1984, when I was on the cusp of adolescence, fervently writing fiction on my typewriter in the basement of my parents' house, imagining novels drawn from Springsteen's motley characters and New Jersey backroads; driving later that afternoon, Widespread Panic's "Travelin' Light" transported me to Red Rocks Stadium in Denver on a hot July day in the mid-90's, the air pungent with sweat and draft beer and sweet gange fumes; on another drive, Pearl Jam's "Rearview Mirror" has me driving a minivan from Boulder to Portland, Oregon with five other folks from Sierra Club, on our way to a conference. At twenty-two, the Age of Narcissism, I didn't need to be alone in the car to sing without restraint, to let the lyrics punctuate my mood: Saw things clearer/Once you were in my/Rearview mirror

On the way home from nursery school, of course, we're back to the Wiggles or "Baby Bunglebee," as Lexi likes to call it, but that's okay, too, because, truth be known, I'll sing along to anything. Well, almost anything. And belting out "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" requires a certain shrugging off of inhibition, too, and there's no shortage of memory-association with these innocent tracks, whose words seem to have been preserved in the far recesses of my brain all these years.

After silence, that which comes closest to expressing the inexpressible is music. --Aldous Huxley