Sets was a pretty amazing event, at an amazing venue. Or amazing from my perspective as an underage, poor teen. It was right on the beach. The stage wasn't facing the ocean, but the beauty with sound is that it travels all direction and we could hear all the music perfectly. But let me start at the start, because I couldn't possibly make 5 paragraphs worth of text from just telling you about the gig.
I got at Scarborough beach at about 1:15, after about two hours of public transport from Guilford where I'd been staying with N (who alas, does not feature in this tale). It was ferociously hot (there goes all the subtle beauty about summer's end in my previous posts) and I had a coconut custard pull-apart thing cooking away in my small black bag under my pungent smelling bathers. I took a swim in the ocean, which was beautiful, the waves were all-round good (in the sense that, if you can catch waves, its good, but if you're shit, they break pretty far out and you can just hang in the white foam). I caught a few waves and went back to my gear, and soon Glock and Reen arrived with a bounty of delicious food. I was glad they arrived, but they had to leave to go 'get changed', an endeavour which took them all of a half-hour. Fortunately, E and H.W. arrived in their absence, and we all chilled. I should mention that music was playing at this point but hey, it wasn't terrific and I couldn't see the band and talking was more important. We all hung in the sun for a while, cooking away (Miffy was supposed to come with an umbrella but he had more important things to do... the dick). We decided to seek sanctuary from the sun on the other side of Sets, and we find a cool place among the trees and limestone to eat. Being UTGGP, what gig would be complete without one of these...
Excuse the fact I look like I've been dead for about 9 and a half hours, it's just the sunscreen. Oh, and if you didn't know, that guy is the drummer for the Holidays. I like the Holidays. The Holidays (excluding him) did not like us. However, their manager did ask us to close an impermanent gate contraption behind them as they drove off. They hadn't played yet, don't worry, I'll get to that.
This is me and Glock doing the Coachella Strut. If you don't know it, you don't truly know how to dance at gigs.
The sun was lower in its arc and we went back round to the beach side. We found an excellent spot where you could see everything and hear perfectly.
We heard the Holidays play! I really am awful at distinguishing one song from the other, but they were all beautiful. And lovely. And we all sat in the sand, and we listened contently. There are two different types of gigs. The ones that make you dance, and the ones that make you content. The waves on the beach seemed to rise and sink, in sync.
The day drew on and on. And as the day drew on, things started to happen. E was the catalyst (or as he would put it - the 'cuntalyst'). Things were all happening to each of us, emotions which seemed to fit together so perfectly, and when 'Big Jet Plane' played, I broke down (and not just because it ain't hardly music and somehow manages to get hours of airtime). But then something perfect happened. We all decided to go into the ocean, because... just because. We entered hand in hand, a long chain of us, and we swam. And we frolicked and kicked and played and we ducked under waves and we let ourselves be crunched by them, their white, furious hugs. We stayed in there until the sunset, the sun setting on Sets.
Stuff happened afterwards, Muscles played music and it was good. It was great. I danced my ass off, and we talked to some nice cops and we dipped marshmallows into chocolate. But all of that is so insignificant, so tiny compared to that sunset, our sunset. Because my gig gang is my family. They are like minded people, people who don't want to waste life. And we all appreciate the end of things too, because is you can't find beauty in the end of things, how on earth can you have valued them?
I wish I could write more, I really do. But with every keystroke, I feel like I'm cheapening the privacy, the integrity of that moment. The image I'm left with, the image I took away from that day? It's just after the sunset. You can't see the sun. And you miss the sun. But it's light is still glowing into the sky. And as that light fades slowly, slowly, you can see stars in the sky. Beautiful, twinkling stars.
For E, for H.W., for Rose.
No comments:
Post a Comment