concert going — voyeurism — introspection

He’s sitting 2 rows ahead of me wearing a pink button-up shirt, sleeves folded once. He reminds me of an investment banker — clean, middle-aged, pudgy. White.

The row between us is filled with flannel and skinny jeans. The contrast is comical. The volume grows and lights flash. He stands, throwing his arms in the air. His body reads euphoric and triumphant. What did he do? How did he succeed?

I confess, I too felt triumph during the show. Jason Isbell touches darkness and resolves to triumph with a few words and a guitar. He speaks to addiction, loneliness, destitution, and the mundane workingman’s life. He searches and finds hope for each moment.

It’s thrilling. But it’s not my triumph, or any in the audience, to enjoy. The realization leaves me empty. Maybe dirty.

Triumph assumes challenge and difficulty. Something overcome or defeated. I paid $35 and left work 15 minutes early. No heroics here.

I watch my banker friend from a distance. He cries at all the right times and laughs in reaction to the resolutions. I find myself judging him for his public display of emotion.

I feel guilty about this. They jut into my mind without my permission.

He seems lost in his own world, which I find ironic as this is the largest crowd I’ve been in this year. I suddenly feel as though my consciousness sticks out.

In a crowd of people swept away by music, I watch a man who I did not pay to watch.

The human experience is borrowed.

The movies we watch, the books we read, and the sports we celebrate are not our triumphs. Yet we despair, experience darkness, feel hope, and triumph along with the performance.

In these synthetic moments we can avoid the things that cut us deeply and take on the experience of another to mask our own.

I’ve cried at dogs dying in movies and looked on emotionless as news cameras sweep over dead bodies and mourning widows in far away places.

The dichotomy is chilling in retrospect.

I avoid the real-life mourning widow’s emotion, but experiencing the fictional heroic character’s.

The concert ends. The banker stands to leave. I see his face flush and wet with sweat. Or is it tears? He turns to the woman he’s with and searches her face to see if another had the same experience.

They turn together his arm around her and leave the theater.