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(post-Hugen/Coverdale meeting edit; originally posted 9/11/03)
I’m taking one of my precious personal days tomorrow, flying to the Denver airport with my sisters Diane and Sarah, courtesy of Dad’s frequent flyer miles. We’re staying the weekend with her in-laws and will be catching the R.E.M. show at Red Rocks on Saturday night. Red Rocks, the Venue of Renown!
It’s my fourth time to see R.E.M. live. Either Wilco or Ed Hardcourt will be opening. Sarah is pushing for Wilco, of course, but I’m itching to see Hardcourt play the keyboard again. I heard him in the summer of 2002 when he opened for Neil Finn (of Crowded House) at Hollywood’s House of Blues. The guy knows his way around the 88, folks. Need I say more?
Speaking of L.A., I saw my third R.E.M. show there with Diane a few years ago, at the Hollywood Bowl. We’d purchased those tickets through R.E.M.’s fan club, which landed us smack in row #3. Again, we have fan club privileges for the Red Rocks show, mysterious green wristbands that will, rumor has it, put us somewhere in a cordoned-off area in the General Admission sea.
Diane, a hard-core introvert, doesn’t like being up front, hates being noticed. At our Monday night family dinner this week, she bemoaned her discomfort at the Hollywood Bowl, when we sat right in bass player Mike Mills’ eyeshot. “I was singing along, when he looked right at me!" She grimaced. "And then he smiled!”
We all thought she was overreacting. “I don’t have a problem with it,” I said emphatically. “I want to be close enough to see Michael Stipes’ pores.”
“It was the same thing with Suzanne Vega,” she sighed. She was speaking of last summer, when Julie, Julie's visiting mother, Diane and I caught Vega (yet another favorite) at a Tucson nightclub. I had slowly worked my way up to the front so that I could better see every nuance of the poet-singer’s facial expressions, so that I could better watch her work the guitar strings, and (last and least, but still, let’s be honest) so that I could better witness the attractive men in her band. Diane was a good sport to follow me, but she endured less than a song’s length before retreating somewhere to the back with Julie.
Dad piped in, "But they love it when you sing along." Dad's pointing out the obvious did nothing to assuage her anxiety.
So this brings me to my modern parable. The Kingdom of Heaven is like a huge, joyous rock show, and grace is that mysterious green wristband, with the power of putting us front and center, although not only available to a finite few but, by some mystery, to all. But we must let God, and others at the show, see us, if we’re going to be down there on the floor, close to the stage, close enough to see his pores (so to speak), close enough to see him working the frets, close enough to really see what he’s doing. We should let ourselves sing along, let him smile at us. C.S. Lewis talked about the terror of that true connection in his allegory, "The Great Divorce," showing that inhibition before God is, ultimately, a formidable pride, a false pride that kills our spirit.
While I wait for Lewis’ soul-bus-ride, these days on earth may seem like opening-act time, often riddled with half-guilty notions that I should be loving the music more, often filled with speculation of how long the wait for God’s “real show” must be. (But wait, isn’t the Kingdom of Heaven at hand?) Sometimes I feel stuck receiving and even giving suffering--like Trent Reznor, howling with a blistering angst; sometimes I’m the beneficiary of a weird, piercing happiness--like Fred Schneider, making goofy rhymes and thrashing about with his microphone. Anyway, when that Son of David headliner finally begins, I want to get down on the floor, dodging body-surfers if need be, but always staying close enough to see Jesus’ pores, to see the wrinkles from his years of walking in that Middle Eastern sun, to see the scars from that horrible, wonderful crown, to see him smile playfully at me when I remember the tune and the words. |
