you’ll be serving the song

This isn’t a personal blog, so I don’t really say much about what I’m up to, but I found a few pictures from the Amsterdam concert I went to last week. And I am actually in one of them! I always appreciate photographic evidence that I’m not making up my entire life.

These photos on flickr, by Henk Ritskes, are all really good, but here are the two I actually care about.

This is early in the show, and nothing is going on right there, so it’s pretty calm. Just over the watermark, you can see my face right at Gord’s feet, my arms on the stage, looking up. I’m not kneeling; I’m on my toes. I look like I’m about eight years old. I didn’t feel like it at the time, but I look ridiculously tiny in that photograph. Note that I’m surrounded by guys who are all much, much bigger than I am.

This is the closing song (‘Blow at High Dough,’ for those of you who care about such things), a shot of the same area of the pit, and it’s pretty easy to imagine me curled against the stage, trying to protect my head but mostly just getting kicked around as the crowd presses in. It wasn’t a 90s-style NIN pit or anything (I was in those, too, and came out hurting), but it got pretty rough for me. But note that I am not complaining! I’m small and by myself and deserve what I get for standing there. I wouldn’t change a thing. Well, okay, maybe I would have had a little less beer dumped down my back.

There was a moment in this show, during ‘Locked in the Trunk of a Car,’ which starts off a little slow, a little quiet, and the room was mostly dark. And then the lights flashed on, bright glaring white shot through with smoke, and the drums kicked in, low and heavy and driving, and I looked to my left and the pit was this huge writhing mass, and people were hanging over the rail of the balconies, and it went up and back and on forever, alive. I thought, “yes,” and then I didn’t think anymore for a long time.

And that is pretty much what I have to say.