Witness to a Dream

I am swimming in a sea of faces 

that shine with anticipation,

glow with excitement.

Young faces grow up a little

and old faces are young again.

Bodies are rigid, tense,

or else writhing and undulating

like waves.

The thud, thud, thud

of a thousand screaming feet

can't drown drums,

nor bass,

nor strings,

nor man.

Man, that marvel that 

towers above the sea

as though it were his.

It is.

This sea dances for him,

roars for him,

foams and crashes for him.

Godlike, this creature

makes us forget the man,

for he is sheltered by glory

and protected by brilliance.

We have fallen in love

with his dream.

So I went to a Hozier concert in Vegas...

I kept trying to write about it in my diary after it was all over, but I couldn't. I couldn't talk about the concert, and I couldn't think about it. All I had was this huge mess of wordless thoughts that I couldn't make sense of. Although now that I think about it, that may have had as much to do with sleep deprivation as anything else.

The concert was beyond words. I had gone to concerts before- Carrie Underwood and Robert Plant when I was 12 and 14, respectively- but this was something totally new. I don't know if the difference is because I'm older now, or due to how close I actually was to him (front row), or because Hozier more fittingly embodies some kind of romantic ideal.

I thought about that a lot, actually. That we have such strong feelings, some of which actually feel like love, for a stranger. Someone we know next to nothing about, and it's because of this image that we inevitably construct, this presence that is felt by us. Hozier jiving onstage was Andrew living his dream, and he as much as us, was drunk off of it. That's what we fell in love with that night- that dream. Because we have no way of knowing the human being behind it all. 

I couldn't even listen to music afterwards, because recordings couldn't compare. I remember having that reaction after the Robert Plant concert too. In person, voices are so much fuller and richer, and the cellist, Alana Henderson, had a voice that was done a great injustice by the recording studio. Mind you, it sounded wonderful on the CD, but live it was something fantastic. 

I also discovered Low Roar, as they were the opening act. I bought their CD immediately after, got their autographs, took some pictures, and flipped out a little. Then we ran into them in the hotel the next morning, and got another picture. 

Usually Andrew (Hozier-Byrne) comes out to meet fans that stay behind, but the venue didn't really lend itself to meet and greets, so he never came out. I had brought Hotel du Lac (see that post here) to give to him, along with a note explaining the exceedingly romantic circumstances of my possession of it. "The hobo said he liked the sound of my voice, so I'm passing it on to you, since I decided I liked the sound of yours", or something like that.

Imagine my disappointment. I'm staring at it right now.

Next time.