Photo by ActionVance on Unsplash
The sweet scent of peach lemonade and vodka seeps from my pores as the temperature rises near the bar at the back of the Starland Ballroom. Oversized flannels hang off the bodies of girls wearing ripped skinny jeans, and a crowd of t-shirts with different tour dates printed on their backs moves in waves – to a standing spot, to the bar, and back again. I hold my plastic cup close to my chest, careful to sip the vodka slowly; I need to be able to stand to see the stage. An advertisement for IHOP flashes across the projector screen, and the crowd roars, a symphony of chants honoring buttermilk pancakes. I clap, too, imagining a side of crispy bacon, a cheese omelette, and hot coffee running down my freshly sore throat when the concert is over.
When the screen retracts into the ceiling, and the opening band members take the stage, the lead singer begins screaming into the microphone. The opening band at a pop-punk show often has something to prove. Perhaps it is because they know the bands to follow will hold the audience’s attention more easily. No one will dare to go out for a cigarette or use the bathroom during the headliner’s performance, so something needs to be extreme for this opener to maintain crowd morale. As something reminiscent of singing begins, I think of the concerts I’ve been to before. I remember the smells, the ever-present aroma of stale sweat and weed. I remember the feelings, of a boyfriend’s hands wrapped around my waist, of a mosh-pit member bruising my thigh, of a crowd surfer stepping sneakers on my shoulders to reach out for a lead singer’s hand.
I drift through memories during concerts, moving through time as if the music notes lift my body above the crowd of tattoos and beer cups and into the past. I find myself back at my desk, or on my couch, writing words inspired by music. I read a book and feel the adjectives in my veins, the metaphors pounding like the beat of a metronome. Yellowcard plays through my laptop speakers, and I remember seeing them live for the first time, the lyrics to “How I Go” drawing tears down my cheeks, the moisture highlighted by the spotlights. I think about that song, its basis in literature, the story of Big Fish told through a vocal duet, and wonder who else knows the secret.
I have listened to this song hundreds of times – on car rides to work, while cleaning my house, as I type these words – and each time, I find myself lost in the storybook, enamored by the prose in music. I imagine myself swimming in the ink on pages of a novel, in sheet music, through the setlist of the band that’s playing, all their words seeping in through my skin.
As the opening band finishes and the projector screen lowers, shielding the stage from prying eyes, I take a sip of my vodka and lemonade, both of which cause a subtle burn in my throat. The advertisements on the screen are for other visiting bands. A show featuring A Day to Remember is coming up soon, and suddenly I am watching Night at the Museum in my living room, and Teddy Roosevelt is talking to the security guard saying, “I’m Made of Wax, Larry, What Are You Made Of?” I turn to my friend, a look of understanding on his face as he takes out his phone and plays the song of the same name. In that moment, I don’t blink - as the song instructs - taking in the slightly screamo scene, struck by the connectedness of artists.
A chain of events is a wonderful thing to examine; a filmmaker conceptualizes a movie, a screenwriter develops the dialogue, a team of editors and copywriters have their way with the script, then a gaggle of actors gets ahold of it, memorizes it, and performs it, and a line from that film becomes the title of a song, and the song is listened to by presumably millions, and all at once everything leads back to creatives, to the people who turn ideas into reality.
I think about the chain in reverse, too. I’ve read The Perks of Being a Wallflower more times than I can count since my teen years, and as a result The Smiths snuck their way into my playlists. Morrissey sings “Asleep” to me whenever insomnia invites itself over. I imagine the light that never goes out, a double decker bus crash, the unyielding call of rest. Soon, it takes me too, and I can thank Stephen Chbosky for introducing me to this music through his words, Morrissey living in two of my libraries.
The screen rises and the next band plays, an indie, pop-punk amalgamation called The Sidekicks. Their performance is high-energy, addicting. The crowd gains momentum, holding their hands in the air when asked, that hypnotic call magnetizing wrists to rise, almost involuntarily. There is magic in the air at a concert; unspoken witchcraft that moves people, both in figurative and literal terms. I’ve only seen the same spells on the pages of books, the placement of a specific adverb enough to turn the page, the lyricism in a paragraph eliciting tears, the meter of a poem bringing me right back to music.
I think of the time I discovered the hidden track on a My Chemical Romance album. The thrill of listening to “Blood,” my own pumping maniacally, my heart almost ready to burst from excitement. An association formed between “Blood” and A Clockwork Orange when someone made a fan trailer using that track as the background music. I still see Alex and his Droogs laughing and kicking innocents, trickles of blood on the page and screen, inflated by the harsh beat of the song, the lyric They can fix me proper with a bit of luck stuck looping, an internal vinyl record.
I sometimes wonder if my associations between literature and music are imaginary. I wonder if the connections I see between my bookshelves and my music library are a stretch, at best. I imagine going through the process of making my own book, embedding punctuation marks on pages in an order that makes me feel whole, making connections between beginning, middle, and end – the crescendo and climax one and the same. Nerve signals send weights to my stomach and my lungs feel sore, breath an unknown concept. Then, I feel the rumble of the bass in my chest, the twang of an electric guitar shooting tingles out my fingertips, and I am reminded of the healing sensation of live music.
The headlining band comes out from behind the projector screen as another photograph of fresh pancakes disappears into the ceiling. Motion City Soundtrack is playing a reunion tour, proving that broken things can always be fixed. I clutch my plastic cup of vodka and lemonade, and squeal like the high school girl that discovered this band, the one who listened to them every day on the bus, who cried more on the day they announced their breakup than she did when her first boyfriend cheated on her. Reliving the past through music, she feels the tears well up before they strum their first note.
At some point mid-show, they play “Can’t Finish What You Started.” I think of all the things I’d like to say in my own writing, familiar with the concept of failing to write a single word sometimes. I feel the percussion in my soul. The soft blues and pinks of this album cover create a cotton candy haze in my vision. I am lost, this time in the music, the notes taking me on another journey. Willingly, I go with them.
Every story needs an ending, after all.
Holly Hagman is a teacher and writer from a small town in New Jersey. She earned her MFA in creative nonfiction from Fairfield University, and she is currently a nonfiction editor for Variant Literature. Her work can be viewed in The Citron Review, Complete Sentence, and Porcupine Literary. She enjoys collecting coffee mugs and cuddling her cats.