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That wacky weekend
2003-10-09 3:40 p.m.

Ideas, connections, focal points have been swirling around in my head for days; there goes my quiet week.

I wanted so desperately to have one, especially after the weekend.

At the risk of sounding ridiculous, I'll go ahead and say that Saturday's Sting show was one of the best I'd ever seen, and extremely meaningful for me. I'm someone who thrives on individual experiences; I think I find beauty and meaning in the most mundane experiences. It's probably the literature major in me, the fact that by profession I've been trained to be analytical and search out hidden connections, to always think about the way the smallest detail might impact my existence or some global fate.

Having a most unmundane experience on Saturday, then, being mere feet from someone who's art I've been awed by and almost suspicious of (how on earth does one come up with album after album of intellectually stimulating and methodically genius work? strike a deal with Satan?)for years was quite a trip. I know, I know, everyone's got that band that they like, and sure my taste is my own; i'm not insinuating that my take on stuff should ever be an absolute truth. But to think about how much I've returned to the music again and again, and to have it in such an intimate setting was unreal.

The show was amazing, and everything seemed to happen exactly as if I would have written it, which is strange; Sting opened with an old Police song, "Walking on the Moon", which happens to be one of my favorites. Lucky, I guess. After a few songs he played "Mad About You" from The Soul Cages, a song about traveling that I've included in every single mix cd I've ever taken on the road with me. One of the things Steve and I found really funny is that even before we knew each other well and were influenced by each others' tastes, we concurred that the song is sort of a travelers' anthem, an underground theme for the person in pursuit of that jolting, uncomfortable experience that only a completely foreign world can bring. I think, in fact, that song came up in conversation during one of our first dates a few years ago.

Oh, by the way, he never plays that song live. Still lucky again, I guess.

The night before the show, I thought about how lucky we were to have the tickets at all; things like this never just fall into your lap. Why did I get them? Certainly there must have been some mistake. While I was thinking about all this my sister-in-law called me. “Oh,” she said, just casually mentioning something between her description of my nephew’s newest rash and the paperwork she had to get done for work, “Your brother is going to be filming an interview with Sting tomorrow in New York. It’s at his apartment, and it’s for the Oprah Winfrey show. Did you want tickets to that show at the Hammerstein? The producers gave Kevin and the other crew guys [of which there were THREE] tons.”

I sputtered out that I already had them, and that I was sorry I didn’t mention it to her earlier – it had been a busy week and I had only acquired them the week before. She said she understood and moved right along, telling me how hard my brother was trying to pretend that this was just a lighting job like all the others he does, and that he didn’t even pay attention to who the talent was.

I know my brother, and I know his coveted collection of Police LP’s, singles, bootlegs, etc. I know the bond the music created between us, and how much my father, also a Jazz bassist, would amuse himself by critiquing Sting’s technique and watch us get defensive. I know that my understanding, attention, and passion about this particular artist was largely due to my brother’s…so I called him up a few hours later and we got as silly as teenage girls over the individual, amazing experiences we were both about to have with the same artist.

A coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not. I was meant to be at that venue, at the show; I could have gotten tickets three or so different ways – the same tickets that people were bidding $500 and up for; the same tickets that were impossible for everyone else to get. Why me? Why my brother? Why the same day, the same artist? I love it. I couldn't have written it better in a work of fiction.

Just lucky, huh?

Everything I am tells me I can’t ignore these moments in life, can’t ignore the coincidences, the similarities, the signs and symbols, no matter how much judgment it brings my way. I don’t ignore the mundane, I don’t chastise my self for getting philosophical about exactly how the weather patterns go and what that has to do with my life and my fate.

After the show, after the newness of songs I’d never heard settled into the comfortable and emotional familiarity of old songs I love mixed together in my head, we headed back to the 90’s party and found a gathering of friends, of great familiar faces, some of whom hadn’t seen each other in years. I couldn’t help but think about how well that connected to the theme of the night; my brother and I both a fans of a certain artist, yes, and we developed a bond over it. We don’t talk about it all the time, or hardly ever, more accurately, but we both had intense, emotional and individual experiences with said artist that brought together because of it. A particular album, artist, concert – it’s all background music; it’s meaningful but an undercurrent at the same time. It’s like those friends you have – they’re around, but not always present, there someone you know is somewhere, but haven’t thought about. When you see those friends, listen to that CD, see that performance again, you remember suddenly who you are, what your life means, why the Universe has been good to you. And why you’re just lucky, I guess.